Employee Voice: Insights from Pakistan

Employee voice has recently emerged as an important phenomenon in the present work environment of contemporary organizations ever since the taxonomy of Hirschman (1970) first coined the term. Scholars have contributed to voice research from various research perspectives. For example, employees sometimes consider voice as a self-initiated strategy which can bring change-oriented solutions in resolving tough organizational issues. At the same time, the previous evidence indicates that employees feel reluctant to provide valuable inputs in the form of genuine concerns, ideas, or suggestions due to the lack of a conducive environment and sufficient support mechanisms available in the organization. Interestingly, it also becomes evident that a large stream of research on voice has come from the Western context neglecting the South Asian context and Pakistan is not an exception. The current methodology in this chapter is based on critical review of past empirical evidence that contributes to voice research in the Pakistani employment context. Thus, the chapter provides holistic insights into the current state of knowledge on employee voice in the context of Pakistan from various theoretical perspectives while considering the conclusive evidence of past research. This will not only convey realistic implications for the key stakeholders on how they can encourage employees to stand out but also highlight possible voids in literature that can ideally be filled with future research efforts.