Promotive and Prohibitive Ethical Voice: Coworker Emotions and Support for the Voice

Despite the importance of ethical voice for advancing ethics in organizations, we know little about how coworkers respond to ethical voice in their work units. Drawing on the fundamental approach/avoidance behavioral system and the promotive and prohibitive distinction in the voice literature, we di...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied psychology 2022-11, Vol.107 (11), p.1973-1994
Main Authors: Chen, Anjier, Treviño, Linda K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambivalence
Approach-Avoidance
Business Ethics
Colleagues
Critical incidents
Emotions
Ethics
Female
Human
Indirect effects
Male
Moral Emotions
Morality
Professional Ethics
Threat
Threats
Voice
Work units
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Summary:Despite the importance of ethical voice for advancing ethics in organizations, we know little about how coworkers respond to ethical voice in their work units. Drawing on the fundamental approach/avoidance behavioral system and the promotive and prohibitive distinction in the voice literature, we distinguish between promotive and prohibitive ethical voice and propose that they engender different emotions-elevation (an approach-oriented moral emotion) and feelings of threat (an avoidance-oriented emotion), respectively, in coworkers. We propose that these emotions differentially influence coworker subsequent responses to the ethical voice behavior. In a time-lagged critical incident survey and two experimental studies, we consistently found support for our hypothesis that promotive ethical voice elicits moral elevation in coworkers with subsequent coworker verbal support for the ethical voice (an approach-oriented response). However, results for prohibitive ethical voice were more complex because prohibitive ethical voice leads to mixed emotions in coworkers. It sometimes leads to feelings of threat, with indirect negative effects via threat on coworker support. But surprisingly, it also leads to coworker elevation and hence can have positive indirect effects via elevation on coworker support. We will discuss the research and practical implications of these findings.
ISSN:0021-9010
1939-1854
DOI:10.1037/apl0001003