"The Joint Effects of Issue Importance, Managerial Openness, and Positive Mood on Voice and Tactics"

The existing voice research has mainly focused on when employees would speak up, but we have limited knowledge about how employees would speak up. In this study we examine not only voice but also employee voice tactics, defined as various manners employees take to express concerns or share suggestions to their leaders. Based on upward communication literature, we propose that voice and voice tactics are influenced by the characteristics of the message, and both stable and temporal characteristics of the leader. Specifically, we examined the joint effects of issue importance, managerial openness, and leaders¡¦ positive mood on employee voice and voice tactics. Using two-wave data from 232 supervisor-subordinate dyads, we found that employees were mostly likely to speak up and to use public and formal voice tactics only when (1) the issue was important, (2) leaders were open to employee voice, and (3) leaders had a positive mood, simultaneously.