Inclusive Leadership and Employee Voice in Multinational Teams: A Multilevel Analysis of Cultural and Psychological Safety

Abstract

Research is growing and gaining momentum on the concept of inclusive leadership and psychological safety, as they become more pertinent to understanding employee voice in culturally diverse and multinational workplaces. This research investigated the impact of inclusive workplace support on employee willingness to communicate sensitive concerns, and the possible mediation between this and psychological safety. A quantitative, cross-sectional design was used, while employee voice was measured by the extent to which employees express themselves about concerns in the workplace to their supervisor and coworkers. Indicators of inclusive workplace support included organizational communication, confidentiality, provision of resources, treatment of employees, and perceived non-punitive responses. correlation analysis, ordinal logistic regression, multilevel analysis and mediation analysis were used. In the model, inclusive support indirectly affected employee voice by influencing psychological safety, meaning that the effects of inclusive support on employee voice are partially mediated by psychological safety, and that supportive work conditions foster communication partly through the lens of perceived risks in the workplace. Staff felt more at ease discussing concerns with supervisors than with other staff, and employees in remote working positions felt that they had better access to voice upwards. There was some variation in employees' voice across countries, but country-level differences accounted for a relatively small amount of the total variance.