A multilevel investigation of the leadership factors on food safety promotive and prohibitive voices through food safety consciousness

Highlights

• Leader safety orientation is an antecedent of food safety promotive and prohibitive voices.

• Food safety consciousness mediates leader safety orientation and employees' voice.

• Authentic leadership moderates the path of food safety consciousness on food safety prohibitive voice.

• Authentic leadership does not moderate the relationship between food safety consciousness on promotive voice.

Abstract

Little research has empirically examined how leadership factors influence food safety promotive and prohibitive voice differently. Also, little research has examined the moderating effects of leadership on the relationship between individual antecedents and promotive and prohibitive voice as contextual factors. The current study developed and tested a multilevel model regarding how leaders' food safety orientation and authentic leadership influence employees' food safety-related prohibitive and promotive voices. The results showed that leaders' food safety orientation is an important antecedent of employees' food safety prohibitive and promotive voices and both relationships are partially mediated by employees' food safety consciousness. Additionally, the results suggested that authentic leadership works as a contextual factor that moderates the relationship between employees' food safety consciousness and food safety prohibitive voice, but the moderating effect is not significant in the relationship between employees’ food safety consciousness and promotive voice. The results of this study provide meaningful insights for researchers by empirically examining how leadership factors influence food safety prohibitive and promotive voice differently as antecedent and moderator.

Introduction

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated there are approximately 600 million illnesses and 420,000 deaths caused by 31 foodborne hazards annually (WHO, 2015). Previous studies predominantly associate foodborne illness outbreaks with food handlers' poor practices (Mclntyre, Vallaster, Wilcott, Henderson, & Kosatsky, 2013; Ncube, Kanda, Chijokwe, & Nyamugure, 2020). Angelo, Nisler, Hall, Brown, and Gould (2016) found that approximately 60% of reported foodborne illness outbreaks in the restaurant industry are attributed to the unsafe practices of food handlers. Other than food safety regulations and training programs, employees' food safety voice is one of the most important factors that can enhance employees' safe handling practices and decrease the number of errors and accidents (Griffith, Livesey, & Clayton, 2010; Hofmann & Stetzer, 1998; Yu, Sirsat, & Neal, 2019). Jack in the Box's decision to ignore a front-line employee's suggestion letter regarding burgers being undercooked caused a major foodborne disease outbreak in 1993 and resulted in approximately $1 billion total loss for the company (Seo, Jang, Almanza, Miao, & Behnke, 2014). Even though the importance of food safety voice is widely accepted in the food safety literature and a large number of studies investigated the relationship between leadership and voice in the organizational behavior field (e.g., Detert & Burris, 2007; McClean, Burris, & Detert, 2013; Svendsen, Unterrainer, & Jønsson, 2018), several research gaps remain in the food safety and employees' voice areas.

First, Van Dyne, Ang, and Botero (2003) identified two types of organizational voice: one is promotive voice, which refers to the expression of constructive suggestions, and the other is prohibitive voice, which is the expression of concerns about existing practices that may harm their organization. Food safety prohibitive voice is extremely effective in preventing improper food handling practices and protecting restaurants from foodborne illness crises (Griffith et al., 2010; Nyarugwe, Linnemann, Hofstede, Fogliano, & Luning, 2016). For example, Section 402 of the Food Safety Modernization Act prohibits food entities from retaliating against employees for engaging in reporting alleged food, drug, and cosmetic violations to encourage employees' prohibitive voice (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 2011). However, recent foodservice research has focused more heavily on promotive voice (e.g., Hung, Yeh, & Shi, 2012; Liang, Chang, Ko, & Lin, 2017; Loi, Ao, & Xu, 2014; Raub & Robert, 2013) compared with prohibitive voice. A few studies in the recent employees' voice literature examined the factors on promotive and prohibitive voice and suggested that the psychological antecedents and motivations of the two forms of voice can be different (Liang, Farth, & Farth, 2012; Wei, Zhang, & Chen, 2015). Specifically, Wei et al. (2015) indicated that there are two motives that influence employees' decisions on their voice, namely, agentic motive, which drives people to actively promote positive self-images, such as dominance and competence, whereas communal motive drives people to avoid actions that will make others see them as disagreeable and unrestrained. Wei et al. (2015) found that the agentic motive (i.e., perceived self-efficacy) is more strongly related to promotive voice, whereas the communal motive (i.e., perceived risks) is more strongly related to prohibitive voice. Leadership is a critical factor that influences employees' agentic and communal motives (Detert & Burris, 2007; Liu, Miao, & Wei, 2015). Thus, the present study examines the effect of leaders' food safety orientation (LSFO), which refers to the extent to which leaders emphasize the importance of food safety and conduct necessary behaviors to improve food safety in the organization (Kao, Spitzmueller, Cigularov, & Wu, 2016), on employees’ food safety promotive and prohibitive voice.

In addition, most of the safety-related voice research (de Koster, Stam, & Balk, 2011; Hofmann, Morgeson, & Gerras, 2003) have examined safety-specific leadership factors as antecedents that predict employees' decision-making regarding standing out or standing by. Leaders play an important role in the development of organizational climate (Hsiung, 2012; Zohar & Luria, 2004). The social context and climate provide important cues for employees to evaluate the costs and benefits during their decision-making process upon expressing voice or not (Hsiung, 2012). Therefore, leadership can also potentially moderate the relationships between employees' individual antecedents and the two forms of voice. Authentic leadership is defined as “leaders who know who they are, what they think and behave and are perceived by others as being aware of their own and others' values/moral perspective, knowledge, and strengths; aware of the context in which they operate; and who are confident, hopeful, resilient, and of high moral character” (Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans, & May 2004, p. 4). Previous studies have found that authentic leadership works as a contextual factor that influences individual and organizational antecedents on employees' attitudes and behaviors, such as turnover intention (Arici, 2018) and work engagement (Arasli & Arici, 2020). However, no previous research has investigated how authentic leadership influences the effects of safety-specific factors in predicting employees’ promotive and prohibitive voices as contextual factors (Barling, Loughlin, & Kelloway, 2002; de Koster et al., 2011; Hofmann et al., 2003).

Therefore, the current study aims to examine the impact of leaders' food safety orientation (LSFO) on food safety-related promotive and prohibitive voices through food handlers’ food safety consciousness (FSC) by proposing a multilevel moderated mediation model (Fig. 1). Additionally, the present study investigates the different moderating effects of authentic leadership on the relationships between FSC and the two forms of food safety-related voice.

By developing and examining the multilevel moderated mediation model, the present study contributes to food safety and employees' voice literature by linking leadership factors with food safety promotive and prohibitive voice simultaneously and examining the differential effects of authentic leadership on promotive and prohibitive voice. In addition, the present study also contributes to safety-related voice literature by identifying the contextual role of authentic leadership on the effect of employees' food safety consciousness on the promotive and prohibitive dimensions of food safety voice. Ultimately, the current study enables both researchers and practitioners to better understand employees' food safety voice in foodservice operation context and provides several suggestions for foodservice practitioners to enhance food safety and reduce risks by encouraging employees’ food safety promotive and prohibitive voices.