Employee Voice and Taking Charge

• Author / Creator

  Guilin, Zhang

• In this dissertation I aim to gain a better understanding of employee voice and taking charge through the interactions between employees’ attitudes, personality, and experiences with leaders. To this end, the studies presented herein investigate how transformational leadership; different types of organizational commitment, and proactive personality jointly influence these behaviors.
  In Study 1, I examined the impact of proactive personality on employees’ aggressive voice, and the moderating role of organizational commitment on these relationships as a means of investigating when proactive individuals speak up for self-serving purposes (i.e., aggressive voice). The findings suggest that the relationship between proactive personality and aggressive voice is stronger when individuals have low perceived sacrifice commitment, or high lack of alternatives commitment.
  Study 2 had two main goals. First, I examined whether transformational leadership impacts on employee voice and taking charge by impacting on employees’ motivational state. The findings demonstrate that both work promotion focus and role-breadth self-efficacy mediated the transformational leadership-voice (taking charge) relationship, but affective commitment did not. Second, I tested whether the influence of transformational leadership on employee constructive voice (and taking charge) depends on followers’ proactive personality. Findings suggest that followers’ proactive personality moderates the transformational leadership-voice relationship such that the impact of transformational leadership on employee constructive voice is stronger amongst low proactive followers. Followers’ proactive personality, however, did not moderate the impact of transformational leadership on taking charge. Implications of the results are discussed and future research directions are offered.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Taking charge
  • Employee voice

• Graduation date

  Fall 2015

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3QJ78382

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.