Abdulkhamid Komil Ugli Fayzullaev

Employee promotive voice is essential for organizational improvement and innovation; however, the impact of supervisor phubbing, a form of inattentive communication, on employees’ willingness to share constructive ideas remains largely understudied. This study addresses this gap by examining whether supervisor phubbing is associated with lower promotive voice through its negative association with supervisor–employee rapport, and whether employees’ need for social approval (NFSA) moderates this indirect association. Quantitative data from a three-wave, time-lagged survey of 307 employees in South Korea showed that supervisor phubbing was negatively related to supervisor–employee rapport, which was positively related to promotive voice, with rapport mediating this relationship. Moreover, NFSA strengthened the negative association between supervisor phubbing and rapport, resulting in a stronger negative indirect association with promotive voice. These findings extend business communication research by identifying supervisor phubbing as an underexplored antecedent of promotive voice and demonstrating supervisor–employee rapport as the relational mechanism underlying this association. Practically, these findings highlight the importance of attentive supervisory communication and clear organizational norms regarding smartphone use during workplace interactions.

Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) is gaining scholarly attention due to its harmful consequences, yet limited research explains how employees’ perceptions of leaders’ personality traits drive such behavior. Drawing on conservation of resources theory and the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept, this study examined whether and how perceived leader narcissistic rivalry predicts employee UPB. We argue that leaders high in narcissistic rivalry devalue and exclude others, increasing workplace ostracism. Ostracism, in turn, depletes employees’ psychological resources and motivates UPB as a compensatory strategy. We further propose that underdog expectations amplify this effect by shaping employees’ interpretations of exclusion. Using a three-wave, time-lagged survey of 383 full-time employees in South Korea and analyzing data with PROCESS Macro, results show that perceived leader narcissistic rivalry positively predicts workplace ostracism. Workplace ostracism increases UPB and mediates the relationship between leader narcissistic rivalry and UPB. Moreover, underdog expectations strengthen the positive association between ostracism and UPB, with stronger effects among employees high in such expectations. These findings identify workplace ostracism as a key resource-depletion mechanism linking leader narcissistic rivalry to unethical behavior and highlight underdog expectations as an important boundary condition. They highlight the need to manage narcissistic leadership, reduce ostracism, and strengthen ethical norms.

Competition is widely promoted as a mechanism for enhancing employee motivation and organizational performance. However, its unintended costs for female managers remain underexplored. This study examines how performance-oriented competition (POC) affects affective organizational commitment (AOC) through workplace interpersonal strain (WIS) and work overload strain (WOS), and whether job autonomy moderates these relationships among female managerial employees. Data were drawn from the seventh wave of the Korean Women Manager Panel, a large-scale national survey in South Korea. The final sample comprised 1325 females across 413 organizations. Mediation and moderation analyses were conducted using the PROCESS macro with bootstrapped confidence intervals. Results indicate that POC is positively associated with both WIS and WOS, which are in turn negatively associated with AOC. Both forms of strain significantly mediate the relationship between competition and commitment, with the WIS pathway being stronger. Job autonomy does not affect the relationship between POC and WIS but unexpectedly strengthens the positive association between POC and WOS. These findings suggest that competitive work systems may impose hidden costs by weakening female managers’ organizational commitment. This study extends research on competitive climates and challenges the assumption that job autonomy is uniformly beneficial. Organizations should exercise caution when relying on competition and autonomy as motivational tools.

Purpose: Drawing on affective events theory, this study aims to investigate the association between vicarious abusive supervision and defensive silence, examine fear as a mediating mechanism associated with this relationship and explore the moderating role of emotional contagion in shaping employees' emotional and behavioral responses to vicarious abusive supervision. Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative survey was conducted to collect time-lagged data from 422 employees in Korean manufacturing companies. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and the PROCESS macro. Findings: Vicarious abusive supervision exhibited a positive association with fear, which in turn mediated its relationship with defensive silence. Furthermore, emotional contagion strengthened the positive association between vicarious abusive supervision and fear, as well as the indirect relationship between vicarious abusive supervision and defensive silence through fear. Originality/value: This study advances the literature on workplace mistreatment and employee silence by suggesting that observing supervisory abuse directed toward coworkers may contribute to employees' fear and defensive silence. By integrating the concept of emotional contagion, the study explains why fear-related silence associated with observed abuse may be more pronounced in some employees than in others.

Employee voice is a widely studied topic in the organisational behaviour literature. While earlier research primarily focused on employees’ suggestions for improving existing work practices and procedures, interest in prohibitive voice—employees’ concerns about harmful practices or behaviours—grew significantly after Liang et al.’s (2012) study. Despite the substantial number of studies conducted on prohibitive voice over the past decade, no up-to-date comprehensive literature review exists. This study addresses this gap by systematically reviewing existing research on prohibitive voice using the systematic literature review (SLR) approach. Following PRISMA guidelines, we analyse 135 empirical studies published between 2012 and 2025. The findings reveal that most studies have examined antecedents, which we categorise into four groups: leadership and management characteristics, individual and relational factors, team dynamics, and organisational context. In terms of outcomes, prohibitive voice has been found to influence individual, group, and organisational-level factors. This study is the first to systematically identify, analyse, and critically evaluate existing research on prohibitive voice. It contributes to the literature by synthesising current knowledge, identifying research gaps, and outlining directions for future studies. Additionally, it offers practical implications for managerial practice and policymaking, helping managers foster conditions that encourage prohibitive voice and enabling policymakers to create psychologically safe environments where employees feel comfortable speaking up.

With the growing integration of smartphones into the workplace, the need to understand their impacts is ever more pressing. In particular, the phenomenon known as supervisor phubbing – where supervisors engage with their mobile phones during interactions with employees - has gained increasing interest among scholars as more evidence presents its negative consequences. Despite the growing scholarly interest and the increasing number of empirical studies, comprehensive reviews of supervisor phubbing research remain scarce. Therefore, the present study conducts a Systematic Literature Review to comprehensively examine, synthesize, and critically evaluate the current body of literature on supervisor phubbing, identifying research gaps and suggesting directions for future research. While supervisor phubbing constitutes the central focus of this review, it also includes studies addressing related forms of workplace phubbing behavior. In total, 17 studies were included and categorized into supervisor phubbing, coworker phubbing, self-phubbing (self-initiated phubbing), and general workplace phubbing. Findings from the studies included in this review indicate that supervisor phubbing negatively affects workplace atmosphere, leading to decreased trust, job satisfaction, engagement, and performance while increasing presenteeism, incivility, ostracism, and cyberloafing. Meanwhile, mindfulness, self-control, power-distance, and enterprise social media usage mitigate some negative effects. By synthesizing fragmented research, this review clarifies existing knowledge on supervisor phubbing and workplace phubbing behaviors, as well as their consequences. The study also proposes practical implications, including the establishment of clear organizational norms regarding smartphone use and the implementation of awareness-raising training programs to reduce phubbing behavior in workplace. Despite these valuable insights, most of the existing studies tend to rely on cross-sectional and correlational designs, which limit the exploration of direct causal effects. Additionally, past research mostly focuses on specific cultures or industries, restricting generalizability. Therefore, based on the identified key research gaps and limitations, this study offers future research directions.

Organizations are increasingly depending on their employees to contribute suggestions aimed at enhancing organizational processes, boosting overall efficiency, and fostering innovation. However, some factors might hinder employees from expressing their thoughts. While there is evidence suggesting an effect of supervisor social undermining behavior on employee voice, the impact on innovative types of voice, specifically promotive voice, remains uncertain. This study aims to explore the association between supervisor social undermining and employee promotive voice. Moreover, this research investigates how employee perceptions of procedural justice moderate this relationship, utilizing the Conservation of Resources theory. Data were collected from 115 highly skilled employees, and hierarchical regression analysis was employed to assess the proposed hypotheses. The findings suggest that when individuals encounter social undermining behavior from their supervisor, they are less inclined to engage in promotive voice behavior. Interestingly, the results indicate that this relationship becomes stronger when individuals possess higher perceptions of procedural justice. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the impact of supervisor social undermining on promotive voice while considering procedural justice as a moderator in this relationship. The findings of this study suggest several theoretical and practical implications and provide directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to test the role of trust in supervisors in mediating the link between paternalistic leadership styles and employee voice and to investigate the contingency role of self-efficacy on the relationship between trust in supervisors and employee voices. We designed the items using survey questionnaires that were assessed by prior studies and collected data from 485 highly skilled employees of manufacturing organizations. To assess the validity of the suggested hypotheses, we used a Baron and Kenny (1986) approach and conducted hierarchical regression analysis. The findings reveal that authoritarian leadership and moral leadership styles are significantly related to trust in supervisors, which explains the association between authoritarian leadership style, and moral leadership style and employee voice. However, the results suggest that trust in supervisors does not explain the association between benevolent leadership style and employee voice. Moreover, the findings reveal that self-efficacy moderates the link between trust in supervisors and employee voice. The originality of this work lies in the fact that this research is the first to test the mediating role of trust in supervisors in the relationship between paternalistic leadership styles and employee voice and the moderating role of self-efficacy on the association between trust in supervisors and employee voice.

Purpose: This work assesses the contingent role of cognitive reappraisal on the link between supervisor incivility and psychological distress and examines the mediating role of psychological distress on the link between supervisor incivility and employee voice, namely, promotive and prohibitive.Design/methodology/approach: The data were collected from 447 highly skilled employees of manufacturing companies. To evaluate the validity of the proposed hypotheses, the authors conducted hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping test.Findings: The findings suggest that despite supervisor incivility, individuals with higher level of cognitive reappraisal are less likely to suffer from psychological distress, whereas individuals with a lower level of cognitive reappraisal are prone to psychological distress when individuals suffer from supervisor incivility. Moreover, the results indicate that psychological distress mediates the link between supervisor incivility and voice, namely, promotive and prohibitive.Originality/value: This work is the first to investigate the contingency role of cognitive reappraisal on the link between supervisor incivility and psychological distress and the mediating role of psychological distress on the link between supervisor incivility and employee voice.

This study investigates the relationships between abusive supervision and two forms of silence, ineffectual and defensive; the moderating role of self-efficacy in the association between abusive supervision and ineffectual silence and the contingency role of fear in the relationship between abusive supervision and defensive silence. We collected data from 685 employees in manufacturing companies. Of these, 271 were incomplete questionnaires and were excluded from the study; the remaining 414 responses were assessed in the analyses. The results indicate that abusive supervision fosters ineffectual and defensive silence. Moreover, the results suggest that even if supervisors are abusive, individuals with a higher level of self-efficacy tend to have a lower level of ineffectual silence. Furthermore, fear strengthens the link between abusive supervision and defensive silence. According to our knowledge, this work is the first to investigate the relationship between abusive supervision and ineffectual silence, the contingency role of self-efficacy in the link between abusive supervision and ineffectual silence and the moderating role of fear in the relationship between abusive supervision and defensive silence.