Motivated by Mutability: The Role of Status Mutability in Voicing Behaviors

For employees, expressing their voice may be a tactic for gaining status (i.e., respect or admiration) as doing so demonstrates their instrumental organizational value (i.e., their ability to contribute to their workgroup’s goals). Yet, previous research suggests that employees will oftentimes remain silent, impeding their ascension in the organization’s status hierarchy – and preventing their group from accessing the benefits of their voice expression. We propose that this may occur when employees believe that demonstrating their potential value by expressing voice will not translate into that value being recognized. Integrating existing research in voice and status attainment, we build on the implications of previous work to develop an undertheorized account for employees’ decision to remain silent: the extent to which they see the status hierarchy as mutable. Across an archival study and two experiments, we find that in immutable hierarchies (relative to mutable hierarchies), employees feel reduced confidence in their ability to gain status and that their voice expressions are more futile. In turn, this reduces their subsequent propensity to express voice. Exploratory analyses reveal that this effect is stronger for low- (versus high-) status people. This research advances a novel antecedent to voicing behaviors – the status hierarchy’s mutability.