Communication skills shape voice effects in organizations [???????????????]

Abstract

Benefiting from constructive communication theory, in this study, we contend that voice behavior will interact with the employee's functional communication competence or communication skills to predict workplace behaviors and motivation. Particularly, we predicted that voice would have a positive effect on task performance when communication skills were high whereas it would have a negative effect when communication skills were low. Using data collected from 299 employees of nine hospitals in Turkey through two separate surveys, we found that communication skills played a mitigating influence in which the negative relationship between voice and task performance is diminished for those employees who have higher levels of communication skills. The results suggest that the value of voice is beneficial to the degree to which employees also have high communication skills, whereas low communication skills diminish task performance benefits and weaken job engagement advantages. This is an important contribution to the current body of knowledge on voice, as this study offers new insights into how voice behavior affects follower task performance and job engagement. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.