Manager consultation and employee voice

Reference paper:

Tangirala, S., & Ramanujam, R. (2012). Ask And You Shall Hear (But Not Always): Examining The Relationship Between Manager Consultation And Employee Voice. Personnel Psychology, 65(2), 251–282. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.2012.01248.x

Abstract:

(A 50-word quick summary from my understanding)

The study demonstrates how managerial consultation has positive effects on employees' voice by strengthening employees' perceived influence at work. Further the study delineates the moderators (manager's status and employee's work self-efficacy) that strengthen manager's consultation on sense of influence, from moderator (overall job satisfaction) that strengthens perceived influence on voice.

Quick Notes/queries:

(For my further delving)

Dyadic-level consultation

• How does manager's consultation with selective employees influence the voice behavior of the others? Are those employees not consulted more likely to proactively seek opportunities to speak up or more likely to remain silent? What individual level attributes affect this relationship?
• What individual and contextual factors influence managers' consulting behavior? Specifically, what individual attributes of managers affect their consulting behavior? Under what situations are they more likely to consult employees? What target characteristics influence who the manager chooses to seek consultation from?
• How does the perceived intention of manager's consultation behavior influence employee's voice behavior? For example - consider a case where manager solicits suggestions, opinions or ideas on subjects that are perceived by employees to be of no interest to organization, collective or self. In such cases would not the voice behavior pattern be distinct (with all else being controlled in the model proposed in the current study)?

Group-level consultation

• Is is possible that consultation exists also as a group-level construct? If so, how does this affect employee's perceived influence at workplace and predict voice behavior? How does consultation as a group-level and dyadic interplay with each other in influencing voice behavior? For example - consider a scenario where the perceived levels of manager's consulting with an employee is same as the levels of consultation with employee's group. In this case, how does 'dyadic manager consultation behavior' influence employee's perceived influence at workplace?

Employee responsiveness

• What individual attributes and contextual factors affect the responsiveness of employees to manager's consultation? How does not responding positively to manager's consultation affect future consulting and voice episodes of the employee?

Perceived influence

• What factors moderate the effect of perceived influence at workplace on prosocial behaviors? When and why are employees with high perceived influence likely to engage in behaviors that are not prosocial or anti-organizational?

Generalizability

• Is it possible that voice behavior in the context observed in the study (nurses in large hospital systems) is very distinct? For example, a nurse in a patient care setting, who knows that a possible medical error that she has noticed could be critical to a patient's life may have a different perception of impact of voice behavior as compared to an employee in a software product setting, where the implications of not speaking up on the customers may be either not evident or perceived to be less critical and significant.
• Are the findings in this study generalizable to a more gender-balanced organization context?
• How different would the behavioral patterns have been if manager's were asked to self-rate their consulting behavior?

Others

• How does manager's perception of utility of consultation sought influence manager's future consultation behavior towards an employee or group?
  
  
• How does climate of silence affect manager's consultation behavior and thereby voice behavior?