Employees often notice issues as they go about their work, but they are more likely to
remain silent than to voice about those issues. This means that organizations miss out
on critical opportunities for improvement. We deepen understanding of why and when
employees do speak up by theorizing about voice episodes that arise when organizational
issues (e.g. policies, actions) cause others to suffer. We suggest that when employees
feel prosocial emotions—empathic concern, empathic anger, and/or guilt—in response
to another’s suffering, they are more likely to voice about the issues creating that
suffering. Specifically, we propose that these other-oriented emotions make it more
likely that employees will see an opportunity for voice, feel sufficiently motivated to
voice, and assess the potential benefits of speaking up as greater than the possible
costs. We also posit that three contextual factors—relationship to sufferer, relational
scripts, and emotional culture—influence whether (and how intensely) employees
experience prosocial emotions in response to suffering triggered by an organizational
issue, and thus affect the likelihood of voice. By theorizing the mechanisms through
which prosocial emotions animate a specific episode of voice, we provide a foundation
for understanding how employees can be moved to speak up.