Employees often notice issues as they go about their work, but they are more likely to remain silent than to voice about those issues. This means that organizations miss out on critical opportunities for improvement. We deepen understanding of why and when employees do speak up by theorizing about voice episodes that arise when organizational issues (e.g., policies, actions) cause others to suffer. We suggest that when employees feel prosocial emotions—empathic concern, empathic anger, and/or guilt—in response to another’s suffering, they are more likely to voice about the issues creating that suffering. Specifically, we propose that these other-oriented emotions make it more likely that employees will see an opportunity for voice, feel sufficiently motivated to voice, and assess the potential benefits of speaking up as greater than the possible costs. We also posit that three contextual factors—relationship to sufferer, relational scripts, and emotional culture—influence whether (and how intensely) employees experience prosocial emotions in response to suffering triggered by an organizational issue, and thus affect the likelihood of voice. By theorizing the mechanisms through which prosocial emotions animate a specific episode of voice, we provide a foundation for understanding how employees can be moved to speak up.

员工在工作中经常会注意到问题，但是与对这些问题发表意见相比，他们更可能保持沉默。这意味着组织错过了关键的改进机会。我们通过理论分析组织问题（例如，政策，行动）导致他人受苦时出现的声音事件，从而加深了对雇员为什么以及何时讲话的理解。我们建议，当员工因对他人的痛苦而感到亲社会的情感时，会产生同情心的关注，同情的愤怒和/或内，因此他们更有可能对造成这种痛苦的问题发表意见。具体来说，我们建议，这些其他导向的情感使员工更有可能看到发声的机会，感到有足够的发声动机，并评估说出来的潜在收益大于可能产生的成本。我们还假设，三个语境因素（与患者的关系，关系脚本和情感文化）影响员工是否（以及如何强烈地）响应因组织问题引发的痛苦而经历亲社会情感，从而影响表达声音的可能性。通过理论化亲社会情感使特定的语音事件动画化的机制，我们为理解如何使员工动起来说话提供了基础。