When passionate employees engage

in voice behavior
The enabling role of work-related goal congruence

The value of employee voice behavior

Many leaders wisely provide employees with a platform to air their views about the
organization. The more astute managers actually take opinions and concerns on board and
act accordingly.
But leader encouragement alone is often not enough to persuade employees to come
forward. Engaging in voice behavior is considered inherently risky. Tensions can arise
between colleagues, especially those concerned that fingers might be pointed at them
about any perceived inadequacies.
Prior work has ascertained that various situational factors might stimulate voice behavior
among employees. In this respect, influential roles in networks and relational forms of
leadership were found to be particularly significant.
However, some analysts attach even greater importance to key personal resources. They
draw attention to resources with the capacity to invigorate individuals and cite “passion for
work” as a fitting example. Its association with engagement, exploiting new opportunities
and other positive work behaviors shows the merits of this personal resource.
Employee voice behavior is classified into two distinct yet related types: prohibitive and
promotive. The first of these identifies perceived problems, while finding potential solutions
is the purpose of the second one. In the context of this research, the focus is on the
prohibitive form.

Passion for work

According to various scholars, passion for work is a personal resource with scope to trigger
prohibitive voice behavior among employees. Many employees remain somewhat passive
though. Consequently, more is needed to identify the conditions in which it is most likely to
transpire. One credible suggestion is that individuals:
䊏 utilize their passion for work as a means of strengthening unity among employees to
generate a shared understanding of work goals and the company’s future purpose;
䊏 feel more confident about engaging in voice behavior on the assumption that increased
togetherness makes resistance less likely; and
䊏 therefore believe that barriers to achieving goals and solving problems can be more
readily overcome.

Colleagues are likelier to view opinions expressed through an employee’s voice behavior as
being more compatible with their own when common ground is established. Such

DOI 10.1108/HRMID-09-2022-0240 VOL. 30 NO. 7 2022, pp. 55-57, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 0967-0734 j HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL DIGEST j PAGE 55
 appreciation then becomes another resource gain for the individual employee concerned.
An added bonus here is that the existence of mutual goals can inspire other positive work-
related activities. Increases in creativity and organizational citizenship behavior are typical
examples.
The rationale behind all this is provided by the conservation of resources (COR) theory that
states personal resources are used by people on the assumption that this will help generate
additional resources for them.

Impact of an external crisis

In addition, there are reasonable grounds to believe that external crises can significantly
influence the process. The recent global Covid-19 pandemic is a perfect illustration of this.
Such events are a major cause of concern for employees who feel passionate about their
work. Anxiety about implications for the firm’s well-being can lead to negative personal
outcomes like emotional fatigue, lower levels of work engagement and increased turnover
intention.
But some analysts believe that a contrasting effect is equally possible. They purport that
employees might respond to the situation by engaging in positive work behaviors in
response to the threats posed by the external crisis. In that scenario:
䊏 congruent goals initiated through their enthusiasm about work can stimulate voice
behavior; and
䊏 help identify and then address pandemic-related issues at both individual and
organizational levels.
In essence, this suggests passion for work increases in value when the environment
becomes more challenging. A plausible explanation is that energy-strengthening resources
function to prevent the crisis causing resource depletion.

Some evidence from Portugal

These relationships are confirmed in study conducted by De Clercq and Pereira (2022)
among representatives of a Portuguese food company. Data was obtained during the
height of the Covid-19 pandemic when infections and fatalities were both increasing and
lockdown measures remained in place. Men accounted for just over half of the 158 survey
participants with a majority being educated to at least degree level. Almost 70% occupied a
supervisory role or higher.
The authors controlled for gender, education and job status based on the assumption that
these variables are likely to have differing impacts on the likelihood of engaging in voice
behavior.
An interesting aspect of this study was confirmation that employees become more
determined to use passion for work as a means to exercise voice during a pandemic.
However, the likelihood of subsequent action to address threats to the company was not

The more astute managers actually take opinions and

concerns on board and act accordingly.

PAGE 56 j HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL DIGEST j VOL. 30 NO. 7 2022

 Colleagues are likelier to view opinions expressed through
an employee’s voice behavior as being more compatible with
their own when common ground is established.

strong in this case. One possible reason for this is the negative effects of energy depletion
caused by the crisis.
Another point to note is the importance of employee endeavor to advance work-related goal
congruence. In its absence, the likelihood of passion for work leading to problem-based
voice behaviors would surely become lower.
Based on evidence here, firms should place emphasis on passion for work and other
employee characteristics like tenacity and initiative. Policies addressing hiring and retention
should exploit these attributes as a means of identifying company weaknesses. Facilitating
development of congruent relations between colleagues will ideally also become top
priority, given this inspires the voice behavior which can ultimately help find solutions. In the
authors’ view, customized employee training to enable optimal use of their work-related
energy would also be beneficial.
Similar work conducted in other cultural settings is recommended as differences might
prevail between collectivist and more individualistic societies. A further possibility is for
researchers to explore additional mediators like affective commitment and fit between
employee and organization. Other personality features are likewise worthy of consideration,
along with the potential significance of threats which arise from inside the firm.

Keywords:
Comment Passion for work,
Work-related goal
The review is based on: “Let’s work together, especially in the pandemic: finding ways to
congruence,
encourage problem-focused voice behavior among passionate employees” by Dirk De Problem-focused voice
Clercq and Renato Pereira, published in Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People behavior,
and Performance. External threats

Reference
De Clercq, D. and Pereira, R. (2022), “Let’s work together, especially in the pandemic: finding ways to
encourage problem-focused voice behavior among passionate employees”, Journal of Organizational
Effectiveness: People and Performance, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 169-192, ISSN 2051-6614, doi: 10.1108/
JOEPP-05-2021-0121.

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