Employee Voice

Through a two phase field study, Detert and Burris (2007) aimed to address and investigate if there was a relationship between leadership style (in particular openness and transformational styles) between superiors and their staff willingness to speak up or ’voice’ their suggestions and if so ,then for what reason and particular to what type of employee. Quantitative research was conducted through the distribution of self administered questionnaires to both employees and managers of a large restaurant chain Serv-Co.

Theoretical motivations behind the study was the perception that although previous qualitative research found a number of leadership styles , limited quantitative research had been less successful in obtaining results regarding leadership style and its relationship with voice. The authors also wished to further extend and build upon previous research and be more detailed into specific areas such as voice and the implication that specific leadership styles may have upon subordinates’ willingness to speak up.

Methodology

Methodology of this research was clearly influenced by that of previous research of Van Dyne and LePine 1998. Empirical data collected through self report questionnaires were given to all staff members and paid for 30 minutes of their time to complete the form and employees could omit their employee identification number in order to keep confidentiality. Within the questionnaire was a likert style scale which was adapted according to each of the four hypotheses (fig 1). Data collection and controls were influenced by previous research and collected by tenure, ethnicity, and job type, gender, hours worked per week and job shift.

Survey research was an appropriate option to use given the volume of questionnaires to be collected (4,998) and of that, an ‘acceptable’ 63 % (Bryman & Bell 2007: 244 ,Mangoine 1995: 60-1) response rate was yielded.

However, it is not made clear to the reader how exactly the questionnaires were...