The Cost of Being Heard : Voice Volume, Voice Type, and the Managerial Listening Experience Under Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is widely regarded as an essential part of a healthy team functioningin organizational literature. Research has shown that employee voice is fostered andmanaged by that climate. However, the literature has insufficiently explored the otherperspective of this phenomenon, namely, the managers. What happens to the manager whosucceeds in shaping a climate where employees are able to speak up, and then as a listenermust attend, process, and act on the voice that follows. As this dimension remainsundertheorized, this thesis examines the relation between the promotion of psychologicalsafety and the generation of increased listening demands for managers in Swedish publicsector organizations. Furthermore, this thesis also highlights the managers’ experience andhow they navigate these demands in their everyday work. The study adopts an abductive,qualitative design that is based on twelve semi-structured interviews with managers inSwedish public sector, across municipalities and regions. The findings suggest thatmanagers perceive psychologically safe climates as generating self-amplifying and variedforms of voice, which in turn creates cognitive, emotional, and structural demands formanagers when acting as a listener. Crucially, the findings suggest that voice is notuniformly experienced by the managers, rather each voice type creates a unique experiencefor the manager when acting as a listener. Promotive voice is seen as energizing, prohibitivevoice as depleting, and a novel voice type, unresolvable voice, highlights a situation wheremanagers are structurally prevented from responding despite their listening efforts whichcreates a burden. Furthermore, this study’s findings highlight a listening paradox where theconditions that enable employee voice through a psychologically safe environment exceedthe managerial capacity to listen, as the voice is self-amplifying. The thesis contributes byproposing unresolvable voice as a new category that is defined by the managerialexperience, capturing the burden that comes with listening to employee input without beingable to act on it due to structural, political, legal, or resource constraints. Additionally, itdiscusses listening as a managerial resource that is finite. Lastly, it provides an integratedframework that links psychological safety, voice type, and institutional constraints uniquefor the Swedish public sector from the managers’ perspective.