Online PhD Defence Jing Wu
In her dissertation 'A Configural Approach to Understanding Voice Behavior in Teams’, Jing Wu takes a configural approach to furthering investigation of voice in a team context. Specifically, she have attempted to unpack how configuration in antecedents may predict occurrence of voice behavior and how configuration of voice influences team process and effectiveness. Jing Wu defended her dissertation on Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 15:30h. Her supervisors were Prof. Daan Van Knippenberg (RSM), Prof. Steffen Giessner (RSM). Other members of the Doctoral Committee were Prof. Subra Tangirala (University of Maryland), Prof. Daan Stam (RSM), and Dr. Anne Nederveen Pieterse (RSM).
About Jing Wu
Jing Wu was born and raised up in Nanjing, China. She is a doctoral candidate in Organizational Behavior at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. She was also a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland in the US in spring 2017 and fall 2018. Prior to her PhD study, Jing obtained a Master degree in Business Management from Nanjing University and a Bachelor degree in Economics from Nanjing Xiaozhuang University in China. During her PhD study, Jing has focused on how employee voice behavior, or expression of opinions or suggestions for improving collective functioning, is elicited and exerts influences in teams with team configuration taken into account. Three chapters in her dissertation, respectively, address (a) how followers are motivated to voice up to the leader considering one’s own and workers’ relationships with the leader, (b) how and when the voice that occurred between team members of different expertise backgrounds can be translated into facilitated team performance, and (c) how teams centralize their voice around more competent members over time to perform better. Jing also collaborates with a diverse group of scholars on projects covering a wider range of topics including leadership, diversity, and power. She has presented her work at international conferences such as Academy of Management Annual Meeting and the New Directions in Leadership Research Conference organized by Duke University, Erasmus University, INSEAD, and the Wharton School. Her dissertation work is currently under review at the leading journals in management field.
Thesis Abstract
Employee voice, or expression of ideas or opinions aimed at improving collective functioning, is believed to be conducive to teams and organizations. Though recent research has started to examine whether voice from employees can be turned into improved collective outcomes as defined and how, the extant research has assumed either that the influence of voice was exerted within teams as a whole, or that voice was distributed in an egalitarian fashion among team members. These assumptions have constrained us from developing a more accurate understanding of the pattern of voice that occurs within teams and how the voice pattern affects team process and effectiveness. To address these issues, I take a configural approach to furthering investigation of voice in a team context in this dissertation. Specifically, I have attempted to unpack how configuration in antecedents may predict occurrence of voice behavior and how configuration of voice influences team process and effectiveness. Three studies of this dissertation examine (a) the antecedents of employee upward voice with a focus on dispersion in leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship, captured by self-other (dis)similarity in LMX, (b) how cross-expertise voice, or voice that occurs between members of different expertise backgrounds, affects team process and performance, and (c) how voice distribution gets structured within teams over time and how teams proactively navigate this process by placing right persons in more active speaking roles.
