Expanding our Understanding of Constructive Voice: Accounting for Voice Function and Scope

Constructive voice, the sharing of ideas or concerns that improve organizational functioning, is an important workplace behavior. Recent narrative reviews of constructive voice have highlighted the importance of accounting for different types of voice. Initial efforts to explain the type of constructive voice have focused on voice function, and distinguished constructive voice as promotive or prohibitive in nature. Yet, research findings regarding relationships between promotive and prohibitive voice and antecedents of constructive voice reveal inconsistencies that suggest that our theoretical understanding is incomplete. In this dissertation, I argue that in addition to distinguishing constructive voice as to its function (i.e., promotive voice and prohibitive voice), it is also important to distinguish constructive voice as to its scope (i.e., the number of different issues expressed by employees). By accounting for the function and scope of voice, I develop four specific types of constructive voice (i.e., championing, initiating, alarming, and patrolling) and conduct two studies wherein I establish construct validity and test differences in antecedent and outcome relationships with the specific types of voice. I first focus on scale development: generating items and assessing content validity. In Study 1, I test the factor structure of championing, initiating, alarming, and patrolling, and the nomological network of the measures. My second study is a field study of 251 employees in an insurance company and manufacturing facility. In Study 2 I test the criterion-related validity of the measures and explore the implications of voice scope. The research reported in my dissertation contributes to our understanding of constructive voice, and following from this, facilitates further theoretical and practical advances as to when employees who voice may be heard and when they may be tuned out.