Speaking up and moving up: How voice can enhance employees' social status

A central argument in the literature on employee voice is that speaking up at work carries image risk. Challenging this assumption, we propose that voice can in fact positively affect how employees are viewed by others, thereby enhancing their social status. Using theory on status attainment and the fundamental social perception dimensions of agency and communion, we suggest that employee voice will result in higher status evaluations by increasing the extent to which an employee is judged as confident/competent (agency) and other-oriented/helpful (communion). We conducted a survey study and two experiments to test these hypotheses. The results supported our predictions. Employees who voiced were ascribed higher status than those who did not, and this effect was mediated by judgments of agency (in all three studies) and communion (in two studies). These results highlight the implications of voice behavior for status enhancement within organizations.