The Influence of Participative Leadership on the Voice Behavior of Public Servants

Abstract

Determining how to stimulate public employees’ voice behaviors has become a critical issue in both theory and practice. This article draws on the theories of participative management, leadership, role theory, and social identity theory and proposes a moderated mediation model to explore the mechanism by which participative leadership shapes public employees’ voice behaviors. To test this study’s hypotheses, we conduct a three-wave investigation of 739 public tax agency employees in the Yangtze River Delta area of China. The results show that participative leadership significantly predicts employees’ voice behaviors by enhancing their organizational identification. Furthermore, power distance moderates the relationship between participative leadership and organizational identification. These findings advance our understanding of how to motivate employees’ voice behaviors from the perspective of participative leadership in public organizations.