Abstract:

Voice behavior, one of the ways of employees' participation in making organizational decisions, is more and more significant for the development and innovation of organizations, and it attracts much attention from organizational behavior scholars. Hirschman (1970) is the person who firstly put forward the concept of voice behavior in nearly 40 years ago, and then the studies of voice behavior never stop. Gradually, organizations pay more attention than before to employee relationship with organizations. In the big data era, organizations are facing too many challenges and opportunities. In addition, many researchers have suggested that a variety of factors can influence employees' voice behaviors. High commitment work systems (or high commitment organizations) are popular in successful multinational enterprises such as Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Disney, and much research had proved that high commitment work systems could lead to more benefits for organizations. The present study is an examination that we explored roles of high commitment work system, perceived career opportunity, and job satisfaction in predicting voice behavior. We proposed the following hypothesis: (1) High commitment work system has positive effect on employee speaking-up. (2) High commitment work system has positive effect on speaking-out. (3) High commitment work system has positive effect on perceived career opportunity. (4) Perceived career opportunity mediates the relationship between high commitment work system and employee speaking-up. (5) High commitment work system has positive effect on job satisfaction. (6) Job satisfaction mediates the relationship between high commitment work system and employee speaking-out. (7) Performance moderates the relationship between perceived career opportunity and employee speaking-up. (8) Interpersonal relationship moderates the relationship between job satisfaction and employee speaking-out. The data consists of 223 surveys' responses from 36 organizations. We analyzed the data by using Mplus and SPSS, and the results showed that: (1) High commitment work system has positive effect on voice behavior, including employee speaking-up and speaking-out. (2) Perceived career opportunity mediates the relationship between high commitment work system and employee speaking-up; and job satisfaction mediates the relationship between high commitment work system and employee speaking-out. (3) Employee performance moderates the relationship between perceived career opportunity and employee speaking-up; it also moderates the ‘high commitment work system-perceived career opportunity-employee speaking-up’ linkage. (4) Interpersonal relationship moderates the relationship between job satisfaction and speaking-out; it also moderates the ‘high commitment work system-job satisfaction and-employee speaking-out’ linkage. Implications, limitations and future directions of these findings are discussed as well.

Key words: high commitment work system, voice behavior, perceived career opportunity, job satisfaction, interpersonal relationship