Employee Voice Behavior To Leader’s Response: The Influence Of Power Distance And Self-control

Voice behavior is a promotive behaviorwhich emphasizes the expression of constructive questioning.According to the content,it can be divided into promotive voice and prohibitive voice.Employee voice plays an important role in the organization for it can help senior leaders to find out the problems existing in the organization,improve the work flow,optimize the decision-making plan,enhance the learning and innovation ability of the organization,and finally promote the development of the organization.Previous studies have paid most attention to the investigation of antecedent variables of employee voice behavior,ignoring the distinction and psychological mechanism between two types of leadership responses(i.e.,promotion and endorsement)induced by them.Also,it lacks the consideration of boundary factors such as leadersand situation(i.e.,self-control and power distance).Therefore,from the perspective of the Reflective-Impulsive Theory,this paper explores the responses of leaders to two types voice behaviors of employees,and examines the role of power distance and self-control of leaders in them.This paper uses three sub-studies to verify the hypothesis.Study 1 selected 149 participants to explore themediation role of leader’s self-threat between employee’s voice behavior and leader’s responseby manipulating voice behavior;Study 2 selected 138 participants to study the moderation role of leader’s power distance in the process of employee’s voice behavior making effects on leader’s endorsement through leader’s self-threat by manipulating voice behavior and leader’s power distance;Study 3 selected 199 participants to study the moderation role of leader’s self-control in the process of employee’s voice behavior making effects on leader’s promotion intention through leader’s self-threatby manipulating voice behavior and leader’s self-control.The main conclusions of the studies are as follows:(1)Employee’s voice behavior affects the leader’s endorsement.Compared with promotive voice,prohibitive voice can lead to lower endorsement than promotive voice,and thenegative effect that prohibitive voice can influence the endorsement through leader’s self-threat is stronger.(2)The power distance of leader can moderate the indirect effect of prohibitive voice on the endorsement through self-threat.Specifically,the higher the power distance,the stronger the negative effect of prohibitive voice on the endorsement through self-threat.(3)Leader’s self-control can moderate the relationship between leader’s self-threat and promotion intention.Leader’s self-control can moderate the indirect effect of prohibitive voice on promotion intention through self-threat.Specifically,the lower the self-control ability of leader,the stronger the negative effect of prohibitive voice on promotion intention through self-threat.The research extends the application of Reflective-Impulsive Theory in the research of voice behavior and enriches the exploration of boundary factors that make effects in the process of leader’s response.Also,study provides reference for employees in the aspect of how to voice and for leaders in the aspect of how to treat both voice and voicer in practice,which may affect the good development of organization.