Representative voice in different organizational contexts: a study of 40 departments of a Dutch childcare organization

Abstract

‘Representative voice’ can be defined as actions in which one or more speakers represent others when speaking up about a problem at the workplace or making a suggestion. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of representative voice, assess the frequency of its occurrence and examine department characteristics associated with its frequency. We present a theoretical framework and develop and test hypotheses about the effects of characteristics of the departmental context on the frequency of representative voice. Our focus is on organizational design features, i.e. characteristics that can be directly implemented by management. Data on 40 departments of a large Dutch childcare organization suggested that representative voice occurred in most of the organization's departments, although not frequently. Multilevel analyses showed that representative voice was best predicted by the presence of shared problems. Further, representative voice was more frequent in departments in which employees worked directly with clients (i.e. children), and in larger departments. Frequent contact with the department's manager and among the department's employees had no effect.

Keywords:

• contact frequency
• hierarchical regression analysis
• organizational design
• representative voice
• social dilemma

Acknowledgements

Data collection was supported by a grant from the Netherlands' Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to Rafael Wittek (Grant No. 016.005.052). Data were collected in collaboration with Lea Ellwardt and Alona Labun. We thank Timo Septer and Katya Ivanova for help with translations, and Marijtje van Duijn and the anonymous reviewer for their comments and advice on this paper. We also thank the childcare organization and the respondents who participated in the telephone interviews and the survey.

Notes

1. We made exceptions to this criterium for two departments with no salient sub-units. In these departments, employees worked at different locations, and department meetings were held only once or twice every 3 months. Nevertheless, according to the departments' managers, employees had occasional informal contact with each other and were aware of what happened within their department.

2. An additional category, ‘other problems’, was only used by five respondents in the survey and, therefore, not included in the analyses.

3. This number may underestimate actual department size. In the personnel records provided to us, only one department affiliation was indicated for each employee. For about 100 employees affiliated with several departments, the affiliation provided was for the department where they worked most hours.

4. We excluded employees' average age because of its high correlation with average tenure (r = 0.59, p < 0.001).