The Voice Cycle in Workplaces

Justice-oriented voice in workplaces is a phenomenon that occurs over time. It is one of the most important features of the experimental study currently under review Shaping Voice: How Powerholders' Self-Interest Impacts Subordinates' Justice-Oriented Voice Over Time, by Burak Oc, Assistant Professor at the Department of Management and Technology of Bocconi University, Michael R. Bashshur (Singapore Management University), and E. Layne Paddock (ETH Zürich).

The way individuals in organizations speak out or up their opinions has been largely studied as a one-time event. But what is the reaction that their voice elicits? Moreover, does the reaction affect the subsequent voice? Two studies were conducted. Study 1 took place in Barcelona, a low power distance culture. Forty-eight undergraduate students were told that they participate in a resource (bonus points added to their final grade) allocation task and play the role of either the subordinate or the powerholder. They did not know that the powerholder's role was performed by a computer program. The second study took place in a high power distance culture, in Singapore. Differently than in Study 1, the subjects had work experience, and played for actual money; there was a new set of conditions to test the powerholder's responsiveness and how pleasant or unpleasant the subordinates felt.

"The intensity of subordinates' voice changes over time as a function of the amount of resources powerholders allocate and how responsive they are", Burak Oc says. "The more selfish the powerholders are, the more justice-oriented voice subordinates offer. But when subordinates' voice is non-acknowledged over time, subordinates feel helpless and give up. At the same time, they feel more pleasantly and their frustration decreases. Subordinates challenge their powerholders in the beginning, but they do not challenge them forever".