Abstract
The study of employee voice in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across national contexts remains under-theorised and under-studied. This paper uses Kaufman’s integrative model of employee voice, and an exploratory study of 30 interviews with employees in non-unionised SMEs in the United Kingdom, Thailand and Nigeria, to compare the employee experience with voice, and the impact of this experience on voice behaviour at work. Findings show that the interaction between the external institutional context and internal SME context (organisational configuration, governance structure and internal contingencies in the employment relationship) impacts employee voice agency, the perceived levels of voice and, ultimately, employee voice behaviour. The paper contributes to employee voice theory by offering an analysis of voice determinants on voice behaviour specific to non-unionised SMEs from an international comparative employee perspective, presents these in an initial framework and explains how employees experience voice in small workplaces.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3149-3174 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | The International Journal of Human Resource Management |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 15 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 22 Aug 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords
- Business and International Management
- Strategy and Management
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
- Management of Technology and Innovation
- Industrial relations
