When and why voice to higher-up? Declaring the psychological mechanisms of subordinate’s voice behavior in the public sector

PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE When and why voice to higher-up? Declaring the psychological mechanisms of subordinate’s voice behavior in the public sector Khawaja Asif Tasneem1, Zonghe Zhang2, Sirui Sun ID3,4* a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 1 School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China, 2 Law School of Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Shanghai, China, 3 School of Humanities, Donghua University, Shanghai, China, 4 Shanghai Innovation Policy Evaluation Center, Shanghai, China * Abstract OPEN ACCESS Citation: Tasneem KA, Zhang Z, Sun S (2023) When and why voice to higher-up? Declaring the psychological mechanisms of subordinate’s voice behavior in the public sector. PLoS ONE 18(8): e0285104. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0285104 Editor: Katarzyna Piwowar-Sulej, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business: Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wroclawiu, POLAND Based on the leadership-member exchange perspective, this study proposes that subordinates are more likely to express their voice in a leader-supported work environment, and this relationship is stronger when they have close social ties with their supervisor. In the case of subordinates supported by supervisors, public service motivation serves as a psychological mechanism to promote them to express voice behavior. This study also explains the boundary effect of the supervisor-subordinate’s guanxi perspective in affecting supervisor support and subordinate’s voice behavior. A longitudinal survey of 136 front-line public officers has been conducted to check this theoretical model in China, and their data verified the moderated-mediation model results. Implications for management theory and practice are discussed. Received: October 27, 2022 Accepted: April 14, 2023 Published: August 18, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Tasneem et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are available from DANS at DOI: 10.17026/dans-zh8whdn (https://easy.dans.knaw.nl/ui/datasets/id/ easy-dataset:277754). Funding: This study was supported by grants from the Soft Science Key Program Fund of Shanghai 2022 “Action Planof Technological Innovation”(No.22692199300, recipient: Sirui Sun) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No.2232022E-13, recipient: 1. Introduction Voice behavior is not only "communication" or "information sharing" that is universal, but also the input behavior of individuals who point out opportunities and ways to improve the organization. When public sectors created an environment, public employees could be encouraged to participate actively and share information, maximizing the human capital value in return. Against this background, many researchers investigated the motivation topics of individuals’ voice behaviors. Although these management studies are in their fashion, research on front line public officers’ voice behaviors is still in its infancy. Voice behavior also needs to be encouraged in the public sector. For example, voice behaviors warmly welcome some special jobs such as front-line administrative law enforcement officers. It is worth encouraging public law enforcement institutions because it created a bridge for public officers to challenge the authority for improper disposal of illegal and provided suggestions such as improving law enforcement procedures. Organizations deficient in voice are problematic [1]. However, voice behavior is a discretionary proactive behavior, and supervisors cannot force employees to voice their, nor can PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285104 August 18, 2023 1 / 14 PLOS ONE Sirui Sun)and Shanghai Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences Project (No.2020EGL021, recipient: Zonghe Zhang) and The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The psychological mechanisms of subordinate’s voice behavior at public sector they punish them for not voicing [2]. So, this study will explore how and when the voice behavior fire would be igniting among these public officers, and declare the psychological mechanism of subordinate voice behavior to their higher-ups. Existing research about the motivation mechanism of voice behavior was mostly conducted in for-profit organizations, i.e., companies. Then, what’s special for the employees of the public sector? Without a concrete measure (e.g., profit) to indicate the success of the organizations, how the employees’ working conditions, supervisor support, working motivation, etc. may differ from those in companies to serve as a motivation tool for public employees to express voice? Therefore, in this study we will try to discover the differences in the mechanisms that generate the suggestion behavior of frontline public sector employees and try to find the psychological mechanisms that motivate them to be brave and proactive in expressing suggestions at work, starting from the leadership relationship and the psychological mechanisms of individuals. According to the leader-member exchange theory(LMX theory), superior-subordinate relationships would be important as a social connection in influencing subordinates’ behavioral performance [3]. Therefore, a subordinate’s voice behavior is equally susceptible to the influence of superior-subordinate relationships. For example, research has revealed that the supportive environment created by supervisors makes subordinates more likely to engage in proactive behavior as well as improve creativity (Liu et al., 2010) [4]. However, the support given by the supervisor in the work environment only answers the question of why the subordinate is willing to speak up, but the personal relationship between the supervisor and the subordinate needs to be considered as to whom the subordinate would prefer to speak up a ton this study, we argue that the closeness of personal relationships between superiors and subordinates leads individuals to decide to whom they should address their words of advice. For the front-line public employees in this study, the innovative suggestions they offer in response to their work are often inhibiting suggestions after problems have been identified, a risky initiative that challenges authority, and therefore the risky initiative is more likely to be listened to and heard by those they know personally and are close to as supervisors. On the one hand, because they have more contacts, both work and personal, and on the other hand because they trust that they will not be "betrayed" by such a supervisor. Since voice behavior is often in as a risk action, we (...truncated)