Socially Responsible Human Resource Management and Employee Moral Voice: Based on the Self-determination Theory

Behind the frequent occurrence of business scandals, it is often the silence and connivance of organizational immorality. Moral voice, a kind of employee active moral behavior, inhibits and prevents the organizational unethical phenomenon. Some researchers have sought to explore how to arouse employee moral voice. However, the limited studies mainly investigated the antecedents of leadership styles, ignoring the impact of the organizational factor on moral voice. Based on the self-determination theory, the current study constructs a theoretical model about how socially responsible human resource management (SRHRM) affects employee moral voice via autonomous motivation and controlled motivation and further considering the moderating role of person-organization value fit. From a two-stage research method and the analysis of 260 valid data, we found that SRHRM promoted employee moral voice and this positive linkage was mediated by autonomous motivation but not by controlled motivation. Besides, the findings also revealed that person-organization fit moderated the indirect influences of SRHRM on moral voice via autonomous motivation, such that the indirect influence was stronger for a high level of person-organization value fit than the low level of person-organization value fit. Some theoretical and practical implications also be discussed.

Automated summary

This study constructs a theoretical model based on the self-determination theory to explore how socially responsible human resource management (SRHRM) influences employee moral voice through autonomous motivation and considers the moderating role of person-organization value fit. With a two-stage research method and analysis of 260 valid data, the study found that SRHRM promotes employee moral voice and this positive linkage is mediated by autonomous motivation. Furthermore, the findings reveal that person-organization fit moderates the indirect influences of SRHRM on moral voice via autonomous motivation.