Understanding the effects of empowering, transformational and ethical leadership on promotive and prohibitive voice. A moderated mediated examination
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-11-2017-0365 |
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| Pages | 707-730 |
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| Author | Umamaheswara Rao Jada,Susmita Mukhopadhyay |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
Understanding the effects of
empowering, transformational
and ethical leadership on
promotive and prohibitive voice
A moderated mediated examination
Umamaheswara Rao Jada
Vinod Gupta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur,
Kharagpur, India, and
Susmita Mukhopadhyay
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this pape r is to compare the direct a nd indirect effects of t ransformational,
ethical and empowerin g leadership (EL) on pr omotive and prohibi tive voice behavior. T he study also
explores the mediatin g effects of leader-me mber exchange (LM X) and moderating effe cts of individual
power distance orientat ion (IPDO) in the hypothesized model. The re search conducted attempts to identify
the most suitable leader ship style for encoura ging promotive and pr ohibitive voice behavi or in service
sector organizations in India.
Design/methodology/approach –Purposive and snowball sampling was used for data collection.
Necessary condition analysis (NCA) was conducted to identify the most suitable style for encouraging
promotive and prohibitive voice behavior. The results NCA were later verified using the structural equation
modeling technique.
Findings –Results of the study displayed the supremacy of EL style in promoting high-quality LMX and
“promotive and prohibitive”voice over transformational and ethical leadership in Indian service
organizations. Considering the overall results of the study, EL appears to be the most suitable style for
encouraging promotive and prohibitive voice in a high power distance country like India.
Research limitations/implications –Self-reported measures utilized in the study might have affected the
findings and hence, should be interpreted with caution.
Practical implications –Researchers propose the adoption of EL style for encouraging promotive and
prohibitive voice in Indian service sector organizations. The researchers also highlight thenoteworthy impact
of LMX and IPDO on promotive and prohibitive voice behavior, which makes it a point for the leaders to work
toward lowering IPDO amongst followers to promote both promotive and prohibitive voice behavior for the
growth of an organization.
Originality/value –The study is the first one to conduct a comparative moderated mediated examination to
analyze the effects of transformational, ethical and EL in encouraging promotive and prohibitive voice
behavior in Indian organizations.
Keywords Quantitative, Transformational leadership, Empowering leadership
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Employee voice is technically defined as the “discretionary communication of ideas,
suggestions, concerns, or opinions about work-related issues with the intent to improve
organizational or unit functioning”(Morrison, 2011). It is deemed essential for
organizations today to achieve sustainable growth and organizational development
(Venkataramani et al., 2016). In the contemporary highly complex and rapidly changing
business environment, managers inevitably need their employees’inputs to improve
organizational performance (Hsiung, 2012). Besides helping organizations in addressing
the critical problems in most effective ways, employee voice fosters employee’s
Personnel Review
Vol. 48 No. 3, 2019
pp. 707-730
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-11-2017-0365
Received 29 November 2017
Revised 4 June 2018
Accepted 15 October 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
707
Transformational
and ethical
leadership
commitment toward ushering constructive changes in the organization (Kwon et al., 2016).
Having realized the critical importance of voice (Morrison, 2014; Kwon et al., 2016),
numerous OB academicians and practitioners have made earnest efforts to explore the
antecedents behind promoting voice (Chamberlin et al., 2017). One aspect which has been
adjudged most significant relates to the impact of leadership style on employee voice
(Detert and Burris, 2007; Detert and Treviño, 2010; Hsiung, 2012; Li and Sun, 2015; Chou
et al., 2016; Svendsen et al., 2018).
Over the past few decades, various leadership styles have evolved and the growing body
of research which endorses the significant impact of these leadership styles
(transformational, ethical and empowering) on employee voice (Gao et al., 2011; Cheng
et al., 2014; Chen and Hou, 2016; Duan et al., 2017) has fueled the debate leading to conflicting
views on the most cultivating leadership style for encouraging employee voice. While,
recent researchers proclaim empowering leadership (EL) to be the most beneficial style
(Biemann et al., 2015) for promoting employee voice (Gao et al., 2011), several past
researchers have in advance established the notable impact of other leadership styles like
transformational (Liu et al., 2010; Svendsen and Joensson, 2016; Liang et al., 2017) and
ethical leadership (ETHL) (Brown et al., 2005; Walumbwa and Schaubroeck, 2009;
Avey et al., 2012; Chen and Hou, 2016) for promoting employee voice. But surprisingly most
of these leadership voice studies have only focused on the promotive aspect of voice, and
neglected the prohibitive form of voice (Liang et al., 2012), which limits us from
understanding, how prohibitve voice can be reflected in the leadership-voice associations
studied till date (Chamberlin et al., 2017). The proposed discriminating relevance of the
prohibitive voice behavior and varied employee motivations behind promotive and
prohibitive voice (Svendsen et al., 2018) makes it a point for the researchers to explore the
impact of various leadership styles on promotive and prohibitive voice distinctively.
The extensive overview of the leadership-voice literature also reveals that majority of
researchers have treated leadership as an independent isolated variable and have not paid
attention to the simultaneous proximal motivations behind employees’voicing behavior
(Tangirala and Ramanujam, 2012). In line with the call made by the recent researchers for
exploring, how contextual variables may augment or diminish the impact leadership on
promotive and prohibitive aspects of voice (Chamberlin et al., 2017), the study proposes the
mediating impact of leader-member exchange (LMX) and the moderating impact of
individual power distance orientation (IPDO) (Kirkman et al., 2009). This is because,
although, the importance of LMX with respect to voice has been well established (Van Dyne
et al., 2008; Botero and Van Dyne, 2009), this relationship has not been examined yet with
respect to the promotive and prohibitive voice separately. In addition, the huge variations in
power distance orientation cultures like India (Daniels and Greguras, 2014) which might
restrict employees from speaking up because of perceived differences in status, authority
and power of the leaders (Botero and Van Dyne, 2009; Li and Sun, 2015; Park and
Nawakitphaitoon, 2018) provides us a substantial ground for its inclusion in the proposed
model (as presented in Figure 1). It is also expected that the cross lagged design adopted in
the study as compared to a cross-sectional design will help us better understand the
dynamics between proposed leadership styles and promotive and prohibitive voice behavior
over time (Svendsen et al., 2018).
The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 2 summarizes the previous literature
and offers ground for the proposed relationship between transformational, ethical, EL and
promotive and prohibitive voice followed by the proposition of hypothesis. Section 3
describes the methodology followed. Descriptive statistics and main findings have been
presented in the Section 4. Section 5 presents the discussion followed by theoretical and
practical implications of the study in Section 6. The paper ends with the limitations and
future scope of research which is presented in Section 7.
708
PR
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