Speaking Up to the Boss: The Effects of Top Management Team Members' Felt Trust and Perceived CEO Trustworthiness on Voice Behaviour in Family Firms

Abstract

Despite the important role of top management team (TMT) voice, the innate risks and vulnerabilities involved often dissuade TMT members from openly expressing their views to the chief executive officer (CEO). This is especially the case in family firms, where the CEO is often a family member and familial ties regularly take priority over ties with individuals from outside the family (i.e., non-family members). In this article, we focus on the role of trust as a potential enabler of TMT voice in family firms. Primary matched triadic data from CEOs (n = 79) and family and non-family TMT members (n = 158) in 79 family firms demonstrate that trust perceptions (feeling trusted by the CEO and perceptions of CEO trustworthiness) have a positive effect on TMT voice behaviour and perceived job performance. Interestingly, this positive effect is significant only for non-family members, suggesting trust perceptions are more imperative for non-family TMT members when it comes to speaking up to the boss. A main implication for scholarship at the interface of trust and family business is that our nuanced, and in some instances counterintuitive, findings suggest traditional theories and approaches to studying trust may not apply to family firms. We also discuss practical implications of our findings.