This study adopts an integrated approach to employee voice (EV) and analyses the impacts of direct and indirect EV mechanisms on firm innovation in small and medium-sized firms separately. It also proposes a new categorization for direct EV, by distinguishing between verbal and written mechanisms, allowing us to take the level of formality of different EV mechanisms into account. The analysis of 17,890 European firms shows that verbal, written and indirect EV mechanisms are all positively related to a higher propensity of firm innovation in both small and medium firms. However, for verbal EV mechanisms the relationship is significantly stronger for small firms than medium firms. The results also reveal that medium firms derive higher benefit than small firms while combining and balancing EV mechanisms with different levels of formalization (i.e. verbal and indirect voice). However, the former also suffers from excessive formalization of employees’ involvement in the innovation process (e.g. through written and indirect voice). Overall, this study supports recent calls for the need to adopt an integrated, pluralistic approach to EV and has important implications for EV research in small and medium firms.

中文翻译：

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中小型企业的直接和间接员工声音与企业创新

本研究采用综合方法处理员工意见（EV），并分别分析直接和间接 EV 机制对中小企业创新的影响。它还提出了直接 EV 的新分类，通过区分口头和书面机制，使我们能够考虑不同 EV 机制的正式程度。对 17,890 家欧洲公司的分析表明，口头、书面和间接的 EV 机制都与中小型公司更高的公司创新倾向呈正相关。然而，对于口头 EV 机制，小型企业的关系明显强于中型企业。结果还表明，在结合和平衡具有不同正规化水平的 EV 机制（即 口头和间接语音）。然而，前者也受到员工参与创新过程的过度正规化（例如通过书面和间接发言）的影响。总体而言，这项研究支持最近关于需要对电动汽车采取综合、多元化的方法的呼吁，并对中​​小企业的电动汽车研究具有重要意义。