A PUBLIC-SERVICE VOICE

In a clever book 25 years ago Albert Hirschman discussed responses to decline in firms, organizations and states (Hirschman, 1970). One option which he identified as available to customers, though rarely to voters, is ‘exit’. Another is ‘voice’-to engage the holders of power in conversation, for example by complaining. Exit and voice are, Hirschman noted, versions of economics-with all its emphasis on consumer choice-and politics, which is nothing if not a conversation. His third mode of responding to organizational life was loyalty, except of course that loyalty can co-exist with both exit and voice. Indeed, you could argue that true loyalty demands voice. © 1995 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.