The influence of national culture on employee voice in small and medium enterprises: a cross-cultural perspective
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-04-2022-0187 |
| Published date | 29 November 2022 |
| Date | 29 November 2022 |
| Pages | 478-494 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Aidan McKearney,Rea Prouska,Monrudee Tungtakanpoung,John Opute |
The influence of national culture
on employee voice in small
and medium enterprises:
a cross-cultural perspective
Aidan McKearney, Rea Prouska, Monrudee Tungtakanpoung and
John Opute
LSBU Business School, London South Bank University, London, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine how employee voice in small and medium enterprises
(SMEs) is shaped by national culture. Specifically, the paper explores the relationship between national culture
and organisational norms and signals. Furthermore, it explores the impact of such norms on employee voice
behaviours. The paper chooses to address these issues in the SME context, in three countries with divergent
cultural dimensions.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors use Kwon and Farndale’s (2020) typology as our “a priori”
framework to explore the influence of national cultural values and cultural tightness on SME organisation
norms, signals and employee voice behaviours. Our study uses qualitative data gathered through in-depth
interviews with SME employees in England, Nigeria and Thailand.
Findings –The results from our interviews are presented thematically. The data illustrates how the cultural
dimensions identified by Kwon and Farndale (2020) can have an influence on organisationalvoice norms. The
dimensions are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, in-group collectivism, performance orientation,
assertiveness and cultural tightness.
Originality/value –Historically, the impact of national culture as a macro factor on voice has been largely
ignored by academic research. Studies in non-western contexts are especially rare. This paper derives its
originality by offering unique insights into the culture–voice relationship from both western and non-western
perspectives. This provides an international, cross-cultural, comparativedimension to our study. This research
includes findings from under-researched settings in Nigeria and Thailand.
Keywords Employee voice, Organizational norms, National culture, SMEs, England, Thailand, Nigeria
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Employee voice has been found to positively affect organisational performance and
improve employee motivation, engagement, commitment, satisfaction and morale (Philip
and Arrowsmith, 2021). Particularly in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which are
characterised by informality in their HRM practices (Prouska and Psychogios, 2019),
voice can enable employee involvement and participation in decision-making and
improve organisational innovation and performance (Selvaraj and Joseph, 2020;Shahzad
et al., 2019). Yet, voice in such enterprises remains largely under-theorised and under-
researched (Gilman et al.,2015).
We frame our paper within an inclusive definition of voice: “the ways and means through
which employees attempt to have a say and potentially influence organisational
affairs relating to issues that affect their work and the interests of managers and owners”
ER
45,2
478
This research was internally funded by the London Centre for Business and Entrepreneurship Research
at LSBU Business School, London South Bank University, UK.
Declaration of interest statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement: The data is available upon request by contacting one of the authors.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 20 April 2022
Revised 19 September 2022
25 October 2022
Accepted 25 October 2022
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 45 No. 2, 2023
pp. 478-494
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-04-2022-0187
(Wilkinson et al., 2014, p. 5). This definition encompasses the multiple meanings of voice and
combines a variety of voice mechanisms.
Voice research has tended to focus on micro-level antecedents of voice (e.g. Mowbray et al.,
2015) and on meso-level organisational moderators or mediators of voice (e.g. Gollan and Xu,
2014). By comparison, examining the impact of macro-level antecedents on voice has received
little attention. Yet the broader context, such as national culture, helps “shape the
organisational norms for the different voice channels”(Kwon and Farndale, 2020, p. 2). Such
organisational norms can influence what issues are on and off the table (Wilkinson et al.,
2020). Therefore, studying the intersection between national culture and employee voice can
help us understand how this aspect of the macro context contributes to the creation of
organisational norms regarding voice. In turn, norms influence the nature of organisational
signals received by employees concerning voice consequences (whether voice might be
considered safe and/or effective; Kwon and Farndale, 2020), and ultimately influence
employee voice behaviours (e.g. the decision of whether to speak up/voice or remain silent;
Morrison, 2011).
To date, the small body of scholarship that exists on the impact of national culture on voice
has focused primarily on one dimension of culture, namely power distance –which tends to
have a negative relationship with voice propensity (e.g. Kwon et al., 2016). Kwon and Farndale
(2020) argue that, beyond the crucial role of power distance in shaping employee voice, there
are four additional culture dimensions, whose influence merits research: uncertainty
avoidance, in-group collectivism, performance orientation and assertiveness. They also argue
the need to incorporate the notion of cultural tightness–looseness (Gelfand et al., 2011)to
explain why cultural values in some countries can have a more substantial influence on voice
than in others. This paper addresses this call and explores the influence of the macro-level
national cultural values and cultural tightness on the meso-level organisational norms and
voice signals.
We conducted interviews with employees in SMEs across three national settings,
England, Nigeria and Thailand, three countries purposefully selected because of their
different cultural dimension scores from the GLOBE study (House et al., 2004). While we
understand that other macro-level factors, such as a nation’s economic development,
employment legislation, labour market conditions and human capital development can
influence voice, the remit of this paper is to explore the influence of national culture. Our
research question is: How does national culture influence employee voice behaviours in small
and medium enterprises across different national contexts? Using interview data gathered in
the three countries, we interpret and analyse our qualitative data using the Kwon and
Farndale (2020) framework as a conceptual lens.
The influence of national culture on employee voice
Rather than existing in contextual vacuums (Knoll et al., 2021), organisations inhabit the
geopolitical, social, economic, legal and cultural contexts of the nations in which they are
located. As such, organisations are influenced by a myriad of macro-level factors. National
culture is one of these macro factors and it can have a profound impact on the immediate
context in which employees operate. It has considerable influence on organisational
behaviour (Tung and Stahl, 2018), provides norms regarding upward and downward
communication, and interpersonal interaction, and shapes the nature of voice, voice safety
and effectiveness signals (Kwon and Farndale, 2020).
Scholars have long called for more attention to the influence of national culture on HRM
practices, including employee voice (Onukwube, 2012). However, to date, most studies
exploring the role of national culture on voice have focused on “western”cultures
(Wilkinson et al., 2020b). This has arguably contributed to a rather narrow conceptualisation
National
culture’s
impact on
employee voice
479
To continue reading
Request your trial