Why does listening matter inside the organization? The impact of internal listening on employee-organization relationships

ABSTRACT

This study examined whether and how listening in the internal communication context may influence the quality of employee-organization relationships. This study proposed employee psychological need satisfaction as the potential underlying mechanism that mediates the relationship between internal listening and employee relational outcomes. An online survey was conducted with 443 employees across various industries in the United States. The key findings of this study showed that employee perceptions of internal organizational listening were positively associated with employees’ perceived relationships with their organization. In addition, employee psychological need satisfaction positively mediated the effects of both organizational and supervisory listening on the quality of employee-organization relationships. This study advances the theorizing of listening from an internal communication perspective and contributes to the growing body of knowledge in relationship management.

KEYWORDS:

• Listening
• internal communication
• employee-organization relationships
• self-determination theory
• psychological need satisfaction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This study focused on medium- and large-sized organizations given that their internal listening environment is more complex and may work at different levels (i.e., organizational-level and supervisory-level listening) compared to small-sized organizations in which internal listening is more likely to happen at an interpersonal level between leaders and employees. We identified organizations with 100–499 employees as medium-sized and organizations with 500 employees and more as large-sized (cf. Highfill & Strassner, 2017).

2. T-test results demonstrated that there was no significant difference between the pretest sample and the non-pretest sample on all key variables. Therefore, the pretest sample was included in the final sample for data analysis.

3. Responses that were all straight lining answers or completed in fewer than three minutes were deemed unqualified and removed from the dataset.

4. Considering the pretest sample was included in the final sample, EFA was conducted again ensure the validity and reliability of the measurement of organizational listening.

5. We considered the model fit as acceptable based on the criteria from Hair et al. (2010) (i.e., χ²/df ≤ 3.00, TLI ≥ .90, SRMR ≤ .08 with CFI ≥ .92, and RMSEA ≤ .07 with CFI ≥ .92).

6. We checked the construct validity based on the criteria from Hair et al. (2010) (i.e., standardized loading >.50; AVE > .50; CR > .70; AVE > ASV).