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Introduction
Employee voice is defined as "promotive behavior that emphasizes expression of constructive challenge intended to improve rather than merely criticize" (Van Dyne and LePine, 1998). Consideration of employee voice is essential for organizations to improve their current status and to achieve sustainable development, and this research topic has become increasingly popular in recent years (Hsiung, 2012; Janssen and Gao, 2015). Most studies of voice behavior have been grounded in social exchange theory, which suggests that employees who experience their work environments as positive are likely to reciprocate this experience through employee voice (Ng and Feldman, 2012). Leader-member exchange (LMX) plays a significant role in employees' work environments and influences employees' feelings of mutual obligation and reciprocity (Dulebohn et al. , 2011), which may be positively related to employee voice behavior. Several studies have demonstrated that LMX encourages employees to speak up (Botero and Van Dyne, 2009; Burris et al. , 2008; Hsiung, 2012; Van Dyne et al. , 2008).
However, the mechanism by which LMX is related to employee voice remains unclear. Only one existing paper has explained psychological attachment (specifically, affective commitment) as the mediator of the relationship between LMX and employee voice (Burris et al. , 2008). However, the result of that study showed that psychological attachment is neither a direct predictor of voice nor a mediator of LMX-voice relationships. According to self-determination theory, the different regulatory processes driving human behavior can be arranged on a self-determination continuum ranging from autonomous motivation ("I choose to do it") to controlled motivation ("I need to do it") (Raub and Robert, 2010; Gagné and Deci, 2005). According to Burris et al. (2008), strongly attached employees feel a need to return to the source of their feelings and exert effort on behalf of their organization, which implies that psychological attachment likely functions as controlled motivation. As a type of extra-role behavior, the realization of voice behavior requires autonomous motivation for which controlled motivation may be absent. Therefore, we believe that autonomous motivation may be more appropriate in explaining the LMX-voice relationship, which could also explain the insignificant mediating result obtained (Burris et al. , 2008).
Psychological empowerment refers to intrinsic task motivation manifested in four cognitions: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact (Spreitzer, 1995). Psychological empowerment is...