Employee voice and Performance Ratings
Voice represents employees’ expression of suggestions, opinions, or concerns on work issues (Van Dyne & Lepine, 1998). In contrast, silence represents their intentional withholding of suggestions, opinions, or concerns on work issues (Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008). The prevailing viewpoint is that voice is helpful and functional, whereas silence is harmful or dysfunctional. That is, when employees speak up, teams are said to avoid mistakes and make improvements in their products and processes; by comparison, when employees suppress their input, teams are posited to suffer performance decrements (Morrison, 2014). In this way, the literature treats voice as an indicator of employees’ engagement and experience of psychological safety, and silence as a symptom of their fear, defensiveness, or disengagement (Brinsfield, 2013; Kish-Gephart, Detert, Treviño, & Edmondson, 2009; Knoll & van Dick, 2013; Morrison, 2011). As a result, most studies aim to identify the antecedents of voice and silence so as to prescribe ways of maximizing the former and minimizing the latter (Detert & Edmondson, 2011; Morrison, See, & Pan, 2015; Sherf, Parke, & Isaakyan, 2020).
Employee voice and Performance Ratings
Project Team: | Apurva Sanaria Michael Parke and Subra Tangirala |
Sponsor: | IIM Bangalore |
Project Status: | Ongoing (Initiated in March 2022) |
Area: | Organizational Behavior & Human Resources Management |
Abstract: | Voice represents employees’ expression of suggestions, opinions, or concerns on work issues (Van Dyne & Lepine, 1998). In contrast, silence represents their intentional withholding of suggestions, opinions, or concerns on work issues (Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008). The prevailing viewpoint is that voice is helpful and functional, whereas silence is harmful or dysfunctional. That is, when employees speak up, teams are said to avoid mistakes and make improvements in their products and processes; by comparison, when employees suppress their input, teams are posited to suffer performance decrements (Morrison, 2014). In this way, the literature treats voice as an indicator of employees’ engagement and experience of psychological safety, and silence as a symptom of their fear, defensiveness, or disengagement (Brinsfield, 2013; Kish-Gephart, Detert, Treviño, & Edmondson, 2009; Knoll & van Dick, 2013; Morrison, 2011). As a result, most studies aim to identify the antecedents of voice and silence so as to prescribe ways of maximizing the former and minimizing the latter (Detert & Edmondson, 2011; Morrison, See, & Pan, 2015; Sherf, Parke, & Isaakyan, 2020). |