Employee Voice in “Pre-resignation Behavior” : Focusing on Years of Service, Attachment, and Diversity

Japanese employment practices are caught up in an increasingly severe environment, and the preconditions for both “loyalty” (attachment to the organization) as described by Hirschman (1970) and “deep internalization” rooted in “long-term employment practices and trust in them” as described by Koike (1983) are in a flux. The bundling of long-term employment with the feelings of “deep internalization” and “attachment” is weakening, and, as Matsuura (2021) highlights, it cannot be denied that peer pressure, which is a potential inducement for long-term employment, can inhibit people from “speaking out” in certain situations.I assign the term “pre-resignation behavior” to the workplace behavior of employees when confronting a challenge sufficiently serious to prompt them to consider resigning, that is, the choice between “exit” and “voice.” This paper examines the “voice” mechanisms for speaking out in such a situation. In particular, focusing on years of service, attachment, and diversity; I formulate the following two hypotheses regarding “pre-resignation behavior” statements and test these hypotheses by using data from employee questionnaire surveys.Hypothesis 1: Long-term employment encourages employees to speak up only if they have an “attachment” to the workplace. Long-term employment alone does not encourage employees to speak up. Hypothesis 2: A workplace culture of diversity and inclusion mitigates peer pressure and encourages employees to speak up.A binomial logistic regression analysis was conducted taking an “in-house consultation and coordination” dummy variable as its explained variable, which represents “pre-resignation behavior” when experiencing a challenge serious enough to prompt the consideration of resignation. Here, 1 represent “in-house consultation and coordination” and 0 represents other alternatives. In Model 1, only the primary effects (“years of service” and “attachment”) were input, whereas in Model 2, the interaction term “years of service × attachment” was added to examine the interaction effect between these two factors.First, examining the results for Hypothesis 1, in Model 1, the primary effects (“years of service” and “attachment”) were of positive significance at the 1% level. In Model 2, the interaction term “years of service × attachment” was significant at the 10% level, thereby indicating an interaction effect. When I conducted a simple slope test, “years of service” was significant for the “high-attachment group” (attachment + one standard deviation), whereas “years of service” had no effect on the “low-attachment group” (attachment-one standard deviation). Therefore, Hypothesis 1 was supported.Further, for Hypothesis 2, “diversity in the workplace” and “acceptance of different opinions” was of positive significance at the 1% level in both models. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 was also supported. The results of the analysis suggest that (1) long-term employment alone does not motivate employees to speak out; In other words, long-term employment has a positive influence on speaking out only when there is an attachment to the workplace, and (2) workplace diversity and a culture that accepts diversity encourages employees to speak out. Thus, to get employees to speak up and solve workplace problems, it is important not only to encourage long-term employment but also to increase employees’ attachment to the workplace and create a culture that accepts diversity and inclusion