Abstract
Extant literature has universally demonstrated that employee voice is a positive workplace behavior that is beneficial for organizations. We challenge this consensus by investigating the potential cost of employee voice for organizational ethics. Drawing upon moral licensing theory, we suggest that employees engaging in voice may lead them to develop psychological entitlement (i.e., a belief that they are owed special treatments from the organization), which in turn increases their workplace deviance. Furthermore, we propose that these effects are especially pronounced among employees with higher levels of power distance orientation. Empirical results from a vignette experiment and a multi-wave survey supported our hypotheses. Taken together, our research not only extends the literature on the consequences of voice by revealing the unforeseen perils of voice for organizations, but also delivers important practical implications for managing employee voice.
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Data availability
Data is available on request for corresponding author.
Notes
According to the anonymous reviewer’s suggestion, we tested our hypotheses by further controlling for employees’ prosocial orientation, perceived leader power, and the demographic characteristics of their leaders. The results did not show substantive changes compared to the results without controlling for these variables.
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Funding
This research was supported by a Fulbright Scholarship, sponsored by the U.S. government, and three grants funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72325012, 72272155, and 71872190), awarded to Dr. Xin Qin.
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P, Zhao formulated the research idea and conducted the study. P, Zhao and J, Guan drafted the manuscript and provided critical revisions to the manuscript.
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Zhao, P., Guan, J. When employee voice backfires: examining how and when employee voice induces workplace deviance. Curr Psychol 43, 18503–18516 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05587-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05587-w