An Exploration of Social Cognitive Consequences of Challenging and Supportive Voices

By drawing from cue consensus theory and status characteristic theory, we argue that the consensus between newcomers’ voices (i.e., challenging voice and supportive voice) and organizational cultures (i.e., individualistic organizational culture and collectivistic organizational culture) leads to distinct observers’ social cognition of status characteristics (i.e., warmth or competence). Through two studies (i.e., a three-wave field survey and an experiment), we found that an individualistic organizational culture moderated the relationship between challenging voice and perceived competence and that voice constructiveness mediated this moderated relationship. That is, newcomers’ challenging voice is more positively related to perceived competence when the level of individualistic organizational culture is higher. Additionally, a collectivistic organizational culture moderates the relationship between supportive voice and perceived warmth, and prosocial motivation mediates this moderated relationship. That is, newcomers’ supportive voice is more positively related to perceived warmth when the level of collectivistic organizational culture is higher. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are also discussed.