Advancing Employee Voice Through Insights From Democratic Innovations

ABSTRACT Employee voice has long attracted interest from academics, policymakers, and practitioners in light of its myriad benefits. To date, employee voice researchers have identified a wide array of voice practices that are organized and understood through a core set of dimensions. However, there are growing calls for more interdisciplinary research to ensure the field's repertoire of practices is effective in terms of addressing employees' and firms' needs while also being attuned to the contemporary nature of work, which includes increasing concerns about inclusion and employee polarization. In this conceptual paper, we seek to expand the field's understanding of existing and potential voice practices by considering whether and how core dimensions and families of practices from democratic innovations scholarship have been applied in employee voice research. We identify four understudied dimensions and three understudied families of practices, illustrate how they could be applied in the context of employee voice, and articulate contributions to research and practice.