Prohibitive Voice:Influence Factors and Implementation Effect

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (5) : 1180-1185.

PDF(342 KB)
PDF(342 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (5) : 1180-1185.

Prohibitive Voice:Influence Factors and Implementation Effect

Author information +
History +

Abstract

In recent years, prohibitive voice is an emerging topic in the field of voice behavior. It describes employees’ expressions of concern about work practices, incidents, and employee behavior that are harmful to their organization. Prohibitive voice can be regarded as an important factor for organizational health, because such alarming messages place previously undetected problems on the collective agenda to be resolved or prevent problematic initiatives from taking place (Liang, Farh, & Farh, 2012). Accordingly, prohibitive voice plays a key role in preventing team crisis and guaranteeing organizational security. Prohibitive voice with defensive properties can enhance regulatory effort in teams toward such loss-prevention and drive the team to strive for security-related goals. Therefore, it can improve the overall safety performance of the organization and exclude the hidden dangers in the organization. At the same time, in the Chinese context organization, the leader will suppress the voice of the subordinates by maintaining their own authority, which in turn easily stimulate the anti production behavior and aggravate the employees’ self-loss. Consequently, this study holds that suppressive suggestions have a double-edged sword effect on organizational management. As a result, it is important to stimulate employees’ suppressing suggestions in the organization, and avoid the negative effects of the suppressing suggestions. This study started with an explicit introduction about the concept and measurement of the prohibitive voice, and then made a systematic review about the empirical research at home and abroad. Specifically, first, the antecedents of prohibitive voice were divided into three aspects: characteristics and behavior tendency, psychological state and values, job characteristics and leadership behavior. The first two aspects reflect the regularity and consistency of individual behavior and thought, which is relatively stable over time, such as the Big Five personality characteristics, while the latter reflects the individual organizational situations, such as organizational structure and moral leadership. Second, we discussed the effects of prohibitive voice based on the pros and cons. On the one hand, it reduces the organizational task performance, suggesting it has a negative impact on the behavior in the work domain, such as counterproductive work behavior and deviant behavior. On the other hand, prohibitive voice increases the customer’s citizenship behaviors and safety performance. There are several future research directions about prohibitive voice. First, although individual differences and situational factors can be seen as key antecedents of prohibitive voice, few studies have focused on complete picture on the effects of individual differences and situations on prohibitive voice based on a comprehensive perspective. Therefore, future research should explore the antecedents of prohibitive voice from the perspective of the individual-situation interaction, making the causal link among variables become clearer and more accurate. Second, prohibitive voice has a double-edged sword effect on the organizational management. Thus, future research should deeply explore the boundary conditions of the effects of prohibitive voice. Third, compared with low-power distance cultural value, the influence factors of prohibitive voice may vary in the context of high-power distance cultural value. Future research should explore the cultural roots of employee prohibitive voice in Chinese organizations and further improve the Chinese localization contingency effect.

Key words

prohibitive voice / double-edged sword effect / localization in China

Cite this article

Download Citations
Prohibitive Voice:Influence Factors and Implementation Effect[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2019, 42(5): 1180-1185
PDF(342 KB)

Accesses

Citation

Detail

Sections
Recommended

/