Voice for ourselves or myself in times of crisis: When and how crisis‐related uncertainty motivates employee voices

Abstract Drawing on fairness heuristic theory, we propose that organizational justice serves as a boundary condition determining how employees respond to perceived uncertainty in times of organizational crisis with different types of proactive voice (i.e. prosocial or self‐interested). We conducted a three‐wave survey study to test our hypotheses with a sample of 401 employee‐supervisor dyads during the COVID‐19 period. Results demonstrated the employee crisis‐related uncertainty perception's positive indirect effect on employee prosocial voice via prosocial motive when organizational justice was higher, and its positive indirect effect on employee self‐interested voice via self‐interested motive when organizational justice was lower. We then discussed our implications for organizational crisis and employee voice literature.