How voicer humility influences managerial voice endorsement: an expectancy violation perspective

Date

2024

Authors

Duan, J.
Wang, X.
Lin, X.
Guo, Z.

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Journal article

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British Journal of Management, 2024; 35(1):449-463

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Abstract

Humble employees are less inclined to speak up in a challenging and dominant manner. Drawing from the expectancy-violation theory, we argue that challenging voice expressed by humble employees can be viewed as unexpected and receives high recognition. Specifically, we examine the effects of voicer humility on violation-expectedness and violation-valence, and, subsequently, on managerial voice endorsement. Moreover, we hypothesize that manager–subordinate familiarity moderates these relationships. Results from an event-based recall study with 188 manager–subordinate dyads (Study 1) and a vignette-based experiment with 434 managers (Study 2) revealed that voicer humility was positively related to managerial voice endorsement via violation-expectedness and violation-valence. Furthermore, we found that the positive relationship between voicer humility and violation-expectedness, as well as the positive relationship between voicer humility and violation-valence, were stronger when manager–subordinate familiarity was higher. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and directions for future research.

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Copyright 2023 British Academy of Management Access Condition Notes: Accepted manuscript available after 1 April 2025

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