A NEW DIGITAL PERSPECTIVE TO EMPLOYEE VOICE: ACHIEVING INNOVATION WORK BEHAVIOR THROUGH A MODERATION AND MEDIATION LENS OF, AMBIDEXTERITY, INVOLVEMENT AND AGILITY

Abstract

At a time of technological breakthroughs, organizations are striving hard to innovate and employees are constantly finding ways to contribute their ideas and be heard in their organizations. Organizations striving to keep up with the evolving trends are looking towards their employees to contribute to the innovation process, however their lack of trust and ambiguity towards employee voice is still at large. Many organizations to date consider it as a tool for causing disruptions to peace and the routine hierarchal structures of the organizations. While organizations try to stray away from employee voice, the emergence of social media has erupted as a new forum for these employees to not only voice their concerns but as means for being heard and acknowledged by organizational members. This has created many problems for the management and challenging them to create digital tools that support employee voice, that will eventually lead to innovation processes and facilitate idea generation. Hence there is a particular need to research on whether digital employee voice leads to positive outcomes and behaviors or not. Therefore, this current study seeks to examine the impact of digitally-enabled employee voice on employee ambidexterity, employee involvement, and innovative work behavior. It simultaneously concentrates to analyze both employee ambidexterity and involvement as mediators, while organizational agility takes the role of a moderator. Moreover, this study also employs support from self-determination theory (SDT). Data has been collected from 222 managerial employees working in the telecommunication sector of Pakistan using self-administered questionnaires. Results of the study demonstrated that digitally-enabled employee voice had a positive relationship with employee ambidexterity and employee involvement. However, it failed to have an influence on their innovative work behavior. Moreover, both employee ambidexterity and employee involvement were seen to have a significant impact on innovative work behavior. Likewise, both of them proved to be successful mediators in the relationship between digitally-enabled employee voice and innovative work behavior. Findings also revealed that, organizational agility did not moderate the relationship between employee ambidexterity and employee involvement with innovative work behavior. Further, this research contributes to the growing literature of digitally-enabled employee voice and the positive impact of having digital spaces within the workplace to support employees’ voice. Moreover, it suggests a range of practical implications from the results of the study and opens numerous research avenues for future researchers in different sectors and countries to enhance the generalization of the study and further add to the literature of the variables.