An emotional journey to speaking up: understanding when and how employee daily emotions relate to promotive and prohibitive voice

Building on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions and the regulatory focus theory, we develop a multilevel model to investigate how employees' daily positive and negative emotions trigger daily promotive and prohibitive voice, and further incorporate employees' leader-member exchange (LMX) and trait self-control capacity as boundary conditions of the daily emotions-voice relationships. To test the proposed model, we conducted two studies utilizing the experience sampling method to collect daily data over 10 working days. In Study 1, we gathered 1458 daily responses from 146 employees. In Study 2, we collected 729 matched daily responses from 75 employees and their co-workers, utilizing a multi-phase design. The results of multilevel path-analyses from both studies reveal that: (1) daily positive emotions are positively related with daily promotive voice, and daily promotion focus mediates this association; (2) daily negative emotions are positively related to daily prohibitive voice, however, daily prevention focus does not mediate this relationship; (3) LMX enhances the positive relationship between daily positive emotions and daily promotive voice, and its indirect effect via daily promotion focus; and (4) self-control capacity strengthens the positive relationship between daily negative emotions and daily prohibitive voice, and its indirect effect via daily prevention focus.