# Does mindfulness help employees express ethical voice? a moderated mediation model of mindfulness and ethical voice

## TL;DR

This study shows that mindfulness helps employees speak up about ethical issues through increased moral confidence and courage, especially in supportive work environments.

## Contribution

The study introduces a moderated mediation model linking mindfulness to ethical voice via moral self-efficacy and moral courage.

## Key findings

- Employee mindfulness positively affects ethical voice through moral self-efficacy and moral courage.
- A caring ethical climate enhances the relationship between mindfulness and ethical voice.
- The findings offer practical guidance for promoting ethical voice in organizations.

## Abstract

Following a series of major ethical scandals in various organizations, researchers have increasingly sought to understand the role of ethical voice in the workplace. Existing ethical voice research centres on leadership-focused models and overlooks the individual psychological mechanisms connecting traits to ethical voice, creating a key gap in understanding the micro-foundations of such behaviour. The results of a longitudinal field study featuring 453 participants from one Chinese firm were used to investigate the model hypothesized in this research. The results reveal that employee mindfulness has a positive effect on ethical voice via moral self-efficacy and moral courage. Moreover, a caring ethical climate strengthens the relationship between mindfulness and ethical voice via moral self-efficacy and moral courage. The findings of this study contribute to the literature on both mindfulness and ethical voice. The findings of this research also have important practical implications for organizations, which can enable them to develop more appropriate human resource management strategies that can promote ethical voice in the workplace; these findings also offer guidance regarding how to manage this entire process effectively.