Employee voice mechanisms, human resource management practices, and labor productivity

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 direct voice mechanisms (i.e. employee involvement) and to underestimate the role that union 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. Despite the debate on union decline and the (supposed) superiority of direct voice, union voice is 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. Finally, the interaction between union and direct voice is not significantly related to organizational performance. The implications of these findings are discussed.