Chips for challenging: the moderating effects of past attainment and future prospect on the relationship between perceived insider status and offering challenging opinions

Abstract

Offering challenging suggestions is important to organizational health. It is, however, less likely for employees to offer challenging suggestions than to offer supporting suggestions. In the United States of America, research on groupthink has demonstrated that group members are willing to go along with a group decision even though they see problems in the group decision. In China, the cultural value of power distance and the emphasis on social harmony suggest that challenging suggestions are less socially acceptable than conformity. Thus, examining situations under which employees are willing to offer challenging suggestions have both theoretical and practical importance. We hypothesize that employees are more willing to offer challenging suggestions if they perceive that they are insiders of an organization (Perceived Insider States, SIS, Stamper and Masterson, 2002) and that they have bargaining chips such as their past attainment in the organization. The identity of an insider puts an employee in a position to contribute and offers some buffer when an employee errs (for example, when voicing challenging suggestions is not accepted). Past attainment is the additional chips for erring because when employees have attained important accomplishments in an organization, their opinions carry more weight. Future prospect, however, may inhibit an employee from challenging for the fear of disapproval. We hypothesize that employees are most likely to offer challenging suggestions when they perceived themselves to be insiders, have attained much in the organization in the past, but have low future prospects in the organization. We tested our hypothesis using a sample of 91 employees in China from different occupations and companies who attended Master’s level classes in a university. Forty-two percent were female. They averaged ten years in their career and five years on their jobs. Their mean age was 32 years. We found a significant three-way interaction between PIS, past attainment and future prospect using hierarchical multiple regression. Results supported our hypothesis. To increase the likelihood that employees would offer challenging suggestions, organizations may consider strengthening the relationship with their employees and considering how to protect the future prospect of employees who voice challenging suggestions.