Employee voice with purpose: Linking psychological safety, obligation and efficacy

Employee voice is essential for organizational learning and adaptability. In a rapidly changing organizational environment, it is vital to encourage employees to voice concerns, make suggestions, and offer ideas in order to foster innovation, flexibility, and success. Drawing on theory of planned behavior, this research seeks clarify how felt obligation for constructive change (FOCC), Psychological safety (PS), and Voice efficacy (VE) shape employee voice intentions. The research employed quantitative cross-sectional research design. The data was collected using structured survey of more than 300 faculty members from Indian HEIs with the help of validated scales of the variables FOCC, PS, VE, Promotive and Prohibitive voice. PLS SEM was used to assess direct and mediated relationships. The results indicate that FOCC is positively related to promotive voice and negatively related to prohibitive voice. Psychological safety is positively related to prohibitive voice, while voice efficacy shows a positive relation with prohibitive voice and a negative relation with promotive voice. VE mediates relationships between FOCC, PS and promotive/prohibitive voice. The research hints at certain boundary conditions under which the relationships exist between determinants, promotive voice and prohibitive voice in Indian HEIs. The findings help in improving theoretical understanding of the antecedents of voice by linking it to moral norms, attitudes and perceived behavioral control in motivating voice expression.