Centering Workers in Voice Research: Emerging Frontiers in Worker Voice

Since Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970), worker voice was largely seen as an extension of Hirschman’s conceptualization as a mean to “change, rather than escape from an objectionable state of affairs.” Many organizational scholars conceptualize voice as “the communication of ideas, suggestions, concerns, problems, or opinions about work-related issues, with the intent to bring about improvement or change” (Morrison, 2023). In the management literature, voice is usually framed as a prosocial behavior (Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, 2006) intended to benefit the organizations (Detert & Burris, 2007; Morrison & Milliken, 2000; Van Dyne, Ang, & Botero 2003). Much of the management research is preoccupied with macro, meso, and micro-level antecedents of voice as well as the consequences of voice for individuals, teams, and the organization. Voice is of interest to scholars and practitioners alike because cultivating worker voice may lead to improvements in efficiency (Kim, MacDuffie, & Pil 2010), quality (Litwin & Eaton 2018), turnover (Batt, Colvin & Keefe, 2002), and safety (Li, Liao, Tangirala, & Firth, 2017). Although management scholars have developed rich theories on worker voice, a sizable voice gap exists in American workplaces today. Many workers today just don’t have much clout when it comes to the things that matter most to them on the job. A survey of American workers found that a majority of American workers report having less influence at work than they believe they should have on benefits, compensation, promotion, job security, respect shown to employees, protection from abuses, and new technologies (Kochan, Yang, Kimball, & Kelly, 2019). To close the voice gap, it requires us to develop and evaluate multi-option systems of worker voice in contrast to both labor law and prevailing managerial practices. In this symposium, we challenge the traditional conceptualization of worker voice and explore how different group of workers exercise voice in their everyday lives and how their voice can shape their job quality and working conditions. In keeping with the theme of the annual meeting—putting the worker front and center—our symposium raises the question of how and when workers voice in service of their specific needs. We explore this question by centering the problems that workers raise about organizations, be they material, emotional, and/or moral issues. Recent work has documented worker participation can aid in organizational problem-solving (Satterstrom, Kerrissey, & DiBenigno, 2021), but scholars know less about how and why specific problems get identified, socialized, and addressed by workers themselves. Set against a pervasive norm not to complain or talk about issues, it is crucial for contemporary research to amplify the organizational issues that workers experience and to explain how and why such problems are ignored or solved. The missing worker voice in job quality: Developing a conceptual framework and survey instrument Author: Yaminette Diaz-Linhart; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Author: Arrow Minster; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Author: Dongwoo Park; ILR at Cornell Author: Duanyi Yang; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Author: Thomas A. Kochan; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Partners on the frontline: When and how frontline managers aid in solving workers' problems Author: Arrow Minster; Massachusetts Institute of Technology When and how technology developers can facilitate worker voice Author: Jenna E. Myers; U. Of Toronto-Ind Rel Lbr Voice without Representation: Worker Voice in China’s Networked Public Sphere Author: Duanyi Yang; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Author: Tingting Zhang; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign