How voice content is developed by employees and evaluated by managers : a construal level perspective

Abstract

The previous research has documented the important role that voice content plays in influencing managers’ reactions to upward voice and voicers. These studies primarily spoke to the function of voice content as a signal of voicers’ work capabilities and/or work attitudes, while little effort has been made to investigate how managers evaluate the voiced issue by forecasting the organizational outcomes if the voice is enacted. Responding to recent calls for viewing voice content with respect to implementation (Burris et al., 2017; Farh et al., 2022), I draw on construal level theory to identify two dimensions of voice content: voice desirability and voice feasibility. I also examine whether, how, and when voice desirability and feasibility link abstract and concrete construal of voiced issue to voice endorsement. A study with an event-sampling method supported the positive indirect relationship between abstract construal of voiced issue and voice endorsement via voice desirability and the positive indirect relationship between concrete construal of voiced issue and voice endorsement via voice feasibility. I further found a positive interactive relationship between concrete construal of voiced issue and organizational tenure in predicting voice feasibility.