Silence is not Golden: Motivating Employee Voice through Inclusive Leadership

Given the dynamic nature of the hospitality industry, firms must continuously improve to remain viable. Many innovations and improvements in service are driven by the experiences of employees on the front lines of service delivery, who have direct knowledge of what works and what does not in the day-to-day operation of a hospitality business. Unfortunately, research indicates that employees are not likely to speak up with opinions, ideas, and suggestions, behavior known as employee voice, unless they have some motivation to do so. Drawing on basic need satisfaction theory, we hypothesized and found that inclusive leader behaviors are associated with the satisfaction of followers’ basic needs for relatedness and competence. In turn, the satisfaction of these basic needs was associated with increases in employee self-reported voice behavior. Our findings provide important insights into the kinds of leader behaviors that may drive employee voice.