The double-edged sword of workplace friendship: exploring when and how workplace friendship promotes versus inhibits voice behavior

Abstract

Extant research has demonstrated the positive roles of workplace friendships and has recently found the negative effect or the double-edged effect on employees and organizations. Unfortunately, little is known about the boundary condition of the double-edged effects of workplace friendships and the elaborated understanding of the mechanism of positive and negative effects of workplace friendship simultaneously. Our purpose is to reveal that workplace friendship is a mixed blessing by investigating when and how workplace friendships are likely to promote versus inhibit voice behavior. We propose that the double-edged effect of workplace friendship hinges on the competitive climate. Specifically, when the competitive climate is low, workplace friendship is positively related to employees’ psychological safety, promoting voice behavior. In contrast, workplace friendship is positively related to employees’ face concern, inhibiting voice behavior when the competitive climate is high. Our hypotheses were supported across the three waves of surveys and experimental studies. Taken together, our findings reveal the perils and benefits of workplace friendship and the importance of boundary conditions resulting in employees’ differential psychological processes in friendship interaction.

Keywords:

• Competitive climate
• face concern
• psychological safety
• voice behavior
• workplace friendship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was supported by the Research Project for High-level Talent Introduction of Shandong Women’s University [2023RCYJ06], the Grant of Key Program for Beijing Educational Science Planning during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period, 2020 [Exploring the Influence of University Students’ Practical Activities on Leadership Emergence, No. CEAA2020047], the Research Project for High-level Talent Introduction of Shandong Women’s University [2022RCYJ02], Social Science Foundation of Shandong Province [23CRKJ01].