Exploring team collective voice: the case of software development teams in Vietnam

An L. Hoang, Anh T.T. Phan, Dam X. Dong, Trang T.H. Tran and Chinh T. Nguyen, National Economics University, Hanoi, Vietnam

International of Organization Theory & Behavior

https://doi.org/10.1108/JED-07-2021-0116

ISSN: 1093-4537

Open Access. Article publication date: 14 December 2022

Abstract

Purpose – The team voice (TV) concept has been largely understudied, with different definitions and understandings among prior research creating confusion for readers and future researchers. This study proposes a unified definition and connotation of TV that captures TV’s collective meaning and highlights TV’s vital role in Eastern contexts.

Design/methodology/approach – This study applied the constructivist grounded theory (CGT) methodology to collect and analyze qualitative data from Vietnam software companies. A total of 32 software development managers and employees were interviewed regarding TV behavior of the managers and employees.

Findings – The findings emphasize that TV should not be understood as team members’ average or aggregate voice. Rather, TV should be understood as the shared voice of team members toward higher management, other teams or individuals in the organization in an attempt to challenge/change the status quo [team collective voice (TCV)]. The findings also reveal the characteristics of TCV (purpose, voicing and consensus mechanisms), TCV’s different types and important roles in the context of an Eastern country operating under weak institutions.

Originality/value – This exploratory study was able to clarify different connotations of employee voice at the team level, which helps raise awareness among scholars on the collective nature of TV and guides successive researchers away from inconsistent understandings of the term. The study also reveals certain institutional conditions that foster this type of voice and suggests the employee voice concept should not be examined independently from the concept’s institutional context. The proposed typology contributes comprehensively to this conceptual work of TCV as the topology reveals the concept’s multidimensionality and aids future research on measurement construction.