Description
Abstract
Purpose: Voice is expressed by young people in the workplace to change the status quo. Voice can be articulated as suggestions for improvement (promotive voice) or concerns about current practices, incidents, or behaviour that are harmful (prohibitive voice). Both types of voices are beneficial for the organizations, yet they are understandably challenging and risky for the individuals involved. This is particularly relevant for young people in the workplace due to organization hierarchy inequality. By adopting an agentic perspective as a theoretical lens in examining how and why young people speak up in the workplace, this article hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the motivational underpinnings of their voices.
Design/Methodology/Approach: A qualitative research design aimed at capturing the lived experiences of young people, with photovoice as the examination tool and interpretative phenomenological analysis as the approach, is used to unearth how and why young people express their voices in the workplace.
Findings: Young people articulate promotive and prohibitive voice for the benefit of the organizations as they feel empowered by their work. As work fulfils themselves with sense of meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact, they passionately choose to speak up. Psychological safety serves as environmental support. Revisiting regular meetings would enable the organization to better accommodate their voice. This study uncovers that this would drive changes to existing practices and policies.
Originality/value: Photovoice enables this study to develop better understanding of how sense of empowerment fuels young people to articulate their voices in the workplace.
Keywords: promotive voice; prohibitive voice, psychological empowerment; organization
