Supervisory Voice Appraisal: Why Different Appraisal for the Same Behavior?

Abstract

Employees' voice has been recognized as valuable extra-role performance. However, little research has been done on the conditions in which supervisors would not assess it as employees' extra-role performance. Based on research of supervisory cognitive information processing in performance appraisal, it was expected that supervisors would not consider employees' voice to be extra-role performance when the employees were perceived to be "bad." Especially,supervisory voice appraisal was expected to significantly vary contingent on the extent to which supervisors preconceived employees to be a) competent and/or b)prosocially motivated in a job. To test our predictions, the present study examined 263 supervisor-employee dyads in a multinational South Korean company. The results demonstrated that when supervisors regarded employees to be low in a) job competency or b) prosocial motivation, the supervisors less likely evaluated the employees’ voice as extra-role performance. There was also an expected three-way interaction of voice, job competency, and prosocial motivation. Employees’ voice was judged to be extra-role performance only when supervisors perceived employees to be high in both job competency and prosocial motivation; when supervisors considered employees to be low in any of job competency and prosocial motivation, the supervisors did not evaluate the employees’ voice as extra-role performance. The study findings would be discussed along with managerial implications and recommendations.