Particularly within the last dozen years or so, there has been a rapidly
growing body of research focused on better understanding the choice, on the
part of employees, of whether to speak up (i.e., voice) when they have potentially
important information to share. Yet this literature, as is true of many
growing areas, is somewhat fragmented. There have been varying conceptualizations
of voice, which has created ambiguity about the meaning and scope of
the construct. In addition, while there has been a growing number of studies on
factors that foster or inhibit voice, there is not yet an overarching theoretical
framework for understanding how these factors relate to one another. There
are also conflicting perspectives on the outcomes associated with voice. Most
importantly, there is not a sufficiently clear sense of where future scholarship
should be directed.