Will Speaking up be Rewarded? A Study of Challenging Voice and Performance Evaluation

While employee's voice can benefit organizations, previous research has yet to provide a conclusive answer of whether voice, in particular challenging voice, can benefit individual's performance evaluation (i.e. whether voice is valued). This study examines the individual voice-performance relationship in two different samples of R&D scientists and nurses based on performance evaluation ratings provided by the organization and the supervisor. Doing so answers the call of Morrison (2014) of conducting more field research in examining individual outcome of voice. Our study reveals that while both organizations and supervisors value challenging voice in their performance evaluation, such positive relationship is also contingent on the ethical leadership style of the supervisors. We discuss implications of our results to voice's research.