Are embedded employees active or passive? The roles of learning goal orientation and preferences for wide task boundaries and job mobility in the embeddedness-voice link

Abstract

Does embedding employees in their organizations turn them into active organizational members who are increasingly interested in improvement, or passive members who increasingly lose interest in improvement? Addressing this embeddedness dilemma, this study aims to examine why and when perceived organizational embeddedness relates to the psychological orientation toward improvement that in turn relates to such improvement-oriented behavior as voice. First, based on the future time perspective, we posit that increasingly embedded employees anticipate that their futures will be intertwined with that of their organizations, thereby motivating them to demonstrate increased learning goal orientation, which in turn promotes voice behavior. Second, this mediating relationship is less likely to occur for those who experience stronger increases in preferences for wide task boundaries and preferences for job mobility. Such preferences create a short-term future time perspective in an employment relationship that is not aligned with the long-term future time perspective inherent in increased embeddedness. Longitudinal data collected from 267 Italian employees over an eight-month period provide empirical support for the proposed moderated mediation relationships.