Voice Quality and Ostracism
基于社会计量器理论,研究员工建言质量如何影响职场排斥,发现低质量建言会导致同事将其视为无能从而被排斥,进而影响员工自我评价和对他人的评价。
To move beyond the current emphasis on voice level or quantity in voice research, it is important to consider the effects of making suggestions that others view as poor quality. Guided by sociometer theory, we propose that voice quality affects workplace ostracism: The coworker may see the employee who makes bad suggestions as incompetent, which results in the employee being ostracized. The employee’s ostracism experience matters because it may not only result in the employee’s self-perception of poor voice quality but may also lead the employee to rate the coworker’s suggestions more harshly. In a field study over 6 weeks (294 employee-coworker dyads) and two vignette experiments (401 subjects), we found support for this sociometer view of voice quality. Thus, this study makes an important contribution to voice research by highlighting the quality dimension of voice. Employees who hope to effect change through their voice should monitor whether the quality of their suggestions will be judged favorably or unfavorably by their coworkers to avoid being ostracized.