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The divergent effects of employees’ sense of power on constructive and defensive voice behavior: A cross-level moderated mediation model

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Abstract

Previous studies mainly focused on the antecedents of voice, yet little research has investigated how sense of power divergently affected voice behavior with different contents. Following the recent literature on voice content and the approach/inhibition theory of power, we argue that sense of power positively influences constructive voice behavior through situational promotion focus but negatively affects defensive voice behavior through situational prevention focus. Moreover, we argue that supervisor openness moderates the relationship between situational regulatory focus and voice behavior. The results of a scenario-based study (N = 95) and a time-lagged field survey (N = 375) indicate that: (1) sense of power is positively related to constructive voice behavior and negatively related to defensive voice behavior; (2) situational promotion focus and situational prevention focus mediate the effect of sense of power on constructive voice behavior and defensive voice behavior, respectively; and (3) the indirect effects of sense of power on constructive and defensive voice behavior via situational regulatory focus are contingent on supervisor openness. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Wu Liu from Department of Management and Marketing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Dr. Jinyun Duan from School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University for their helpful suggestions, and thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks.

Funding

This work was supported by MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation (Grant No. 18YJC630111), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. LY20G020003), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (General Program, Grant No. 71572175).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business, NingboTech University, Ningbo, China

    Yanbin Liu & Hongxu Lu

  2. Business School, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China

    Wei Wang

  3. School of Business, Zhejiang Wanli University, Ningbo, China

    Ping Yuan

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  1. Yanbin Liu
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Correspondence to Hongxu Lu.

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Liu, Y., Wang, W., Lu, H. et al. The divergent effects of employees’ sense of power on constructive and defensive voice behavior: A cross-level moderated mediation model. Asia Pac J Manag 39, 1341–1366 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-021-09765-x

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