The Influences of Social Status and Organizational Justice on Employee Voice: A Case of Customer Care Workers

Abstract

Employee voice plays a critical role in facilitating positive organizational change and development. This study seeks to identify the antecedents of challenging promotive voice, which indicates constructive challenge geared toward improvement. Specifically, we investigate the influences of formal, informal, and self-perceived status as well as the effects of interpersonal and procedural justice. The results demonstrate that: (a) informal status such as age was positively associated with challenging promotive voice; (b) self-perceived status was positively linked to challenging promotive voice; (c) both interpersonal and procedural justice increased challenging promotive voice; and (d) interpersonal justice moderated the relationship between self-perceived status and challenging promotive voice such that the effect of status was less pronounced when perceptions of interpersonal justice was higher. The findings highlight the significance of structural influences on voice behavior, calling for further research on status disparities, organizational justice climate, and employee engagement.

Keywords

employee voice social status interpersonal justice procedural justice care workers

Organizations thrive on constructive suggestions, novel ideas, as well as the exchanges of candid and trustworthy feedback. Since Hirschman’s (1970) seminal work proposed the notion of voice as individual or collective petition to change an objectionable state of affairs in organizations, a diverse stream of literature has examined the significance and influences of voice across a range of organizational contexts. Challenging promotive voice, which refers to “promotive behavior that emphasizes expression of constructive challenge intended to improve rather than merely criticize” (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998, p. 109), has been known as a key factor in positive outcomes such as improved task performance, idea implementation, creativity, and reduced turnover (for reviews, see Morrison, 2014). This type of employee voice, in contrast to destructive remarks or defensive responses, serves challenging and simultaneously promotive functions that are intimately linked to positive organizational change (Brinsfield, 2014). For example, suggesting new ways of improving organizational services or work procedures even when others disagree counts as challenging promotive voice. This form of voice is conceived as an extra-role behavior because it is positive, discretionary, and not formally rewarded by the organization (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). Hence, challenging promotive voice has attracted substantial scholarly attention by virtue of its nature as extra-role behavior that can yield beneficial outcomes (for a review, see Ng & Feldman, 2012).

Given this critical role of employee voice, numerous scholars have strived to identify its potential antecedents (for a review, see Chamberlin et al., 2017). The extant literature on the motivators of employee voice has predominantly focused on two core factors: (a) employees’ individual dispositions, perceptions, or beliefs, and (b) managerial behaviors or leader-member exchange (for reviews, see Morrison, 2014; Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2012). For example, employees’ motivational states can enhance their willingness to speak up and exercise their influence at work (Venkataramani & Tangirala, 2010). Also, it has been well documented that employees are more likely to engage in voice behavior when managers solicit and listen to input from below (Detert & Treviño, 2010).

However, these two dominant perspectives have paid less attention to structural or contextual influences that may shape one’s engagement in challenging promotive voice. As employees are keenly aware of the impacts of organizational structure, power, and status differences on their job, employees tend to weigh in structural constraints before speaking up. Although structural determinants of employee voice have received limited empirical attention, a few studies have delved into how group and organizational climate (Frazier & Fainshmidt, 2012; Morrison et al., 2011), organizational centralization (Kim & Leach, 2020), and power distance (Botero & Van Dyne, 2009) may affect employee voice behavior. Beyond individual dispositions and supervisory behaviors, the analyses of structural elements can offer significant insight into how we can better cultivate employee voice to facilitate positive organizational change.

Highlighting the critical significance of social and structural factors, the current study seeks to investigate the influences of social status on challenging promotive voice. In turn, we examine how organizational justice may mitigate the effects of social status and foster challenging promotive voice. First, we examine formal and informal status cues in organizations that may be associated with employee voice behavior. Proposing that status differences may play a key role in voice behavior, our study scrutinizes the effects of (a) a formal status indicator, (b) informal status cues, and (c) self-perceived social status on employee voice to deepen our understanding of the relationships between social status and employee voice. Second, building on the recent studies of the influence of organizational justice on voice (Wang & Jiang, 2015; Whiteside & Barclay, 2013), we seek to examine organizational justice as structural characteristics that may be intertwined with employee voice. Employees’ positive evaluations of justice at work lead to various prosocial behaviors, further strengthening their extra-role engagement such as challenging promotive voice (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998).

To pursue the aforementioned goals of this study, we investigate the case of customer service workers employed in so called “care industries” in South Korea, in which the consequences of status disparities and organizational justice are particularly salient. Customer service workers, such as customer support staff and call center workers, are mostly situated in low-status positions, excluded from decision-making procedures, and thereby facing substantial barriers to making their voices heard. Their lack of voice may be further exacerbated by the superimposition of multiple status cues (e.g., employment status, age, gender) and perceived organizational injustice including unfair treatment by their supervisors or customers. As employees in care industries work on the “frontline” where they deal with customer demands and complaints as part of their job, care workers are more likely to face injustices. By ascertaining the relationships among status, justice, and voice, we aim to demonstrate the consequences of status differences and organizational justice for employee participation. In aggregate, we wish to lay the groundwork for the research of social and structural determinants of employee voice, calling for further research on status hierarchies and organizational justice.

The Effects of Social Status and Organizational Justice on Employee Voice

Incorporating Social Status into the Employee Voice Scholarship

Social status refers to the position in a social hierarchy that results from accumulated acts of deference (Goode, 1978), where deference can be determined by either formal or informal cues provided in a social structure. In organizations, formal status stems from different job positions, hierarchical ranks, or employment status defined by organizational structures and rules. Informal status emerges through social interactions and consensus among group members regarding the relative social standing of each individual (Mast & Hall, 2004). Informal status is thus highly influenced by prevailing cultural norms and values (e.g., gender roles, age-associated social expectations) (Morrill et al., 1997).

It has been well documented that social status produces various forms of inequalities and disparities (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Specifically, numerous studies have alluded to a potential connection between status and voice in organizational contexts. In general, low-status members of an organization are situated in a structurally-disadvantageous position to exert interpersonal influence (Lee et al., 2019). Status also affects micro-status ordering such as participation, social influence, and evaluation in task groups and organizations (Skvoretz & Fararo, 2016). Both middle-status and low-status actors exhibit conformity behavior more often than high-status actors because of social constraints in their choice (Phillps & Zuckerman, 2002). Further, low-status workers are less likely to participate in high-level knowledge discussions due to the concerns of judgement and monitoring by their supervisors and peers (Kim, 2018b). Although these studies do not focus squarely on the impact of status on challenging promotive voice, they offer strong theoretical motivation to explore the role of status in facilitating or hindering employee voice. Building on this line of work, we propose our hypotheses on various status signals (i.e., formal, informal, and self-perceived) and challenging promotive voice in the following section.

Social Status and Challenging Promotive Voice

As a formal status indicator, employment status (i.e., permanent, full-time versus temporary, part-time employment) serves as a primary cue that reflects one’s standing in the organization. The disparity in employment status may affect a variety of employee behaviors that are also germane to their voice. Employment status facilitates enactment of extra-role behaviors (e.g., organizational citizenship behaviors, engagement in challenging promotive voice) since high status at work can function as a buffer against negative evaluations and consequences (Anderson et al., 2001). Further, full-time and part-time employees may have different psychological contracts, which lead to disparities in their attitudes such as varying levels of affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors (Conway & Briner, 2002). Avery et al. (2011) also found that tenured employees engage in voice behaviors more than their nontenured counterparts. Conversely, low-status employees may be reluctant to engage in voice behaviors owing to their lack of resources, concerns about potential negative ramifications, and psychological constraints. For example, involuntary part-time workers who desired to occupy a full-time position in service organizations showed the lowest engagement in challenging promotive voice due to perceived high costs associated with speaking up such as potential job loss (Stamper & Van Dyne, 2001). Likewise, in South Korean customer care industries (e.g., call centers), employment status (i.e., permanent vs. temporary) serves as a primary indicator of formal job-related status in part because customer representatives rarely have different job titles or hierarchical ranks in their organization. We therefore propose that permanent full-time employees are more likely to express their challenging promotive voice than temporary employees:

H1: Employment status is positively associated with engagement in challenging promotive voice.

Next, informal status can be a powerful source of one’s behavioral discretion and constraints, depending on organizational structures and cultures. Informal status originates from a number of elements such as age, gender, race, and ethnicity, all of which may have culturally-shaped value attachment to some extent (Morrill et al., 1997). Among these informal status signals, we focus on age and gender, which are particularly salient to our inquiry in the context of the service sector in South Korea (with little racial diversity). Although research on informal status and employee voice remains relatively scant, some demographic correlates have been examined as control variables (Botero, 2013). Although scholars have stated that there is no guiding theory to explain what relationships to expect and why these relationships occur (Morrison, 2011), we posit that demographics such as age and gender tend to be associated with social status or culturally-shaped values in organizations.

Prior scholarship has reported the effects of age and gender on a variety of participation behaviors. For example, Artistico et al. (2003) argued that older employees tend to feel more confident and are likely to make suggestions on how to improve organizations compared to younger employees. Also, several studies have shown that male employees tend to speak up more compared to women because (a) employee behaviors may be shaped by gender stereotypes (Kidder & Parks, 2001); (b) women are prone to negative evaluations (Pideritt & Ashford, 2003); and (c) ideas forwarded by men draw more attention compared to those from women (Simpson & Lewis, 2005). As age and gender are deeply entwined with status differences in hierarchical cultural contexts such as customer service organizations in South Korea, it is conceivable that age and gender may also be associated with employees’ engagement in challenging promotive voice. Hence, we advance the following hypotheses:

H2: Age is positively associated with engagement in challenging promotive voice.

H3: Men are more likely to engage in challenging promotive voice than women.

Finally, we also investigate the influence of self-perceived social status on challenging promotive voice. In addition to formal and informal status indicators, one’s perceptions of their own status and social influence can substantially shape their voice behavior. Prior research has documented a number of psychological antecedents of voice such as felt obligation (Fuller et al., 2006) and organization-based self-esteem (Pierce et al., 1993) that can affect employees’ beliefs about their capabilities, which subsequently motivate their change-oriented behaviors. In fact, those who perceive themselves to be influential in their organization will engage more in constructive voice behaviors (Liang et al., 2012). When workers view themselves as a source of influence and knowledge, they tend to participate more actively in important task-related discussions such as decision making (Kim, 2018b). Similarly, employees who believe that they have greater social influence in their organization are more likely to engage in upward voice (Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2012) and take initiatives by utilizing constructive voice (Venkataramani & Tangirala, 2010). By contrast, employees with perceived lack of social status are more likely to withdraw (Keltner et al., 2003). Such withdrawal behaviors may inhibit opportunities for enacting challenging promotive voice. In aggregate, we expect that employees’ self-perceived social status is positively linked to their challenging promotive voice:

H4: Self-perceived social status is positively associated with engagement in challenging promotive voice.

Organizational Justice and Employee Voice

Among other dimensions of organizational justice, interpersonal justice and procedural justice are particularly salient in the examinations of service workers’ voluntary work-related behaviors (Simons & Roberson, 2003). Interpersonal justice has been conceived as the “communicative” aspect of organizational justice, articulating the criteria for evaluating the fairness of interpersonal treatment by decision-making authorities (Bies, 2001). The criteria to determine the degree of interpersonal justice received during the implementation of decision making encompass truthful, respectful, and courteous communication, as well as refrainment of improper remarks. Procedural justice refers to the fairness of procedural rule application during decision making processes, which can be assessed independent of decision making outcomes (Thibaut & Walker, 1975). Procedural rules include consistency, bias suppression, accuracy of information, correctability, representation, and ethicality (Colquitt, 2001). If these rules are upheld throughout the processes of decision making, the procedure can be viewed as just even when desired outcomes are not obtained.

Interpersonal justice enacted by decision-making authorities at work may enable employees to express challenging promotive voice. Broadly, supervisors’ attitudes and consultation could promote employees’ willingness to engage in voice behaviors (Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2012). Employees tend to monitor closely how their supervisor responds to their input, which in turn influences their voice behaviors (Detert & Burris, 2007). In particular, employees who perceive their authority figures to be fair are likely to enact challenging promotive voice (Takeuchi et al., 2012). Similarly, employees who are treated with respect and dignity by supervisors tend to engage in challenging promotive voice in part because fair treatment signifies an acknowledgment of employees’ valuable contribution to the organization, which can prompt employees to reciprocate that acknowledgment by engaging in voice behaviors (Gao et al., 2011). By contrast, perceptions of interpersonal injustice tend to hinder voice behaviors among employees. When supervisors fail to listen or implement employees’ input, employees will remain silent or less likely to engage in voice behaviors to avoid futile effort (Whiteside & Barclay, 2013). Hence, when workers feel that their interpersonal communication with supervisors have been just, workers are more likely to express challenging promotive voice. Therefore, we hypothesize:

H5: Perceived interpersonal justice is positively associated with engagement in challenging promotive voice.

Procedural justice, which captures the structural aspect of process fairness, can help employees feel protected by the organizational formal system (e.g., procedural rule compliance), and thereby supporting employee voice behavior (Takeuchi et al., 2012). In a similar vein, Greenberg (1990) stated that perceptions of fair procedures reduce the fear of victimization among employees because they believe that their organization will act on a bias-free manner. Further, the perceptions of procedural justice make employees feel that their input will count during organizational decision making (Tyler & Lind, 1992). Overall, perceptions of fair procedures could bolster feelings of safety among employees, allowing them to engage in constructive voice (Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008). Building on this line of work, we propose that procedural justice has a positive relationship with challenging promotive voice:

H6: Perceived procedural justice is positively associated with engagement in challenging promotive voice.

Finally, given the positive influences of organizational justice on employee engagement in challenging promotive voice, it is within reason to assume that perceived interpersonal and procedural justice may mitigate the effects of perceived social status on challenging promotive voice. Namely, low-status workers can be more encouraged to speak up when they believe that they are situated in a fair environment. Although the interaction effects between social status and organizational justice have not been explored, we suggest that voice disparities among low-status and high-status workers could be reduced in a more just work environment. Hence, we propose the moderation hypotheses as follows:

H7: The relationship between self-perceived social status and challenging promotive voice will be moderated by perceived interpersonal justice. Specifically, the relationship between social status and challenging promotive voice will be weaker when interpersonal justice is higher than lower.

H8: The relationship between self-perceived social status and challenging promotive voice will be moderated by perceived procedural justice. Specifically, the relationship between social status and challenging promotive voice will be weaker when procedural justice is higher than lower.

The proposed hypotheses are illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Hypothesized model predicting employee voice.

Method

Data Collection

To conduct this study, the first author obtained permission to administer an online survey through Blind, an enterprise social media platform in which members can exchange their opinions without disclosing their identity. Blind is an increasingly popular anonymous social media application for workplace communication available both in South Korea and the United States (Clarey, 2018). To join the online communities in Blind, individuals must verify their official company email address as part of the registration process. Upon verification, users are granted exclusive access to their company message board and industry-specific message boards, which are matched with users based on their company information. Blind users share their work experiences regarding a variety of topics such as their organizational procedures, human resources management policies, tips for promotions and negotiations, or everyday work life. As Blind is an anonymous communication platform, workers can share their candid thoughts with other employees without concerns of potential retribution or negative judgment by peers and superiors. For researchers, journalists, and industry analysts, Blind serves as a unique site through which they can reach out to workers in a particular organization or a specific industry to glean employee input regarding various issues. For example, a recent poll through Blind revealed that workers in the Silicon Valley high-tech organizations had witnessed discrimination against queer employees in their organization (Leskin, 2019).

In collaboration with TeamBlind, Inc., the developer and provider of Blind, the online survey was distributed among care industry workers such as customer support staff, call center workers, and information desk workers whose day-to-day tasks involved direct interactions with customers and clients. The survey was available through a targeted advertisement exposed only to the employees in customer service firms. When users clicked the advertisement, they were provided with an informed consent form, which stated that the survey was anonymous; participation was voluntary; and only group-level results would be reported. We also indicated that only adults who were employed at the time of data collection would be allowed to participate in the study. As we circulated our survey within anonymous communities, we collected minimal demographic information not to make respondents feel concerned or threatened. The informed consent and survey questionnaire were translated into Korean by the first author. In turn, both documents were back-translated and certified by a native speaker of Korean. Participants were entered into a raffle to win 1 of 30 Starbucks gift certificates as an incentive to complete the survey, which was open for three weeks in July 2019. In total, 214 participants completed the survey. The final sample size had enough power to test our models since an a priori test indicated that the minimum sample size to adequately detect medium-sized effects about .15 would be 103 (α = .05, power = .80, number of predictors = 7). The study protocol was approved by the institutional review board at the authors’ institution.

Measures

Formal status

In organizations, one’s status can be inferred from formal status indicators such as hierarchical ranks, job titles, and employment status. In our study, we asked about respondents’ employment status (i.e., permanent, full-time vs. temporary employment) in part because discrete hierarchical ranks or job titles rarely existed among customer service workers in South Korea. For instance, workers at a call center often fell into a single category of customer service representatives. Further, whereas permanent employment ensures full-time work status whereas temporary employment does not necessarily guarantee the same privilege and stability. Permanent employment status is positively linked to greater job autonomy and stability, which have been viewed as status markers in the workplace (Ang & Slaughter, 2001). In addition, part-time workers are viewed as partially included in their organization, and thereby situated in low-status, marginalized groups (Conway & Briner, 2002). Out of all respondents, 179 indicated that they were permanent full-time workers whereas 35 stated that they were employed as a temporary worker.

Informal status

As for informal status signals, we assessed respondents’ gender and age. In total, 146 respondents identified themselves as a woman while 68 respondents identified as a man. No participants self-identified themselves as queer. With respect to age groups, 66 respondents belong to the age of 19–29 (approximately 31%); 107 respondents to the age of 30–39 (50%); 30 respondents to the age of 40–49 (14%); and 11 respondents to the age of 50–59 (5%). No respondents were 60 years or older.

Self-perceived status

Following the existing literature, employees’ social status was operationalized as their self-perceived social influence in their work unit. The original instrument was developed by Spreitzer (1995), and later utilized to explore the relationship between self-perceived status and employees’ upward voice (Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2012). This five-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) consisted of the following three items: “My impact on what happens in my unit is large,” “I have a great deal of control over what happens in my department,” and “I have significant influence over what happens in my unit” (M = 2.93, SD = 1.00, a = .91).

Interpersonal justice

A widely accepted interpersonal justice measurement, a subscale of the organizational justice scale, was employed for the current study (Colquitt, 2001). The scale enquired about the extent of fair interpersonal treatment during the decision-making processes at work. Asking about interpersonal communication with authority figures who make decisions that impact on respondents’ work, this four-item scale examined whether such decision-making authorities had treated the respondent “in a polite manner,” “with dignity,” “with respect,” and “without improper remarks or comments.” The respondents were required to rate the statements following a five-point Likert-type scale from 1 = to a small extent to 5 = to a large extent (M = 2.88, SD = .93, a = .90).

Procedural justice

Procedural justice scale was also adopted from Colquitt (2001). The scale investigated the extent of the perceived fairness of decision-making procedures. To assess respondents’ evaluations of procedural fairness, the scale touched upon core dimensions of procedural justice such as consistency, bias suppression, accuracy of information, correctability, representation, and ethicality. The scale consisted of seven instrument items such as “Have those procedures been applied consistently?”, “Have those procedures been based on accurate information?”, “Have you been able to express your views and feelings during those procedures?”. The respondents were required to rate the statements following a five-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 = to a small extent to 5 = to a large extent (M = 2.41, SD = .86, a = .91).

Challenging promotive voice

We used the employee voice scale developed by Van Dyne and LePine (1998). The scale included five items such as “I develop and make recommendations concerning issues that affect my team” and “I communicate my opinions about work issues even if others disagree with me.” The respondents were asked to rate each statement following a five-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree (M = 3.09, SD = .93, a = .91).

Data Analysis

As a preliminary analysis, we tested potential non-response bias to ascertain the generalizability of our cross-sectional study. Despite the limitations, a comparative analysis of early and late respondents has been used to examine whether the sample can represent the target population when it is not feasible to achieve a 100% response rate (Lindner et al., 2001). We performed a series of t-tests to determine whether there are statistically significant differences in values of all Likert-type scales across early and late respondent groups. The results indicated that no significant differences were found as p values ranged from .19 to .78. Next, we conducted bivariate correlations using all study variables (see Table 1). The study variables were moderately correlated.

Table 1.

Bivariate Correlations among Study Variables.

	1	2	3	4	5	6
1: Employment status^a
2: Gender^b	0.02
3: Age	0.07	0.24**
4: Social status	0.15	0.18*	0.34
5: Interpersonal justice	0.07	0.03	−0.16*	0.12
6: Procedural justice	−0.01	0.15	−0.11	0.23**	0.34**
7: Employee voice	0.12	0.13	0.08⁺	0.58**	0.27**	0.34**

0 = Temporary employment.

0 = Woman.

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.

Our primary analyses followed two-step procedures. To test H1-H6, we performed a series of hierarchical linear regressions as primary analyses (see Table 2). To ascertain moderating effects of interpersonal and procedural justice, we performed moderated hierarchical linear regressions (see Table 3).

Table 2.

Hierarchical Regression Models Predicting Employee Voice.

	Model 1		Model 2			Model 3
	β	SE	β	SE	F ²	β	SE	F ²
Employment status^a	0.11	0.20	0.03	0.16		0.02	0.16
Gender^b	0.13	0.16	0.04	0.13		−0.01	0.13
Age	0.05	0.09	0.04	0.07		0.12*	0.07	0.01
Social status			0.51***	0.06	0.44	0.49***	0.06	0.28
Interpersonal justice						0.20**	0.07	0.04
Procedural justice						0.15*	0.08	0.02
R ²	0.04		0.35			0.42
Δ R ²	0.04		0.31			0.07
F	2.07⁺		21.98***			20.92***
Adjusted R²	0.02		0.34			0.40

0 = Temporary employment.

0 = Woman.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 3.

Moderated Hierarchical Regression Models Predicting Employee Voice.

	Model 4			Model 5
	β	SE	F ²	β	SE	F ²
Employment status^a	0.03	0.15		0.02	0.16
Gender^b	−0.01	0.12		−0.01	0.13
Age	0.13*	0.07	0.01	0.12*	0.07	0.01
Social status	0.46***	0.06	0.22	0.50***	0.06	0.25
Interpersonal justice	0.20**	0.06	0.04	0.20**	0.07	0.04
Procedural justice	0.15*	0.07	0.02	0.15*	0.08	0.02
Social status * Interpersonal justice	−0.16**	0.05	0.02
Social status * Procedural justice				0.01	0.06
R ²	0.45			0.42
Δ R ²	0.45			0.42
F	18.42***			16.71***
Adjusted R²	0.42			0.40

0 = Temporary employment.

0 = Woman.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Results

According to the results of the final empirical model, employment status and gender did not show statistically significant relationships with employee voice. However, age was positively associated with employee voice (β = .12, p < .05), revealing that older employees were more likely to use challenging promotive voice at work. Therefore, H1 and H2 were not supported whereas H3 was supported. Next, self-perceived social status was positively linked to employee voice (β = .49, p < .001), indicating that H4 was supported. With respect to organizational justice, both interpersonal justice (β = .20, p < .001) and procedural justice (β = .15, p < .05) had positive associations with employee voice. Hence, H5 and H6 were supported.

Finally, interpersonal justice moderated the relationship between self-perceived social status and challenging promotive voice (β = –.16, p < .01) such that the effect of social status was less pronounced when interpersonal justice was higher (see Figure 2). However, procedural justice did not produce a significant moderating effect. Thus, H7 was supported whereas H8 was unsupported.

Figure 2.

Moderating effect of interpersonal justice.

Discussion

Given the critical role of employee voice, we examined its antecedents to identify some possible ways to support voice among customer care workers. Our study sought to investigate (a) how care workers’ formal, informal, and self-perceived social status may be linked to their engagement in challenging promotive voice; (b) how interpersonal and procedural justice could enhance care workers’ challenging promotive voice; and (c) how interpersonal and procedural justice could ameliorate the disparate influences of social status on challenging promotive voice. Our findings revealed that age, a status signal particularly in hierarchical settings, had a positive association with the use of challenging promotive voice at work. In addition, self-perceived social status turned out a strongest factor in workers’ enactment of challenging promotive voice. However, gender and a full-time employment status did not exhibit statistically significant relationships in our study contexts. With respect to organizational justice, both interpersonal and procedural justice increased employees’ challenging promotive voice. Notably, interpersonal justice moderated the relationship between self-perceived status and challenging promotive voice such that the effect of status was less pronounced in a high interpersonal justice setting.

The findings advance the scholarship of employee voice by elucidating the meanings and influences of social status and organizational justice with regard to the enactment of challenging promotive voice. First, our study contributes to the employee voice literature by emphasizing the role of social status in organizations, in which the flow of ideas and knowledge is conditioned by status hierarchies (Kim, 2018a). Despite that numerous studies have been conducted in a variety of organizational contexts, the precedents of employee voice were often understood as individual attributes (e.g., extroversion, motivation) or the outcome of leader-member exchange qualities (e.g., supervisors’ consultation). We argue that structural influences could also substantially shape employees’ voice behaviors, calling for further research in this area.

Specifically, we pay our attention to status differences, which can substantively affect employee engagement in challenging promotive voice. The effects of status differentials can yield sweeping consequences across diverse organizational relationships and practices that go beyond a supervisor-subordinate dyad. As challenging promotive voice is a form of proactive, extra-role behavior that is not necessarily prescribed in employees’ job role (Botero & Van Dyne, 2009; Van Dyne & LePine, 1998), low-status employees may face barriers to initiating such voice beyond task execution. Indeed, low-status actors tend to show conformity behavior because they are likely to be constrained in their behavioral choice owing to a lack of legitimacy (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2002). Further, in centralized organizations where decision-making power is concentrated at the top, workers believe that they have a lower level of free speech at work, which subsequently results in decreased involvement in challenging promotive voice (Kim & Leach, 2020). Similarly, when workplace freedom of speech is less protected in their organization, employees rather choose anonymous means to express their work-related ideas. Employees with a lower rank or a shorter organizational tenure—both of which are key status signals—are also more likely to turn to anonymous media than their counterparts for workplace communication (Kim & Scott, 2018, 2019). In doing so, low-status individuals could avoid potential risks of retribution, demotion, and disenfranchisement.

Our study corroborates that differences in social status, such as self-perceived status and age, are intertwined with workers’ engagement in challenging promotive voice. Specifically, frontline workers, care workers, and customer service workers are often situated in a disadvantageous position that prevents them from exerting social influence or participating in decision making. Coupled with their low positionality in general, their own perceptions of status disparities can further undermine their willingness and ability to speak up. Also, informal status cues such as age and gender can limit employees’ voice behavior. Our findings show that younger employees could be more disempowered and less likely to exhibit challenging promotive voice although gender did not have such effects. On top of the fact that age is a core symbol of social status in South Korea (e.g., people are expected to disclose their age at work to determine a “pecking order” and choose appropriate honorifics for day-to-day conversations), age differences can be more salient than gender in our study context because customer service work tend to be dominated by women employees, hence male care workers do not necessarily have high-status privileges. These results could be further scrutinized by follow-up studies that include qualitative approaches. Also, the difference between full-time versus part-time status did not make a significant impact on employee engagement in challenging promotive voice. Stamper and Van Dyne (2001) discuss that full-time status may not necessarily result in increased voice behavior when the full-time status does not match one’s “preferred” status. Thus, one possible explanation is that customer service workers do not always desire full-time employment but rather prefer part-time employment (e.g., considering service work a temporary profession while pursuing a different career). In this scenario, service or care workers may not associate full-time employment with higher social status. The disparate influences of various status cues across different occupations and organizational contexts should be further examined to better understand the ways in which challenging promotive voice can be encouraged among low-status workers such that their voice is not dismissed. We call for further research on the effects of formal, informal, and self-perceived social status on a range of employee engagement behaviors.

Additionally, we explored the role of interpersonal justice and procedural justice in fostering challenging promotive voice despite the existence of status differences. The research of interpersonal justice began as an inquiry to identify “communication criteria” of fairness, which cannot be captured by traditional notion of distributive justice (Bies, 2001). The literature of procedural justice has evolved for the past decades to disentangle necessary processes of procedural enactments that can ensure fair treatment at work (Rupp et al., 2017). Particularly regarding employee voice, both interpersonal and procedural justice perceptions were positively associated with challenging promotive voice among service workers. The findings confirm that employees are more likely to express constructive voice, in spite of others’ potential disagreement with them, when they have received fair treatment at work. In addition, interpersonal justice moderated the relationship between self-perceived status and challenging promotive voice such that interpersonal justice mitigated the negative impact of lower-status, reducing voice disparities between high-status and low-status groups. This finding reflects the importance of the patterns and qualities of communicative interactions between decision-making authorities and employees. Since service workers are subject to client injustice (e.g., verbal aggression, disrespect) and emotional labor, the fairness of interpersonal treatment at work can be particularly meaningful for them. For example, interpersonal justice may increase psychological safety among low-status workers, which subsequently allows them to voice their concerns without fear of judgment or retaliation. Therefore, when supervisors strive to promote interpersonal justice in their team, employees’ challenging promotive voice can be amplified across different status groups.

The communicative enactments of procedural and interpersonal justice can be further explored by delineating discursive practices by authority figures. Discursive approaches to leaders’ communication focus on language in use, interaction processes, and discursive formations (Fairhurst, 2007). For instance, scholars can delve into authority figures’ language choice, dialogue, and other linguistic acts in relation to their practice and achievement of interpersonal and procedural justice. In turn, the analysis of how such communicative practices are perceived and evaluated by employees will unravel the construction processes of justice climate at work and their impact on voice, engagement, and participation. Indeed, employees are generally well aware of superiors’ differential treatments of their coworkers, which may affect cooperative communication climates in their work group (Lee, 2001). The studies of communicative construction of justice will offer a useful theoretical and analytical angle for examining organizational climate.

Practical Implications

Our study provides important practical implications. By cultivating and embracing constructive employee voice, organizational stakeholders can garner critical knowledge and input that are necessary for sustainable development of organizations. Employee voice plays a critical role in identifying problems in an early stage (Janssen & Gao, 2015), improving decision qualities (Burris, 2012), and facilitating positive change (Kim & Leach, 2020). First, the present study emphasizes that organizational members, particularly supervisors and high-status workers, should be mindful about status disparities that could inhibit voices among low-status workers. Supervisors and executives may empower low-status workers by openly soliciting input from them and ensuring that they will not be penalized simply due to offering different opinions. Further, instead of relying on the majority’s opinions, organizations may consider creating new opportunities or channels through which employees can submit novel ideas and opinions. When feedback across different status groups is solicited and reviewed, organizations could obtain increased chances for process improvement, idea generation, and open participation.

Second, organizational stakeholders and decision makers (e.g., policy makers, managers, human resources professionals) should strive to build and maintain a just climate, in which they conform to procedural and interpersonal justice rules. Perceived organizational justice can significantly increase employee voice, which in turn facilitate improvement of various organizational practices. Specifically, managers’ interpersonal treatment of their unit members is crucial for alleviating the impacts of status differentials. Indeed, employees do care about justice because of not only tangible outcomes (e.g., rewards) but also social considerations (e.g., offering proper and respectful explanations of different rewards) (Cropanzano et al., 2007). However, interpersonal communication competence has been often neglected in managerial training programs. Organizations may offer interpersonal communication and fairness training for authority figures such as managers and supervisors to help them more reflexive and mindful of their communication and decision-making at work. As procedural and interpersonal enactments need to be perceived to be fair, decision makers should learn about how they can effectively manifest the values and rules of justice in their communicative acts, rather than simply conforming to justice rules during decision-making processes behind the scene. Especially for low-status employees, who rarely have a chance to observe high-level decision-making processes, the management’s explication of how fairness is ensured for important decisions that affect their job would be perceived particularly useful.

Limitations and Future Directions

This study is not without limitations. First, as a cross-sectional study, the findings do not necessarily establish causal relationships among study variables. To further elaborate on the effects of social status on employee voice as well as how organizational justice climate can ameliorate such effects, future research may conduct longitudinal analyses to trace changes in social status (e.g., promotion) and their associations with employee voice. Second, the present study was performed in the context of customer care industries in South Korea, which may inhibit the generalizability of findings. Although we selected an ideal and unique context to interrogate the engagement of low-status workers and the significance of organizational justice for them, we acknowledge the need for more studies conducted in other industries or countries. Since the perceptions and establishment of informal status can be shaped by cultural differences, other informal status indicators may be more salient in various national contexts (e.g., religions, sexualities) or in other industries where gender composition is different. Also, as the current study did not examine institutional differences, future studies can recruit participants from multiple organizations to compare the effects of different organizational climates on employee voice. By investigating a range of status cues across industries or countries, we can improve our knowledge of how the superimposition of multiple status cues may engender complex sociopolitical effects on one’s engagement, voice, and conformity behaviors.

Conclusion

Our study advances employee voice scholarship by illuminating the importance of social status and fair treatment at work. Building on our findings, we call for more research on structural and contextual influences that may affect employee voice behaviors. Organizational climates, power and status disparities, and hierarchical structures must be further examined to draw a holistic picture of the antecedents and outcomes of employee voice. The notion of organizational justice also offers a useful springboard for investigating both relational and structural conditions that enable or constrain a range of organizational behaviors. By paying more attention to status, justice, and power, future research can contribute to effectively cultivating constructive voice among employees from various positions and status.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018S1A3A2075237).

ORCID iD

Heewon Kim

Author Biographies

Heewon Kim (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is an assistant professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. Her research interests include organizational justice, power and status disparities, and diversity and inclusion at work.

Mary Kiura (M.A., Illinois State University) is a doctoral student in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. Her research interests include employee voice, organizational (in)justice, power and status disparities, and issues of intercultural communication.

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