High-performance work system and transformational leadership for employee constructive voice: unique and relative importance in a high-power distance context

Constructive employee voice is important but challenging to promote in high power distance contexts. The unique and relative importance of HRM systems and leadership in promoting it is more generally little understood. This study investigates the unique and relative importance of a high-performance work system (HPWS) and transformational leadership (TL) for constructive employee voice behavior, as well as how individual-level power distance orientation (PDO) moderates those relationships. The analyses are based on a sample of 403 subordinates of middle managers in 232 domestic Russian organizations. The results show that both TL and HPWS relate positively to employee voice, but most importantly that HPWS is more strongly so related, that it significantly substitutes the relationship between TL and voice, and that the relationship between HPWS and voice is further strengthened by employee PDO. We also conducted post-hoc qualitative interviews with 25 employees in domestic Russian organizations to triangulate our quantitative results. The study contributes to research on employee voice, in particular to research on the relative importance of its antecedents, and to the emerging body of research that simultaneously considers HRM and leadership.