Inclusive leadership and voice behavior among early-career nurses: the conditional roles of work meaningfulness and proactive personality
- 1School of Economics and Management, East University of Heilongjiang, Harbin, China
Abstract
Introduction: Safety-focused explanations of nurse voice leave open whether the perceived value of work is associated with speaking up differently across proactive personality. Drawing on social information processing theory and an interactionist perspective informed by trait activation theory, we examined this conditional association among early-career nurses.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 464 nurses in five tertiary hospitals in Harbin, China, assessed inclusive leadership, work meaningfulness, constructive voice, and proactive personality. Item-level confirmatory factor analysis and composite-score conditional process analysis were conducted.
Results: Inclusive leadership was positively associated with meaningfulness and voice. The conditional indirect association through meaningfulness was positive at mean proactive personality (0.2502, 95% bootstrap CI [0.1857, 0.3197]) and increased with personality (index = 0.0744, 95% CI [0.0269, 0.1229]). The interaction added 1.29 percentage points of explained voice variance, indicating modest amplification; the personality–voice zero-order correlation was near zero.
Discussion: The findings provide context-specific evidence for a conditional value-of-work account alongside safety-based explanations, without establishing causality or superiority over alternative pathways. Inviting suggestions and communicating the value of nursing contributions are practices worth evaluating. The data concern constructive voice, not demonstrated improvements in patient safety, and require longitudinal, multisource replication.
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BibTeX
@article{wang2026inclusive,
title = {{Inclusive leadership and voice behavior among early-career nurses: the conditional roles of work meaningfulness and proactive personality}},
author = {Xuerui Wang and Huiyu Wang and He Zhou},
journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1964826},
url = {https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1964826},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Inclusive leadership and voice behavior among early-career nurses: the conditional roles of work meaningfulness and proactive personality
AU - Xuerui Wang
AU - Huiyu Wang
AU - He Zhou
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/22
JO - Frontiers in Psychology
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1964826
UR - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1964826
AB - Introduction: Safety-focused explanations of nurse voice leave open whether the perceived value of work is associated with speaking up differently across proactive personality. Drawing on social information processing theory and an interactionist perspective informed by trait activation theory, we examined this conditional association among early-career nurses. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 464 nurses in five tertiary hospitals in Harbin, China, assessed inclusive leadership, work meaningfulness, constructive voice, and proactive personality. Item-level confirmatory factor analysis and composite-score conditional process analysis were conducted. Results: Inclusive leadership was positively associated with meaningfulness and voice. The conditional indirect association through meaningfulness was positive at mean proactive personality (0.2502, 95% bootstrap CI [0.1857, 0.3197]) and increased with personality (index = 0.0744, 95% CI [0.0269, 0.1229]). The interaction added 1.29 percentage points of explained voice variance, indicating modest amplification; the personality–voice zero-order correlation was near zero. Discussion: The findings provide context-specific evidence for a conditional value-of-work account alongside safety-based explanations, without establishing causality or superiority over alternative pathways. Inviting suggestions and communicating the value of nursing contributions are practices worth evaluating. The data concern constructive voice, not demonstrated improvements in patient safety, and require longitudinal, multisource replication.
SN - 1664-1078
ER -