Employee voice: bridging new terrains and disciplinary boundaries

‘Voice’ is a term that has been widely used in the practitioner and academic literature on human resource management (HRM), organizational behaviour (OB) and industrial relations in recent years. In their seminal work, Freeman and Medoff (1984) associated voice with union monopoly representation and in particular with the role of unions articulating concerns on behalf of the collective. As such, union voice was viewed as an integral part of democratic representation in the workplace, but which also could bring about benefits for employers. With the fall in union density and coverage, analysis of voice in workplaces has shifted to how workers communicate with managers and are able to express their concerns about their work situation without a union, and on the ways in which employees have a say over work tasks and organizational decision-making (Kochan et al., 2019). But researchers from different disciplinary perspectives often use ‘voice’ in different ways. Some refer to involvement, others to participation, while yet others refer to empowerment or engagement, as if they are interchangeable. As Kaufman (Chapter 2 in this volume) makes clear, few appreciate the historical pedigree of employee voice, for instance the importance to which Karl Marx and Adam Smith attached interest in the ways and means through which labour expressed its voice. The deeper antecedents to voice have often been forgotten or eclipsed in a rush towards newer managerial fads, such as engagement, or other equally abstract notions of labour offering discretionary effort.