Voice for ourselves or myself in times of crisis: When and how crisis-related uncertainty motivates employee voices

Abstract

Drawing on fairness heuristic theory, we propose that organizational justice serves as a boundary condition determining how employees respond to perceived uncertainty in times of organizational crisis with different types of proactive voice (i.e. prosocial or self-interested). We conducted a three-wave survey study to test our hypotheses with a sample of 401 employee-supervisor dyads during the COVID-19 period. Results demonstrated the employee crisis-related uncertainty perception's positive indirect effect on employee prosocial voice via prosocial motive when organizational justice was higher, and its positive indirect effect on employee self-interested voice via self-interested motive when organizational justice was lower. We then discussed our implications for organizational crisis and employee voice literature.