Disagreeing with Employees’ Constructive Disagreement: On Giving (Non-)Specific Explanations for Rejecting Employees’ Voiced Suggestions

When employees express constructive disagreement with their manager (i.e., employee voice), employees express an opportunity for improvement, but not all ideas from employees can be implemented as managers often need to reject employees' suggestions. Simultaneously, managers need to handle this disagreement in a way that ensures employees continue to speak up even after their previous ideas were turned down, i.e., show voice resilience. We seek to contribute to this important but neglected area of research. We propose that when managers offer specific explanations for why employee voice is not endorsed, employees will perceive higher voice safety, which encourages voice resilience. In line with our predictions, the results from two experimental studies where we manipulated managers' specific versus non-specific explanations after non-endorsements of a voiced suggestion provides converging evidence that managers' high explanation specificity when rejecting voice indirectly fosters employees' voice resilience via voice safety.Our study contributes to an emerging understanding of how managers may effectively respond to employees who voice their dissent when managers must disagree with the content of this dissent. With specific explanations for their rejection, they may protect voice safety perceptions and future voice behavior.