Collective voice mechanisms and labor productivity in Italian manufacturing firms

The literature on employee voice has grown enormously over the past decades. However, the relationships between different employee voice mechanisms and organizational performance are far from being fully understood, and the existing research shows mixed evidence. Moreover, the HRM literature tends to concentrate on individual voice mechanisms (e.g. employee involvement) and to underestimate the role that collective voice may have in the HRM performance relationship. Through an analysis of a sample of 223 Italian manufacturing firms matched with an external database (AIDA) containing balance sheet information, this paper offers new findings for the advancement of the debate on employee voice and performance by analyzing how collective voice mechanisms (i.e. team and union voice) and their interactions with other high performance work practices affect organizational productivity. Union voice was found to be positively related to labor productivity, while direct voice did not show any significant relationship with organizational performance. Moreover, both union and direct voice have important moderation effects in the HRM-performance relationship. Union voice moderates positively the relationship between variable pay and performance and negatively the relationship between training and performance. Direct voice positively moderates the relationship between training and performance. The implications of these findings are discussed.