The mechanism through which team voice affects leader voice-taking: A legitimacy perspective

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1041.2026.1666

Abstract

Abstract: In the rapidly evolving business landscape, team voice has become a prevalent and highly valued form of proactive behavior in organizations and been recognized as a key driver of team innovation and performance. Although team members can typically make constructive suggestions regarding existing or potential work issues affecting the team, the effectiveness of team voice hinges on the acceptance of team leaders and their action on such suggestions. Despite the significance of the receptiveness of team leaders to team voice, research has predominantly focused on the process of leaders’ acceptance of individual voice and paid little attention to the mechanisms of such acceptance.
To explore how and when team leaders act on team voice, we draw on legitimacy theory and a group influence perspective to propose that team leaders’ perceived legitimacy of team voice serves as a mediating mechanism between team voice and leaders’ voice-taking behavior (i.e., implementation of team voice and delivery of team voice to higher-up leaders). Additionally, we suggest that the openness of higher-up leaders acts as a boundary condition that can strengthen the mechanism.
This study employs a mixed-method of questionnaire surveys and experimental designs across three studies to test the hypotheses. This study collects experimental data from 179 participants in a within-subjects scenario design and from 350 participants in two between-subjects scenario designs and three-wave survey data from 99 team leaders. The within-subjects experimental results demonstrate that compared with individual voice, team voice exerts a stronger influence on leaders’ perception of voice legitimacy and subsequent voice-taking behavior. Moreover, the survey and two between-subjects experiments consistently support most of the proposed hypotheses.
This research makes three significant contributions to the literature. First, this study extends the leader voice-taking process from the individual level to the team level. By introducing legitimacy theory from the group influence perspective, this study reveals that team voice legitimacy is a key mediating mechanism through which team voice influences leaders’ voice-taking behavior. This study goes beyond prior research, which primarily explored leaders’ voice-taking behavior (e.g., implementation) from an interpersonal influence perspective, and reveals the bottom-up influence of collective action as a vehicle of power on leaders’ behavior. Second, this study uncovers a bottom-up legitimacy-generating pathway within the interaction process between leaders and teams in organizational contexts and thus extends legitimacy theory from organizational-institutional contexts to team-leader interactions. Specifically, this study reveals a bottom-up legitimacy construction mechanism driven by collective action from frontline members. Finally, this study distinguishes between two types of leader voice-taking behavior and reveals the distinct response strategies employed by leaders in response to team voice.

Key words: team voice, leader voice-taking, legitimacy, higher-up leader's openness

FAN Pan, LI Fuli. (2026). The mechanism through which team voice affects leader voice-taking: A legitimacy perspective. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 58(8), 1666-1680.

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