Organizations frequently invite employees to speak while leaving the reception, interpretation, and conversion of concerns dependent on individual managers. This arrangement confuses opportunities for voice with the organizational capacity to notice consequential signals and respond responsibly. This Original Conceptual Framework Article develops managerial listening as a proposed organizational capability rather than a personal communication behavior. The framework integrates five connected processes: sensing employee concerns across formal, informal, representative, and technology-mediated channels; interpreting ambiguous and conflicting signals without equating visibility, style, or status with merit; mobilizing authorized and resourced responses; closing feedback loops through acknowledgment, explanation, attribution, and status communication; and using accumulated response histories for organizational learning. The article proposes that listening becomes capability-like only when these processes are repeatable, distributed, supported by routines, and capable of altering ordinary decisions or practices. It further proposes decision principles concerning signal provenance, plural interpretation, response ownership, non-retaliation, reason-giving, and readiness for organizational reliance. The framework does not assume that every concern should be accepted, that employee perceptions establish organizational performance, or that listening produces causal improvements. Its principal limitations are the heterogeneous evidence base, incomplete multilevel validation, context-dependent voice dynamics, and the absence of a validated capability measure. Longitudinal, multisource, behavioral, and comparative research is therefore required to test, refine, or reject the proposed relationships. The contribution is an evidence-bounded architecture for connecting managerial attention to accountable responsive action.
