Science Research Management ›› 2019, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (11): 276-284.

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Is good relationship with supervisors conducive to middle managers’ prohibitive voice? A moderated mediation model

Huang Dujuan1, Ye Jiangfeng2, Zhang Gupeng3   

  1. 1. School of Business Administration, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu 233030, Anhui,China; 
    2. School of Business, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, Anhui, China;
    3. School of Public Policy and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  • Received:2018-09-25 Revised:2019-05-28 Online:2019-11-20 Published:2019-11-25

Abstract: Voice behavior has being a research focus, however,most of researches are pay attention to the voice of the employees of grass roots while ignoring the voice of middle managers. Middle managers are the key personnel who must try to tackle demands from both the tops and the bottoms of their organizations. The role undertaken by middle managers to link differentiated views has become highly important, especially in circumstances of complex change. Thus, middle manager voice plays an important role in organization operation and development. The essential differences between middle manager and grass roots employees are they concerned on profound factors when behave their voice behavior. However, little work has been done to explore what factors and how they affect middle managers’ voice behavior in Chinese context. Owing to the influence of Chinese culture and thinking style of Chinese people, although there are outstanding research outcomes in foreign countries, it is still hard to put these conclusions into practice in Chinese background. This study is being conducted in Chinese companies to explore the mechanism of Chinese middle managers’ prohibitive voice, which has significant theoretical implications for voice behavior research, and are practically beneficial for the management in organizations.〖JP〗
China is a good-relationship foundation country and supervisor-subordinate good-relationship is defined as a dyadic, particular and sentimental tie that has potential of facilitating favor exchanges between the parties connected by the tie. Taking into account the previous research did not make a further distinction on supervisor-subordinate good-relationship and the upper echelons supervisor-subordinate good-relationship has a more significant effect on the subordinate’s organizational behavior, this paper will focus on impact of manager-supervisor good-relationship on middle managers’ prohibitive voice, and examines the mechanism and moderating effect. 
Although studies have suggested that Chinese supervisors can influence middle managers’ behavior because they have extensive control over resources , evidence regarding the intermediate psychological processes that would explain how and why manager-supervisorgood-relationship affects managers’ voice behavior needs to explore. Drawing from social exchange theory, we examine the mediation effects of belief in reciprocity. Further, based on role theory, consistent with recent calls for the examination of moderators for voice behavior, power distance was included as a moderators. We first analyze the meaning of supervisor-subordinate good-relationship and belief in reciprocity. We discuss the theoretical background and hypotheses, and put forwarded four hypotheses and a moderated mediation model. On the one hand, we analyze the impact of supervisor-subordinate good-relationship on middle managers’ prohibitive voice. On the other hand, we explore the mediation role of belief in reciprocity as well as the moderation role of power distance in the relationships between supervisor-subordinate good-relationship on middle managers’ prohibitive voice. Second, in order to examine the hypotheses, we conduct an empirical study, and issue the questionnaires to 328 middle managers and their 76 leaders, after deleting the incomplete ones, we obtain 236 valid matching questionnaires. Third, by conducting confirmatory factor analysis, the discriminant validity are assessed, and variable’s mean, standard deviation and correlations are calculated which shows that there is a strong correlation among the variables in this study, and without collinearity problem. Hierarchical regression analyses are applied to examine the main effect, mediating effect and moderating effect, while bootstrapping method are used to prove the moderated mediation effect. 
In this study, SPSS statistical software was used to test the research hypotheses, and the results indicated that:(1) relationship with senior leaders has a positive impact on middle managers’ prohibitive voice; (2) the relationship between supervisor-subordinate good-relationship and middle managers’ prohibitive voice is mediated by belief in reciprocity; and (3) power distance negatively moderated the relationship between supervisor-subordinate good-relationship and belief in reciprocity in such a way that the relationships were stronger for individuals lower than higher in power distance, and this moderation also buffered the whole mediating mechanism. All hypotheses were supported. 
At present, the research on voice mainly focuses on the junior staff, lacking the research on voice from middle managers. Based onsocial exchange theory and role theory, this study, firstly, expands the existing research about the relationship between supervisor-subordinate good-relationship and middle managers’ prohibitive voice; on the other hand; secondly, further proves that belief in reciprocity plays a vital role in facilitating middle managers’ prohibitive voice but this effect has boundaries. We reveal the boundary condition that how belief in reciprocity affects on middle managers’ prohibitive voice; finally, this study reveals the contingency characteristics of power distance, which is a combination of situational knowledge and universalization theory in the context of Chinese culture. This reflects that as the fundamental norm of reciprocity in interpersonal communication, it will be affected by the role orientation of specific exchange relations. Overall, this research contributes to the voice behavior literature by providing a new theory perspective, extends our understanding of the relationship between manager-supervisor good-relationship and managers’ voice behavior. This paper also has important implication in practice. It proves that the supervisor-subordinate good-relationship has an important impact on the middle managers’ prohibitive voice, will be conducive to the resolution of middle managers’ voice dilemma and has an important practical implications for the organizational development. 
The shortcomings of this study are as follows: (1) The sample data of this study is a cross-sectional data. In the future, longitudinal data can be introduced to further verify this influence mechanism; and (2) This study only considers the influence of individual level on voice behavior. In the future, cross-level analysis can be considered.

Key words: supervisor-subordinate good-relationship, belief in reciprocity, power distance, prohibitive voice