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The purpose of this chapter is to examine voice as an empowerment practice in a manufacturing company. The case study follows a qualitative approach to analyse employee voice and types of empowerment from a structural perspective. Findings suggest a variety of voice arrangements to empowering employees such as voice surveys, meetings, e-suggestions, opinion boxes and informal means such as casual meetings and walkarounds. In addition, employee voice is linked to types of empowerment such as information sharing, upward problem solving, task autonomy and attitudinal shaping. Further research would benefit from an exploration of employees’ feelings regarding voice mechanisms to examine the psychological perspective of empowerment.

Sustainable development is a central issue for the world economy today. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are associated with both responsible business practices and strategic orientation for competitive advantages. While most multinational enterprises (MNEs) want to ensure that their businesses will maintain or even enhance sustainability across borders, they face enormous challenges, often due to a lack of capabilities and inefficient institutions in host countries. In the nexus between the SDGs and international business (IB) research, the contexts of emerging markets and developing countries have particular significance, because they impose complex constraints on the achievement of the SDGs. At the same time, there is a high potential for MNEs to have positive effects internationally through their sustainable practices. This chapter discusses the recent trend in IB research on sustainability by showcasing current issues addressing several interrelated SDGs. The exemplary topics touch upon child labor, innovation for social sustainability, challenges in the green transition, MNE activities associated with the pollution haven, and health and safety concerns in global supply chains. The discussion cuts across various contextual settings and calls for actions by all stakeholders, including business entities, governments, and scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model drawing together and integrating research from employment relations (ER), human resource management (HRM) and organizational behaviour (OB) to identify how high-performance work systems (HPWS) encourage voice behaviour.

The authors identify shortcomings in research on the relationship between HPWS practices and employee voice behaviour, attributable to the disparate conceptualization of voice across management disciplines. The authors then present a conceptual model using the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) framework to theorize how the ER climate influences the design of the HPWS and subsequently how the HPWS encourages voice behaviour. Practical implications and recommendations for future studies are provided.

The mutual gains ER climate will influence the design of the HPWS; in turn the HPWS' practices will influence line manager AMO to manage voice and the employees' AMO to engage in voice behaviour, resulting in the encouragement of both employer and employee interest forms of voice.

The HPWS-voice behaviour interaction model sheds light on the types of HR practices organisations can implement to optimize employee voice behaviour.

The conceptual model demonstrates how ER, HRM and OB factors influence voice behaviour within a HPWS, which has not previously been considered by voice scholars. The integrated conceptual model encourages a multidisciplinary approach to studying employee voice in future research.

The paper explores the historical evolution of employee voice in Namibia from an employment relations (ER) perspective and in the context of institutional factors such as labour legislation, trade union strategies, company policies and governmental regulations. The first part of the paper provides a brief outline of ER conceptions of voice that are manifest in the recent resurgence of interest in the topic. The next part traces the historical evolution of labour regulation and employee voice in Namibia. It is shown that, in the absence of collective voice and statutory protections, informal voice and occupational solidarity were the primary means of defence available to black workers against oppressive conditions. In the final part, an outline of some key features of employee voice in contemporary Namibia is provided. The analysis shows that systems of employee voice are fundamentally a manifestation of the balance of powers at a particular time and place. It is therefore crucial to link voice preferences and behaviours in the workplace to specific preconditions and to highlight the limiting factors that serve to constrain choice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore employee voice and silence in the mobile telecommunication industry in Nigeria.

An exploratory qualitative case study methodology was employed in this study. Participant selection was done through a purposeful intensity sampling technique, which resulted in 30 employees from two different multinational organizations and an indigenous organization taking part in in-depth interviews.

Findings show the presence of fear of victimization in the Nigerian workplace embellished by the Sub-Saharan culture and the state of the labor market, which resulted in employee silence. The study revealed that the implementation of culturally adapted employee voice mechanisms within organizations in the mobile telecommunication industry in Nigeria promotes employee voice and organizational performance, whereas a lack thereof results in organizational failure.

A limitation is that the purposive sample of employees from three organizations in the mobile telecommunications industry only permits theoretical and analytic generalization.

A focus on the co-creation of a high-performance work environment and the development of a powerful employee value proposition would foster employee voice.

It will enable multinationals operating in Nigeria understand better how to operate employee voice in order to obtain optimal performance from workers in Sub-Sahara Africa.

This paper contributes to the literature on employee/industrial relations by showing that a high-power-distance national culture and a high unemployment rate affect employee voice and silence, which brings to the fore the importance of adequate employee voice mechanisms through which employees express their voice in order to arrive at beneficial individual and organizational outcomes.

The missing employee voice has become a salient topic in China. This paper aims to document the newest developments relating to the topic by reviewing the recent literature on employment relations and employee voice. The findings of this paper suggest that the purposes of and channels for the employee voice in China have been undergoing significant changes. Different stakeholder groups have approached the issue. ‘Democratic management’ in China, the country’s home-grown concept of employee voice, has been resurrected to encourage more effective employee representation. Apart from this top-down influence from the government and All-China Federation of Trade Unions, this paper also identifies the bottom-up approach driven by the workers, and the external influence from the global corporate social responsibility campaign and nongovernmental labour organizations. Based on the review of the newest developments in workplace democracy and the employee voice in China, this paper proposes a stakeholder framework incorporating these developments. The authors also suggest some directions for future research.

This study examines the yin (promotive) and yang (prohibitive) of employee voice based on employee preference for voice channel attributes. Employee inputs may be disregarded, requiring employees to maneuver for unheeded voice and adopt alternate voice tactics. The authors emphasize the ubiquity of lurking employee silence and its affective effects on subsequent cycles of voice or silence.

Qualitative design involving semi-structured interviews of employees from service sector firms in India assisted the inquiry.

Employees prefer voice channel attributes that ensure visibility and data substance for promotive voice and anonymity and confidentiality for prohibitive voice. Voice target switching and message reframing were common employee strategies. Silence on both sharing views/opinions (promotive) and voicing issues/concerns (prohibitive) weakens employee future voice incidents, besides suppressing the affect. Post-silence cognitive reappraisal increases voice incidences.

Findings may have limited generalizability given the qualitative design of the study. Moving beyond extant episodic voice research, the authors demonstrate the recurrent nature of employee voice and silence. The study broadens perspectives on how varied voice types necessitate nuanced voice channel attributes.

Present work brings together organizational behavior (OB) perspective on discretionary voice through human resource (HR)-based channels, helping bridge the gap between previously disparate stands.

In a complex, ever-changing, and turbulent business world, encouraging employees to express their improvement-oriented novel ideas through voice behavior is crucial for organizations to survive and thrive. Understanding how to foster employee promotive voice at work is a significant issue for both researchers and managers. This study explores how to foster employee promotive voice through specific HRM practices and positive employee attitudes. It also examines the effect of employee promotive voice on perceived organizational performance.

This study employed a time-lagged multisource survey design. Data were collected from 215 executives, 790 supervisors, and 1,004 employees in 113 firms, and analyzed utilizing a multilevel moderated serial mediation model.

The findings of this study revealed that promotive voice was significantly related to perceived organizational performance. Innovation-enhancing HRM was positively associated with employee promotive voice. The HRM-voice relationship was partially mediated by employee job satisfaction. Power distance orientation was found to significantly moderate the relationship between innovation-enhancing HRM and employee job satisfaction at the firm level. Our findings showed that innovation-enhancing HRM policies may fail to foster promotive voice if they do not enhance employee job satisfaction.

This study challenges some taken-for-granted assumptions in the literature such as any high performance HRM bundles (e.g. HPWS) can foster employee promotive voice, and the effects of HRM are direct and even unconditional on organizational outcomes. It emphasizes the need to avoid potential unintended effects of HRM on employee voice and the importance of contextualizing voice research.