The Relationships among Leader-Member Exchange, Employee Voice Behavior, Psychological Safety, and Gender: A Study in the Private Sector in El Salvador

Abstract

An organization in which employees are actively engaged in Employee Voice Behavior provides a competitive advantage for organizations in today’s highly competitive business world. The purpose of this study was to examine how high-quality interactions between leaders an employee’s affects how much employees are willing to engage in Employee Voice Behavior, whether Psychological Safety serves as a mediator in the relationship, and whether Gender serves as a moderator in said relationship. Extending from the well-known Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX), this study presents the hypothesis that supervisors who engage in high-level LMX practices have an effect on subordinates’ use of Employee Voice Behavior in which Psychological Safety mediates the relationship, and Gender moderates the relationship. This research study adopted a quantitative approach using an on-line survey questionnaire to collect data. The collected sample data was of 200 Salvadorian employees working in Finance, Customer Service and/or Sales department in the private sector from six different organizations. IBM SPSS 23.0 was used to run descriptive analysis, Pearson’s correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis. The results showed that Leader-Member Exchange is related to Employee Voice Behavior, that Psychological Safety partially mediates the relationship between LMX and Employee Voice Behavior, and that Gender does not moderate the relationship between LMX and Employee Voice Behavior.

An organization in which employees are actively engaged in Employee Voice Behavior provides a competitive advantage for organizations in today’s highly competitive business world. The purpose of this study was to examine how high-quality interactions between leaders an employee’s affects how much employees are willing to engage in Employee Voice Behavior, whether Psychological Safety serves as a mediator in the relationship, and whether Gender serves as a moderator in said relationship. Extending from the well-known Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX), this study presents the hypothesis that supervisors who engage in high-level LMX practices have an effect on subordinates’ use of Employee Voice Behavior in which Psychological Safety mediates the relationship, and Gender moderates the relationship. This research study adopted a quantitative approach using an on-line survey questionnaire to collect data. The collected sample data was of 200 Salvadorian employees working in Finance, Customer Service and/or Sales department in the private sector from six different organizations. IBM SPSS 23.0 was used to run descriptive analysis, Pearson’s correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis. The results showed that Leader-Member Exchange is related to Employee Voice Behavior, that Psychological Safety partially mediates the relationship between LMX and Employee Voice Behavior, and that Gender does not moderate the relationship between LMX and Employee Voice Behavior.