A Sociopolitical Perspective to Understand When and Why Supervisors Endorse and Implement Employees’ Suggested Changes

When employees make suggestions for changes to their supervisors, they are providing raw materials potentially critical to the organization’s continuous improvement and adaptation. However, research suggests that supervisors do not always react favorably to employee voice behavior. The purpose of this study is to unravel the mediating and moderating mechanisms that can explain when and why employee voice behavior leads to supervisor endorsement and implementation. Specifically, taking a sociopolitical perspective, I argued that supervisor motive attributions for employee voice behavior can explain the extent to which supervisors endorse and subsequently implement employee voice. Furthermore, I argued that the mediating effects of supervisor motive attributions in the relationship between employee voice behavior and supervisor voice endorsement are moderated by employee political skills in the first stage of the mediating path (i.e., from voice behavior to supervisor motive attributions) and by supervisor perceived instrumentality of implementing employee voice in the second stage of the mediating path (i.e., from supervisor motive attributions to supervisor endorsement). Through a three-wave, multi-source field study, I first found that employee voice behavior is positively related to both supervisor prosocial and self-serving motive attributions for employee voice. Second, I found that employee political skills significantly moderate the relationship between employee voice behavior and supervisor prosocial motive attribution in an unexpected pattern, while employee political skills do not moderate the relationship between employee voice and supervisor self-serving motive attribution. Third, I found that supervisor prosocial motive attribution is positively associated with supervisor voice endorsement, whereas supervisor self-serving motive attribution has no significant effect on voice endorsement. Fourth, I found that supervisor perceived instrumentality of implementing employee voice significantly moderates the effect of supervisor prosocial motive attribution on voice endorsement in an unexpected manner while supervisor perceived instrumentality significantly moderates the effect of supervisor self-serving motive attribution on voice endorsement as predicted. Finally, I found that supervisor voice endorsement is significantly associated with voice implementation. Although a few of the hypothesized relationships were inconsistent with what was originally predicted, the study findings revealed some interesting and novel interactive patterns. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings were discussed