Employees’ Misplaced Loyalty: Perceived Costs and Actual Benefits of Public Voice

Employee voice, or the upward expression of work-related ideas, suggestions, or concerns is crucial for effective organizational functioning. However, because voice challenges the status quo, for which managers often feel responsible, voice is often associated with lack of loyalty, while employee silence is seen as a manifestation of loyalty. We challenge this perspective by proposing that employees may display loyalty by voicing privately (i.e., when no one else is present besides the manager) versus publicly (i.e., when other people are present besides the manager). We argue that employees’ implicit public voice theories (i.e., taken-for-granted beliefs that public voice is inappropriate) explain when employees are more likely to voice in private. Yet, we also argue that private voice is less effective, in comparison to public voice, in engendering managerial attention, and, as a result, employees who voice in private are less likely to initiate change. Utilizing multisource data from 110 manager-employee dyads, we find that employees’ implicit public voice theories are associated with less public voice, and, consequently, negatively with employees’ initiation of change. We further show that this indirect effect is mitigated by the work-group self-promotion climate–a shared belief that displaying behaviors signaling to others one’s competence is appreciated.