Wann und wieso sind Vorgesetzte bereit, Verbesserungsvorschläge ihrer Mitarbeitenden umzusetzen?

Abstract

This research provides a view on the appraisal and handling of employee improvement suggestions (voice behavior) through superiors. Only a small number of studies have explored the appraisal-process of superiors, when employees come up with improvement suggestions or ideas. The purpose of this research was to determine how employee’s improvement suggestions are appraised by superiors and under which conditions superiors are willing to implement the improvement suggestions. To examine the hypothesized relationships, data of 184 superiors from two Swiss service companies were collected by use of an online-survey. The results showed, that superior’s appraisal of the suggestions fully mediates the relationship between employee’s improvement suggestions and superior’s implementation intention. In addition, superiors show more implementation intention when they have enough scope of influence. Another finding is that superiors appraise suggestions of high-performance employees generally higher as suggestions of other employees. Limitations could come from response biases, which may occurred due to the elected research method (questionnaire).