"Confidence of Voice: Effects of Performance, Empowering Leadership and Power Distance on Silence"

Drawing upon self-efficacy theory, this study examines employee silence from the perspective of confidence of speaking up. We examined the effects of past performance and empowering leadership as two main source of forming efficacy of speaking up. We also proposed a two way interaction of these two factors on silence. Further, we incorporated power distance as the factor which can influence how employees react to empowering leadership behaviors, forming a three-way interaction of past performance, empowering leadership and power distance on silence. Results based on time-lagged and multi-source data indicated that past performance and empowering leadership can reduce employee silence. Most importantly, results of three-way interaction showed that 1) for employees with high power distance, performance can strongly reduce employee silence when empowering leadership is high; 2) for employees with low power distance, performance can strongly reduce employee silence when empowering leadership is low.