Leadership talk with Jing Wu
Emphasize Why versus How? How Feedback Seeking from Peers in Different Networks Affects Employee Voice Framing and Leader Endorsement.
- Starts:13:00, 13 February 2025
- Ends:13:45, 13 February 2025
- Location:BI - campus Oslo, room: A2-Red 14 or Zoom
- Contact:Federica De Molli (federica.d.molli@bi.no)
Abstract
Seeking support from peers can be a pivotal means by which employees enhance their voice and secure leader endorsement. However, the influences of peer feedback on the construction and articulation of employee voice have remained under-investigated. This research integrates feedback seeking literature with construal level theory to conceptualize voice feedback seeking as a proactive approach wherein employees solicit input from peers for developing work- related ideas or suggestions. We examine the roles of different voice feedback seeking tactics in shaping voice framing—with an emphasis on the “why” versus “how” aspects—and its subsequent effect on leader endorsement. We conduct three studies to test our theory: First, an intervention study reveals that training employees to seek feedback from peers central to workflow network as opposed to friends at work steers voice framing towards a why-focused direction. Second, an experimental study confirms that a voice framed with an emphasis on why is more favorably endorsed by leaders than a how-focused voice. Last, a field study using a round-robin design supports our overall conceptual model. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
What is Leadership Talks?
Leadership Talks is a series of seminars about topics related to leadership, change and sustainability, project management and organizational psychology, hosted by the Department of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at BI Norwegian Business School.
Speaker & link to Zoom
-
Jing Wu is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Communication and Culture at BI. She obtained her PhD in Organizational Behavior from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, the Netherlands in 2020. During her doctoral study, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland, the US in 2017 and 2018. Jing’s research interests focus on how to facilitate communication and foster proactivity in the context of (a) leader-employee dyads, (b) team diversity and dynamics, and (c) the workplaces redefined by AI. In carrying out research projects, Jing adopts a multi-method approach, combining field surveys, lab experiments, field experiments, and interviews. And she uses a variety of statistical methods, such as polynomial regression and response surface analyses, multilevel analysis, social network analysis, and latent growth modeling.
-
Join Zoom Meeting:
ID meeting: 624 7076 3316
Access code: 482131