The Influence of Inclusive Leadership on Employee Voice Behavior: A Mediating Effect of Psychological Safety and Moderating Effects of Learning Goal Orientation and Power Distance Orientation

Recently, inclusive leadership is considered as a major leadership concept positively affecting a subordinate’s psychological safety and voice behavior. In this vein, it is suggested that further research on the effect of inclusive leadership is needed to be performed across various industries. In addition, it is pointed that more studies are needed to investigate the contingency factors or boundary conditions to explain relative effects of psychological safety. Based on the social information processing theory, this study examined the influence of inclusive leadership on subordinates’ voice behavior through psychological safety in a bank industry. This study also examined the moderating effects of subordinate’s learning goal orientation and power distance orientation on the relationship between psychological safety and voice behavior. Five hypotheses were developed based on literature review and data were collected using off-line questionnaires from employees working for a large-size bank in Korea. A total of 730 questionnaires were used for the analyses to test hypotheses. The results supported all of five hypotheses developed in this study. First, the result shows that there is a significant and positive relationship between inclusive leadership and a subordinate’s voice behavior. Second, inclusive leadership significantly and positively relates to a subordinate’s psychological safety. Third, a subordinate’s psychological safety partially mediates the relationship between inclusive leadership and voice behavior. Forth, a subordinate’s learning goal orientation positively moderates the relationship between psychological safety and voice behavior. Finally, a subordinate’s power distance orientation negatively moderates the relationship between psychological safety and voice behavior. This study shows the importance of inclusive leadership of bank branch manager and its relationships with a subordinate’s psychological safety and voice behavior, and the boundary conditions explaining the relative effect of psychological safety on voice behavior. Further theoretical and practical implications are discussed and the directions for future research are proposed.