From Turnover to Giving Back: Unveiling the Psychological Ownership Mechanism of Former Employees' Voice

By explicitly extending the subjects of voice to former employees who have left the employment relationship with the organization, this study breaks the current situation in which voice research is rooted within organizations and based on employment relationships. In addition, drawing on psychological ownership theory, it reveals the mechanism by which former employees engage in voice toward their former organization in a cross-organizational context. Study 1 used a two-wave online longitudinal survey to collect data from 633 founders and senior executives, and Study 2 used a scenario experiment to obtain data from 267 employees. The analysis results show that: (1) the higher the former employee's rank in the former organization, the more likely they are to engage in voice toward the former organization; (2) the former employee's psychological ownership of the former organization plays a... role in the above relationship.