MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY
---------------------------------

HOANG LE AN

TEAM COLLECTIVE VOICE AND ITS
ROLES IN PROMOTING TEAM
INNOVATIVE PERFORMANCE

PHD DISSERTATION
IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

HANOI – 2023


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY
---------------------------------

HOANG LE AN

TEAM COLLECTIVE VOICE AND ITS
ROLES IN PROMOTING TEAM
INNOVATIVE PERFORMANCE
Specialization: Business administration
Specialization code: 9340101

PHD DISSERTATION
Supervisors:
1. Dr. Tran Huy Phuong

2. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Thi Thuc Anh

HANOI – 2023


DECLARATION
I hereby declare that this dissertation is my own work, which I have never submitted for
a degree at this or any other educational institution. I certify that all of the dissertation's
references have been properly credited.
I have read and comprehended the University's policy on plagiarism and academic
integrity violations. With my own honor, I certify that I carried out this research and did
not violate the regulations of good academic practice.
PhD Candidate

Hoang Le An

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank the following people, without whom I would not have been able
to complete this dissertation and without whom I would not have made it through my
Ph.D. degree!
The Professors at the Institute for Sustainable Development and the Institute for
Postgraduate Studies, National Economics University, especially my supervisors Assoc.
Prof. Dr. Phan Thi Thuc Anh and Dr. Tran Huy Phuong, whose insight and knowledge
into the subject matter steered me through this research. And special thanks to the late
Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Thang, who has supported me from my very first and challenging
steps on this journey of acquiring knowledge.
The ICT employees in multiple firms in Hanoi and Hochiminh City took the time to

share their thoughts and return surveys, and without whom, I would have no content for
my research.
My dear National Economics University classmates have supported me and had to put
up with my stresses and moans for the past five years of study!
And my most enormous thanks to my family for all the support you have shown me
through this research!

ii


Table of Contents
DECLARATION ............................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ........................................................................................... ii
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1
1.1. Rationale ............................................................................................................ 1
1.2. Research objectives and research questions..................................................... 2
1.3. Research subject and scope ............................................................................... 3
Research subject ...................................................................................................... 3
Research scope ........................................................................................................ 3
1.4. Originality of the research ................................................................................ 3
1.5. Structure of the dissertation .............................................................................. 5
CHAPTER 1.

LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................. 7

1.1. Employee voice .................................................................................................. 7
1.1.1.

Conceptualizations of employee voice ...................................................... 7


1.1.2.

Types of employee voice ......................................................................... 12

1.1.3.

Measurement scales of employee voice .................................................. 18

1.2. Factors influencing employee voice ............................................................... 19
1.2.1.

Factors influencing individual voice ....................................................... 19

1.2.2.

Factors influencing team voice ................................................................ 20

1.3. The impacts of employee voice on innovative performance .......................... 22
1.3.1.

Overview of the roles of employee voice ................................................ 22

1.3.2.

Innovative performance ........................................................................... 24

1.3.3.

Individual voice and innovative performance ......................................... 26


1.3.4.

Team voice and innovative performance................................................. 27

1.4. Research gaps in team voice literature ........................................................... 28
1.5. Research questions .......................................................................................... 29
CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL
BASIS
AND
HYPOTHESES
DEVELOPMENT ........................................................................................................ 31

iii


2.1. Institutional Theory and Vietnamese institutional context ........................... 31
2.1.1.

Key ideas of Institutional Theory ............................................................ 31

2.1.2.

Applications of Institutional Theory........................................................ 35

2.1.3.

Vietnamese institutional context and employee voice ............................ 36

2.1.4.


Limitations of Institutional Theory.......................................................... 39

2.2. The important role of routines ........................................................................ 40
2.3. The Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change ............................................ 40
2.3.1.

Assumptions of Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change ................... 41

2.3.2.

Key ideas of Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change ........................ 42

2.3.3.

Applications in studying routine changes ................................................ 44

2.4. Research model and hypotheses development ................................................ 46
2.4.1.

Employee voice as exogenous routine changes ....................................... 46

2.4.2.

Team autonomy as endogenous routine changes .................................... 47

2.4.3.

Individual voice, Team collective voice and the mediation effect .......... 48

CHAPTER 3.


RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .................................................. 50

3.1. Rationale for exploratory sequential mixed methods .................................... 50
3.2. Research design ............................................................................................... 54
3.2.1.

Research context ...................................................................................... 50

3.2.2.

Sequential mixed-methods research design ............................................. 54

3.3. Qualitative data collection and analysis ......................................................... 56
3.3.1.

Qualitative data collection ....................................................................... 56

3.3.2.

Qualitative data analysis .......................................................................... 60

3.4. Quantitative data collection and analysis ....................................................... 63
3.4.1.

Level of analysis and the selection of team type ..................................... 63

3.4.2.

Questionnaire development ..................................................................... 64


3.4.3.

Quantitative sampling and data collection............................................... 70

3.4.4.

Quantitative data analysis ........................................................................ 72

CHAPTER 4.

FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ........................................................ 74

4.1. Qualitative findings and analysis.................................................................... 74

iv


4.1.1.

The nature of team collective voice ......................................................... 74

4.1.2.

The utilization of team collective voice .................................................. 77

4.1.3.

Types of team collective voice, their formation, and influence on


performance ........................................................................................................... 81
4.1.4.

From qualitative to quantitative ............................................................... 86

4.2. Quantitative findings and analysis ................................................................. 86
4.2.1.

Reliability assessment of the measurement scales .................................. 86

4.2.2.

Exploratory factor analysis ...................................................................... 89

4.2.3.

Confirmatory factor analysis ................................................................... 91

4.2.4.

Common method bias .............................................................................. 91

4.2.5.

Data aggregation ...................................................................................... 94

4.2.6.

Descriptive analysis ................................................................................. 95


4.2.7.

The difference between team leaders and team members ....................... 97

4.2.8.

Correlation analysis ................................................................................. 98

4.2.9.

Hypothesis testing.................................................................................... 98

CHAPTER 5.

DISCUSSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .....................................104

5.1. Discussions ....................................................................................................104
5.1.1.

Qualitative findings discussions ............................................................105

5.1.2.

Quantitative findings discussions ..........................................................108

5.2. Theoretical contributions ..............................................................................112
5.3. Practical implications ....................................................................................114
5.3.1.

Implications for team members .............................................................114


5.3.2.

Implications for managements...............................................................115

5.4. Limitations and future research directions ..................................................116
CONCLUSION .........................................................................................................118
LIST OF PUBLISHED WORKS .............................................................................120
REFERENCES .........................................................................................................121
APPENDIX 1. LITERATURE
REVIEW
OF
INDIVIDUAL
VOICE
MEASUREMENTS ...................................................................................................141

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APPENDIX 2. LITERATURE REVIEW OF INNOVATIVE PERFORMANCE
MEASURMENTS......................................................................................................146
APPENDIX 3. INTERVIEW QUESTIONS.........................................................149
APPENDIX 4. QUESTIONNAIRE (ENGLISH VERSION) .............................151
APPENDIX 5. QUESTIONNAIRE (VIETNAMESE VERSION) .....................154
APPENDIX 6. REGRESSION ANALYSIS AT INDIVIDUAL LEVEL ..........158
APPENDIX 7. SPSS REGRESSION OUTPUTS ................................................159
Model 1 ....................................................................................................................159
Model 2 and 3..........................................................................................................159
Model 4 and 5..........................................................................................................160


vi


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 1.1. Voice conceptualizations ..............................................................................10
Table 1.2. Types of employee voice ..............................................................................17
Table 2.1. Three pillars of institutions...........................................................................33
Table 2.2. Institutional pillars and carriers ....................................................................35
Table 3.1. Scrum team ...................................................................................................53
Table 3.2. Qualitative research sample..........................................................................59
Table 3.3. Coding scheme .............................................................................................61
Table 3.4. Types of teams..............................................................................................64
Table 3.5. Measurement items of key variables ............................................................67
Table 3.6. Descriptive analysis of the research sample .................................................71
Table 4.1. Team collective voice examples...................................................................75
Table 4.2. Voice levels comparison ..............................................................................77
Table 4.3. Reliability of measurement scales ................................................................87
Table 4.4. KMO and Bartlett's tests ..............................................................................89
Table 4.5. Rotated Component Matrix ..........................................................................90
Table 4.6. Reliability and validity .................................................................................91
Table 4.7. Data aggregation comparison .......................................................................94
Table 4.8. Within group agreement and intraclass correlations indexes .......................95
Table 4.9. Descriptive statistics .....................................................................................96
Table 4.10. T-tests for equality of means ......................................................................97
Table 4.11. Means, SDs, and correlations .....................................................................99
Table 4.12. Regressions models ................................................................................. 101
Figure 1.1. EVLN model .................................................................................................8
Figure 1.2. Gorden's (1988) range of voice .....................................................................8
Figure 1.3. Typology of extra role behavior..................................................................10
Figure 1.4. Map of individual voice antecedents ..........................................................21

Figure 2.1. The research model .....................................................................................48
Figure 3.1. The Scrum framework ................................................................................55
Figure 3.2. Applying CGT process................................................................................56
Figure 4.1. Team collective voice typology ..................................................................84
Figure 4.2. Common latent factor..................................................................................93
Figure 4.3. Mediation model ...................................................................................... 102
Figure 5.1. Three building blocks of the study........................................................... 104

vii


INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
Organizations today increasingly seek proactive employee contributions as valuable
inputs (Wilkinson & Fay, 2011) for innovation/adaptation processes to deal with a fastchanging external environment. One type of proactivity is employee voice, which refers
to employees’ expressions of ideas, suggestions, or attempts to change the unfavorable
status quo (Detert & Burris, 2007). It is widely recognized that employee voice would
improve employee job engagement (Cheng et al., 2013), job satisfaction (Alfayad &
Arif, 2017), team and organization performance (Frazier & Bowler, 2015; Li et al.,
2017), improve cultural change, a source of competitive advantage (Royer et al., 2008),
promote creativity and innovation (Chen & Hou, 2016; Guo, 2016; Miao et al., 2020;
Ng & Feldman, 2012; Rasheed et al., 2017), etc.
Multiple studies have asserted that voice is multilevel (Frazier & Bowler, 2015; Huang
& Paterson, 2017; Li et al., 2017), including individual and collective levels. Collective
forms of voice, such as team voice, offer employees a safer way to express their views
(Huang & Paterson, 2017), which is particularly important in some contexts, such as
China (Jing et al., 2022; Wu et al., 2020).
However, team voice has been significantly understudied, considering the
comparatively rich voice literature. Only a few studies have examined team voice, such
as Frazier (2009), Frazier & Bowler (2015), Huang & Paterson (2017), Kim et al.

(2010), Li et al. (2017), Torre (2019) and Walumbwa et al. (2012). However, the term
has been understood differently among those scholars. None have specified these
different views and dug into the nature of team voice itself (purpose, voicing
mechanism, unanimity mechanism, etc.), creating confusion for readers and succeeding
researchers. As a result, the measurement of the term has also been dubious.
In addition, voice literature seems to have a Western bias, with many studies written by
Western scholars with Western countries as the backdrop (Wilkinson et al., 2020).
Studies of voice in Eastern countries are rare. Since human and organizational
behaviors, such as voice, are highly influenced by institutional features (Scott, 1995),
this research argues that employee voice is highly context-specific. In Eastern contexts
such as China and Vietnam, the voice of individual employees is restricted by contextual
features such as authoritative leadership, considerable power distance, collectivism,
valuing harmony over conflict, face-saving and relationship-keeping, and respect for
elders (Garner, 2012; Jing et al., 2022; Kassing, 1997; Zhang et al., 2015). This means

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a more collective form of voice would practically hold greater significance in these
contexts as an alternative mechanism to hinder individual voice and contribute to
enhancing organizational outcomes.
However, few empirical studies have precisely measured and examined the concept of
team voice as shared or consensus voice of the team (Frazier & Bowler, 2015; Huang &
Paterson, 2017). As a result, empirical investigations regarding its important impacts on
performance-related variables such as team performance or innovation, which are highly
important and interesting variables among scholars, have also been underdeveloped.
This urges for further examination of team voice both conceptually and empirically.

1.2. Research objectives and research questions
This research aims to fill the above research gaps and contribute to the employee voice

literature with the clarification of team voice conceptualization, investigating the role of
team voice in Vietnam Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
organizations compared to that of individual voice, as well as testing its contributions to
innovation.
The concept of team collective voice was proposed to differentiate it from other team
voice concepts in previous literature. Thence, the following research objectives are
aimed to achieve:
-

Exploring the true connotations and conceptualization of team collective voice,
its characteristics, and formation process.

-

Developing the theoretical model
Investigating the direct and indirect influence of team collective voice on team
innovative performance.
Providing practical recommendations for teams and management to enhancing
organizational outcomes.

-

The objectives are refined into these five research questions:
RQ1. Does team collective voice exist in Vietnam organizations, and what is the nature
of team collective voice?
RQ2. In what situations is team collective voice used?
RQ3. What types of team collective voice are used, and how are they formed?
RQ4. How is the use of team collective voice compared to individual voice?
RQ5. How does team collective voice influence team innovative performance?


2


1.3. Research subject and scope
Research subject
The key research subject of this dissertation is the team collective voice of work teams
in organizations, which is defined as the expression of shared views, ideas, suggestions,
or opinions of a work team to either higher management, other teams or individuals in
the organization in an attempt to challenge or change the current status quo. This
definition is proposed in this study to distinguish it from other team voice concepts used
in previous research.
In addition, this study also takes into account individual voices of team members to
compare the use of these two levels of voice and also compares their influence on team
innovative performance.

Research scope
In this study, employees from the ICT sector were targeted. This sector was chosen
owing to its growing importance in Vietnam's economic development (Bukht & Heeks,
2017; Dahlman et al., 2016; ITU, 2016; Nguyen, 2021; Vu, 2022) as well as the
profession nature of working in teams (Rubin, 2012), which contributes to its
appropriateness for conducting research about team collective voice.
To answer the research questions, this dissertation has adopted exploratory sequential
mixed methods, which include two phases of conducting research order (Creswell &
Clark, 2017). The first phase was an exploratory qualitative study to address the
development in the conceptualization of team collective voice. Data was collected
through semi-structured interviews with 30 employees to gain insights regarding team
collective voice. The second phase was a quantitative study with cross-sectional data
from surveying employees. 765 survey respondents working in 157 ICT teams have
participated in the study. Both phases’ data was collected from organizations in Hanoi
and Hochiminh City, the two biggest cities in Vietnam, where most ICT firms are based.


1.4. Originality of the research
Having identified the research gaps related to team collective voice, this study utilized
the theoretical perspectives of Institutional Theory (Scott, 1995) and Evolutionary
Theory of Economic Change (Nelson & Winter, 1982) to help form the arguments and
explain the research findings. Thence, theoretical contributions and contributions to the
employee voice and innovation literature were established.

3


First, the first phase of the qualitative study clarified different connotations of employee
voice at the team level, which helps raise awareness among scholars on the collective
nature of team voice and guides successive researchers away from inconsistent
understandings of the term. Unique characteristics and the formation process of team
collective voice was discussed, highlighting its differences from other connotations. The
study also reveals certain institutional conditions that foster this type of voice and
suggests the employee voice concept should not be examined independently from the
concept’s institutional context. The proposed typology contributes comprehensively to
this conceptual work of team collective voice as the topology reveals the concept’s
multidimensionality and aids future research on measurement construction.
Second, in line with the argument about the confusing conceptualization of team voice,
this study attempted to measure team collective voice that captures its connotation of
shared or consensus team voice. Although the employee voice measurement scale of
Van Dyne & LePine (1998) was also adapted, similar to previous research (Frazier &
Bowler, 2015; Huang & Paterson, 2017; Walumbwa et al., 2012), it was adapted
differently and made sure that respondents understand the correct meaning of the
measurement. This allowed further examinations regarding team collective voice’s
associations with other interested variables. Specifically, in comparison with the use of
individual voice, team collective voice is preferred in Vietnam organizations. This has

verified the suggestion of the qualitative research that employee voice is highly
influenced by institutional elements, and Vietnam's institutional characteristics might
enhance the role of team collective voice.
In addition, drawing the Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Nelson & Winter,
1982), the findings also contribute to innovation literature by suggesting another path
that employee voice can promote team innovative performance through exogenous
routine changes. Employee voice can act as a search routine – a higher-order routine
that is designed to produce changes to lower-order routines, such as having a market
analysis or research and development department in place. Hence, this also contributed
theoretically to the Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change of Nelson & Winter
(1982) by proposing a different type of search – employee voice.
Among the two levels of voice, team collective voice is not only preferred but also fully
mediates the relationship between individual voice and team innovative performance.
From an institutional perspective, it implies that in order to create changes in routines
or also institutional changes in this context, individual voice is not strong enough. Team
collective voice is necessary to influence management decisions, thus leading to

4


changes. Contributing to the Institutional Theory (Scott, 1995), this means institutional
changes’ drivers can be different in different institutional contexts.
Correspondingly, the findings also suggested the endogenous pathway of routine
changes that support the effect of team autonomy on team innovative performance,
creating a model of two ways that can promote team innovative performance through
exogenous and endogenous routine changes. Which method is utilized might again
depend on the institutional characteristics of the context. In a more controlled working
environment, which is caused by various cultural-cognitive, normative, and regulative
institutional factors, employees learn that changes need to arise from the higher level,
therefore, team collective voice is the more appropriate path to routine changes. In

contrast, a more open environment is more likely to companion with a high level of
autonomy.

1.5. Structure of the dissertation
The dissertation is structured in five chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion
including:
Chapter 1. Literature review
Chapter 1 presents the outcomes of a systematic literature review about employee voice
with a focus on team voice. Employee voice’s determinants as well as performancerelated outcomes are also discussed to provide a fuller picture about the development of
knowledge about voice behavior in the literature. Based on this systematic review, the
concept of team collective voice is proposed as one of the gaps in the literature,
establishing the direction and objectives of this research.
Chapter 2. Theoretical basis and hypothesis development
Chapter 2 constructs the theoretical foundation for the current study with a
comprehensive discussion of the Institutional Theory and the Evolutionary Theory of
Economic Change. Key terms and related conceptual frameworks are highlighted
targeting the proposed hypotheses.
Chapter 3. Research methodology
Chapter 3 describes the exploratory sequential mixed methods used in this study. It
begins with the description of research context and the clarification of the method
rationale explaining the reasons for choosing the mixed methods. Two sequential phases
are then described comprehensively, qualitative and quantitative research respectively.

5


Each part consists of detailed description about the sample, interview
questions/questionnaire development, data collection and data analysis process.
Chapter 4. Findings and analysis
Corresponding to the research method, research findings are presented in this chapter

following the above research sequence. Qualitative results are shown and analyzed first,
followed by quantitative findings and analysis. Interview data was used for explorative
analysis of the team collective voice concept including its natural characteristics, its
types and formation process. These findings guided the next phase - quantitative
research whose results are presented in the second section of this chapter.
Chapter 5. Discussions and implications
Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation with discussions of the key findings, theoretical
contributions and practical implications derived from the research findings. Limitations
are also acknowledged and discussed in this chapter, opening up the way forward for
future research.

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CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides a comprehensive review regarding employee voice, its different
types, measurements, antecedents and its relationship with performance. The first
section thoroughly explores different employe voice conceptualizations among scholars,
followed by sections addressing types and measurements of the concept with a focus on
different levels of voice. A map of factors influencing employee voice is then developed.
The discussion is followed by another key section investigating theoretical and
empirical research on the roles of employee voice on different types of performance.
Based on the systematic review of literature, several research gaps are acknowledged
and discussed, contributing to the establishment of ressearch objectives.

1.1. Employee voice
This section focuses comprehensively on employee voice to provide a consistent
understanding of employee voice discussed in this dissertation. How the term has been
defined throughout its development will be systematically discussed and compared for
similarities and differences in the following section.


1.1.1. Conceptualizations of employee voice
The term voice was early appeared since 1970 in the model of Exit, Voice and Loyalty
(Hirschman, 1970). Since then, various authors have studied and theoretical and
empirical developed this term. They can be categorized in three perspectives toward
voice conceptualizations as summarized in Table 1.1 – Response to dissatisfaction,
Fairness indication and Extra role behavior.
The first perspective, developed from the model of Hirschman (1970), define voice as a
very broad construct of “any attempt at all to change, rather than to escape from, an
objectionable state of affairs” (Hirschman, 1970, 30). Voice is considered as an
alternative of exiting the organization by challenging the unfavorable status quo. This
broad definition makes room for the growth of many types of voice in literature. Later,
Farrell (1983) expanded Hirschman’s (1970) work by adding neglect to complete the
EVLN model (see Figure 1.1), which offers a four-way conceptualization of responses
to job dissatisfaction.

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Figure 1.1. EVLN model

Source: Gorden (1988)
Withey & Cooper (1989) supported this model and emphasized that the main objective
of voice is to remove personal dissatisfaction. Voice can take many forms such as
discussion with supervisor, complaining to co-workers, making suggestions, whistle
blowing, collective bargaining or protest. Also based on Hirschman (1970) and Farrell
(1983) theoretical models, Gorden (1988) used active/passive versus constructive/
destructive typology to classified four types of voice (see Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.2. Gorden's (1988) range of voice


Source: Gorden (1988)
According to Gorden (1988), both satisfaction and dissatisfaction can initiate voice and
voice can be either constructive or destructive, active or passive. This definition of

8


Gorden (1988) has widen the conceptualization of voice to include items such as gossip,
murmuring of dissatisfaction compared to previous literature.
In the procedural justice literature, voice is considered as a mean or method used by
management to enhance employees’ perceived fairness. For example, Lind et al. (1990)
investigated the process of goal setting through experiments and found that both preand post-decision voice lead to higher fairness judgement compared to no voice at all,
with pre-decision voice bring the highest perceived justice. In these situations, voice is
a passive behavior and employees can only have their voice when opportunities are
given. In addition, also in the light of fairness, union voice, which can be understood as
formal collective expression of opinions, is also viewed as a form of employee voice
(Addison, 2005). This topic dominated literature when unions were at their top of power
back in the 80s.
The third group of employee voice research has a different perspective. Instead of
originating from dissatisfied feeling, these authors argue that voice is a type of extra role
behavior (Van Dyne et al., 1995) or Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) (Van
Dyne & LePine, 1998). Van Dyne et al. (1995) hinged on the work of Katz (1964),
Organ (1988) OCB categorization, and Van Dyne et al. (1994) to establish a different
typology of extra role behavior that contrasting promotive/prohibitive and
affiliative/challenging (see Figure 1.3). In this typology, voice belongs to promotive and
challenging quadrant and is defined as proactive expression of ideas, innovations
intended to improve the situation rather than purely criticize. Many empirical studies
have had their focus on this positive aspect of employee voice when carrying out their
research (Chamberlin et al., 2017; Jada & Mukhopadhyay, 2018; Li et al., 2017; Li et
al., 2018; Liang et al., 2012; Liang et al., 2019; Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). Even

prohibitive voice – the expression of concern about existing harmful practices, which is
normally negative in nature, is argued as consisting constructive attributes as showing
good intention to stop harmful factors (Liang et al., 2012). This positive focus is
narrower and does not include behavior such as whistle blowing, grievance filling,
collective bargaining, etc.

9


Figure 1.3. Typology of extra role behavior

Source: Van Dyne et al. (1994)
Table 1.1. Voice conceptualizations
Study

Conceptualization

Key attributions

Response to dissatisfaction
Hirschman
(1970, 30)

Voice has been defined as “any
attempt at all to change, rather than
to escape from, an objectionable state
of affairs.”

Broad definition of voice that
allows the variety of voice

types.

Farrell
“Voice usually involves appeals to
(1983, 597- higher authorities either inside or
598)
outside of the managerial hierarchy,
but it also may involve other actions
and protests.”

Add Neglect to typology of
response to dissatisfaction
compared to Hirschman’s
(1970) model.

Withey & Voice is understood as “people talked
Cooper
to their supervisors and others about
(1989, 525) working to improve dissatisfying
conditions.”

Voice is change-oriented.

10

Voice challenges the status
quo as the alternative of exit.

Main objective of voice is
eliminating

personal
dissatisfaction instead of
organization improvement,
similar to Farrell (1983).


Study

Conceptualization

Key attributions

Fairness indication
Folger

Voice means “having some form of Voice is passive.

(1977, 109)

participation in decision making by A mean that is given by
expressing one's own opinion, and management to employees to
participation.”
improve their perception of
distributive justice.

Lind et al. Voice is understood as expressing Voice enhances procedural
(1990, 952) views toward an issue/decision, which fairness even when the
employee believe “will help them individual making the fairness
control


the

outcomes

–

their judgment has no direct control
arguments might persuade the over the decision itself.
decision maker to provide a better
outcome – and that these expectations
lead to higher procedural fairness
judgments.”
Addison

Employee voice is collective voice Collective

(2005)

through work councils or unions.

voice

through

union outperforms individual
voice.

Extra role behavior
Van Dyne et Voice is considered as a Challenging- Developed a typology of extra
al. (1995)

Promotive extra-role behavior.
role
behavior:
Affiliative/Challenging
–
Promotive/Prohibitive.
Van Dyne & Voice is defined “as promotive Constructively challenge the
LePine
behavior that emphasizes expression status quo.
(1998, 109) of constructive challenge intended to
improve rather than merely criticize.
Voice
is
making
innovative
suggestions
for
change
and
recommending modifications to
standard procedures even when
others disagree.”

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Study

Conceptualization


Van Dyne et The term voice is used to “describe
al.
(2003, speaking up behavior such as when
1369)
employees
proactively
make
suggestions for change.”

Key attributions
Constructive suggestions as
well as concerns.
Differentiate voice based on
three different employee
motives:
 Other-oriented behavior:
feeling cooperative and
altruistic.
 Self-protective behavior:
feeling afraid and
personally at risk.
 Disengaged behavior:
feeling unable to make a
difference.

Liang et al. “…voice behavior as an intentional, Constructive suggestions as
(2012, 73)
“planned behavior” occurring in an well as concerns.
interpersonal context.”


1.1.2. Types of employee voice
Literature has explored the multi-dimensional characteristic of employee voice. They
have categorized employee voice by different aspects such as mechanism, purpose and
level. This section synthesizes these main aspects and presents the classification of
different types of employee voice.

1.1.2.1. Mechanisms
By mechanism, employee voice can be classified as formal and informal voice. Formal
voice includes employee voice through representative or union which is indirect, while
informal voice is normally direct discussion between employees and their supervisor on
the daily basis. Some authors also consider whistleblowing (Gundlach et al., 2003) and
grievance (Ichniowsky, 1986) as formal voice mechanisms to submit concerns. These
types of formal mechanisms are normally followed by investigation and handling
process (Klaas et al., 2012).
A less discussed way to categorize voice is its identifiability (Klaas et al., 2012).
Identifiable voice research is abundant and accounts for the majority of voice literature
(Van Dyne & LePine, 1998), while anonymous voice is significantly understudied, even
though this type is frequently used among organizations, such as employee surveys,

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anonymous message or notes through suggestion box. While identifiable voice involves
risks for individual such as negative reactions or retaliation (Klaas et al., 2012; Siebert
et al., 2001) which results in reluctance to exercise, anonymous voice has lower
accountability regarding its content (i.e. people are unlikely to be confronted to justify
or defend ideas) and provides safety (Klaas et al., 2012).

1.1.2.2. Purposes
Differences in voice substance are harder to be detected and labelled. Liang et al. (2012)

based on the definition of Van Dyne & LePine (1998) to clarify the difference between
promotive and prohibitive voice. Although both are constructive, promotive voice,
which involves innovative solutions that benefit the organizations, is naturally
considered more positive and less risky compared to prohibitive voice, which
contributes to organizational performance through alarming existing problems and
preventing harmful work practices without necessarily providing solutions. As a result,
prohibitive voice might induce negative emotion among co-workers or team members
(Liang et al., 2012).
Maynes & Podsakoff (2014) developed an expanded framework of voice behavior
constructed by combining two dimensions: (1) preservation/challenging the status quo,
and (2) promotive/prohibitive voice. The first dimension can be found in Hirschman
(1970), Van Dyne & LePine (1998), and Gorden (1988). The second dimension was
from Liang et al. (2012), however, Maynes & Podsakoff (2014) challenged the view
that both promotive and prohibitive are constructive behavior. In fact, their view
matches Gorden’s (1988), which asserts the negative nature of prohibitive voice and
people do not always raise voice in a constructive manner. The two dimensions were
netted into a two-by-two matrix creating 4 types of voice.

1.1.2.3. Levels
Employee voice is also found to be a multilevel concept (Frazier & Bowler, 2015; Huang
& Paterson, 2017), individual voice and collective voice. Recent literature has been
focusing on individual voice owing to the decrease in union density at several advance
countries (Verma et al., 2002; Visser, 2006). For example, countries such as the UK and
US have dramatic deunionization rate according to OECD (2018). Besides, the
acknowledgement of voice important role in organization effectiveness together with
the development of HRM from HR administration utility to integrating HR strategy
(Ulrich et al., 2012) also contributes to the dominant of individual voice (Torre, 2018).
Collective voice refers to the articulation of employees’ input who normally have joint
experiences (i.e. desires, challenges, frustrations and joys) and speak in unity through


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some form of collective employee representation (Jing et al., 2022; Lavelle et al., 2010).
The group speaks on behalf of individual members and vice versa. At organizational
level, collective voice is normally described in the form of trade union voice (Deery et
al., 2014; Kaufman, 2004). Freeman & Medoff (1984) and Tachibanaki & Noda (2000)
suggest that unions provide workers a collective voice mechanism through which
members’ grievances and other matters can be put cases to management, thus,
improving satisfaction and productivity (Brewster et al., 2007; Brewster et al., 2006;
Brown & Medoff, 1978). In addition, union voice substitutes for ineffective individual
voice with stronger collective power (Kaufman, 2004), allows deeper content by
eliminating fear of victimization (Harcourt et al., 2004).
Collective voice can also take the form of working teams, however, this type has been
understudied. A systematic review has been carried out of all relevant studies from
scholarly journals on two databases, Business Source Complete and PsycArticles. Three
keywords were used: “team voice”, “group voice” and “collective voice”. Additional
criteria were subject and research field classification, which generated 811 results in
total. Papers that did not study collective voice at the interested level (i.e., union voice
or collective voice of the community or interest group) were excluded, resulting in only
24 papers being found. They were empirical studies from the US, Europe, Japan and
China published between 2002 and 2022. Even with this limited amount of research,
team voice is still diverse in how it is defined and its connotation, which can be grouped
as follows.
Team voice as team influence
Kim et al. (2010) and Torre (2019) shared the same approach when examining the
impact of collective voice (representative and team voice) on organizational
productivity. While representative voice (i.e., union/non-union representatives) was
considered as an indirect mechanism, team voice was a proxy for direct voice and was
defined as the team influence toward decision making in ten day-to-day and workrelated areas such as the use of new technology, who should be brought into or dismissed

from the team, performance evaluations and who should do what job (Kim et al., 2010).
Torre (2019) also measured team voice as team influence using three items: the presence
and intensity of (1) decentralization of decision-making, (2) autonomous teamwork, and
(3) semi-autonomous teamwork. This approach in defining and measuring team voice
merely considered the outcome of team voice – team influence. This is rather misleading
and confusing with team autonomy. Some organizations would have a high level of
decentralization and give their units/teams the freedom to decide a variety of workrelated aspects. The teams can influence decisions simply because they are given the
right to do so as part of organizational operation instead of actively raising voice. In

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addition, the decisions made might just be the team leaders’, which does not contain any
collective characteristics of the concept. Therefore, this does not indicate the existence
of team voice.
Team voice as the aggregation of members’ voice
Walumbwa et al. (2012) and Ye et al. (2019) described team voice as the extent to which
members of a team speaks up with new ideas, concerns, and problems implying team
voice represents the aggregation of team members’ voice, which does not seem to
correctly capture the meaning of group voice behavior. Other papers also claimed to
examine team voice, group voice or collective voice; however, they conceptualized
individual voice into team level by aggregating members’ voice (Brykman & Maerz,
2022; Chen et al., 2022; He et al., 2021; Li et al., 2017; Podsakoff et al., 2015; Sessions
et al., 2020; Um-e-Rubbab et al., 2022; Wang & Hu, 2018; Zhou et al., 2021) and
defined it as the extent to which members express their constructive opinions or initiate
communication toward teammates.
Correspondingly, they measured team voice by aggregating or averaging members’
voices using the additive or referent-shift consensus model proposed by Chan (1998) for
conducting multilevel research. The latter involves the change of referents in the
measurement scale to derive new constructs (Chan, 1998). For example, Van Dyne and

LePine (1998)’s individual voice scale was transformed into items such as “Employees
in my workgroup speak up and encourage others…” (Wang & Hu, 2018, 958) and “The
team member comes up with and puts forward opinions and suggestions on problems
that affect the work team” (Chen et al., 2022, 7). Using this method, researchers have
shifted the focus from participants’ perceptions of their own voice to their members’
voice and whether there is within-group consensus in such perceptions. Within-group
consensus is tested using indices such as within-group agreement rwg(j) and intraclass
correlations ICC(1) and ICC(2) as indicators of interrater reliability and group-mean
reliability, respectively (Bliese, 2000; James et al., 1984). These tests justify the
aggregation of individual responses to represent the value of higher-level construct –
team voice.
Team voice as shared voice
Frazier and Bowler (2015, 842) defined group voice as “a work group making
suggestions for improvement to its direct supervisor”. Huang & Paterson (2017)
supported this view and asserted that group voice protects individual employees and has
greater influence on management. This view is fundamentally different from the
previous one as it represents the consensus substance of voice, for example, members’
shared opinion about applying a particular technology, while the aggregation of

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members’ voice indicates the consensus about the extent of members’ voice behavior.
It is not easy to distinguish between these approaches since these scholars have confused
definition and measurement.
The way they measured team voice or group voice is also different. Frazier & Bowler
(2015) studied voice climate’s influence on group performance through encouraging
group voice behavior. They asked employees to rate their voice climate, while
supervisors rated group voice behavior and group performance. Group voice behavior
was assessed from the viewpoint of group outsiders - the supervisors, and the referent

was shifted differently; instead of “employees in my workgroup” (Wang & Hu, 2018),
they used “the work group I supervise”. Similar method was used by Huang & Paterson
(2017) and Zheng et al. (2022), managers (outsiders to the groups) were asked to assess
group voice or team voice with the referent shifted to “this group” or “the team I
supervise”. Each team had one rating for their group voice only.
However, this measurement method still suffers from some drawbacks. It seems to
capture the overall voice of the team, but it does not necessarily reflect the collective
nature of team voice since the supervisors might perceive the scale as asking for
individual voice level of the teams rather than the collective opinion. Supervisors might
also not be able to know whether the voice is collective or rather expressed by one
individual and misinterpreted as team voice.
This connotation of team voice has also shown up in a more recent study about lateral
voice. Lateral voice is attracting researchers’ attention as an alternative to hampered
vertical voice due to factors such as authoritarian leaders, high power distance and the
collectivist culture in China (Jing et al., 2022), which shares many cultural
characteristics with Vietnam. Jing et al. (2022) suggested that lateral voice is the
transition mechanism to the collective vertical voice, which is considered more powerful
than the individual voice. Shared voice was created from shared experience, and with
the help of lateral voice, those people with shared experience or issues are brought
together to build support and then collectively voice to managers. However, this
qualitative work by Jing et al. (2022) merely touched on the formation mechanism of
collective voice as a by-product of lateral voice without further examination.
In short, team voice literature has been insufficient in addressing team voice as shared
voice. This gap will be discussed further later setting up the foundation for the research
objectives and research questions.

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