Silence and voice in the organization : The influences of silence motives and psychological safety

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate which factors influence the employees’ decision of voice or silence when facing a critical or an ethically problematic situation within their organizations. Following previous studies, we assumed four factors of employee silence motivation, Quiescent, Acquiescent, Prosocial, and Opportunistic and examined the relationship among the perception of psychological safety climate, these factors, and the behavior of voice and silence. To confirm assumed factor structure and to test the hypotheses about these relationships, we conducted a structural equation modeling using 204 participants from one governmental and four private organizations. The results indicated that the motivation of silence was explained by four factors and the perception of psychological safety climate decreased quiescent silence motivation and had a mediated impact on voice behavior. The acquiescent silence motivation was affected by the quiescent silence motivation and had a positive impact on silence behavior.