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Zhongyong, as a typical Confucian thinking model, is related to employees' voice behavior. In this research we explored the relationship between Zhongyong thinking and employees' voice behavior, and examined the mediating effect of psychological safety in this relationship. Survey data were collected from 218 part-time Master of Business Administration students from two Chinese universities. The structural equation modeling results demonstrate that Zhongyong thinking was positively related to psychological safety, and that psychological safety was positively related to voice behavior. Further, psychological safety mediated the Zhongyong thinking-voice behavior relationship. These results suggest that organizations can encourage voice behavior by enhancing employees' Zhongyong thinking and by boosting their perception of psychological safety in the workplace.
Keywords
Zhongyong thinking; Confucianism; employee voice behavior; psychological safety; tolerance; forgiveness; collectivism
Voice behavior is defined as employees' expression of constructive opinions about work-related issues (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). As an extrarole behavior, voice behavior is regarded as an important driver of individual performance and organizational advantages (e.g., innovation), which has led to growing research interest in this topic (Morrison, 2011). Common themes in this field are how to encourage employees to voice their concerns and how to identify the factors that facilitate employees speaking their thoughts freely. Many factors, especially cultural characteristics (e.g., Kwon & Farndale, 2020), have been assessed to analyze the voice behavior mechanism (Morrison, 2011). Moreover, the uniqueness of Chinese culture has attracted considerable attention from researchers in this field. In a study of Chinese employees and their leaders, Wei et al. (2015) reported that two characteristics of Chinese culture-power distance and superficial harmony-inhibit employees from speaking up to enhance performance and correct mistakes.
Chinese culture has mainly been conceptualized as being based philosophically on Confucianism (Lin, 2010). It is well-known that Chinese people have long abided by the Confucian doctrine of the mean or Zhongyong thinking, which refers to "considering things carefully from different aspects and conducting appropriate behaviors to account for whole situation" (Wu & Lin, 2005, p. 300). Zhong represents equilibrium, and yong reflects harmoniousness (Fan, 2021). As Zhongyong thinking promotes harmony, which enables individuals to tolerate conflict and express different opinions (Wang & Juslin, 2009; Yeh & Xu, 2010), an inference is that Zhongyong thinking should be conducive to voice behavior, and...