Organizational silence: employee voice and workplace communication dynamics

¶ … Employees Remain Silent in Organizations/Companies?

The objective of this study is to read the work entitled "Making Sense of Organizational Members' Silence" and to summarize this article and examine the scope of this article. This study will identify the ideas or conclusions that would appear to generate interest, insight, or controversy for readers and discuss the implications of the authority's ideas regarding communication and organizations. Finally this study will examine the article's strengths and weaknesses.

The work of Bagheriu, Zaret, and Aeen (2011) reports that organizations have powerful forces that result in information being withheld throughout the organization about concerns or issues and that this is referred to as organizational silence. This is reported as a "collective phenomenon" and to have been classified according to top management team characteristics, organizational and environmental characteristics, employee interaction effect, belief of management, policies and structures of the organization, fear of negative feedback by management and dissimilar demographics. Silence is defined as follows: "Silence is not only defined as not to speak but also defined as not to write, not be present, not to hear and to ignore. Silence also includes talk or text without credit. Moreover, silence may refer to censoring, suppression, marginalization, trivialization, exclusion and other forms of discount." (Bagheriu, Zaret, and Aeen, 2011, p. 273) Bagheriu, Zaret, and Aeen (2011) additionally state that the reasons for organizational silence or organizational voice are inclusive of the reasons stated in the following table labeled Figure 1.

Figure 1

Reasons for Organizational Voice and Silence

The work of Aylsworth (2009) reports that organizational silence effectively renders change in the organization to be impossible. Tahmasebi, et al. (2013) reports that the concerns of organizational managers should be the building of strength in terms of the "organizational voice of staff and their comments about organizational issues." (p.272)

The work of Bisel and Arterburn (2012) begins by defining organizational silence as "employee's refusal to communicate troubling information to management" and states that organizational silence is quite common in the workplace. (p.217) It is noted by Bisel and Arterburn (2012) that there is little in the way of empirical research available in this area of inquiry. Research presently available is such that focuses on describing the types of issues that are determined to be something that will not be communicated. In the area of communication research focuses on the methods used for dissent by employees. However, it is reported that Morrison and Milliken (2000) stated a theoretical proposal concerning the dynamics that result in organizational silence and the role played by organizational silence that bars the adaptability of the organization and that stands in the way of organizational change. The conceptual framework described by Morrison and Milliken (2000) relate that organizational or employee silence is derived from "a process of collective sensemaking, whereby employees together try to derive meaning about their workplace: it demands, constraints and outcome contingencies." (p.714 cited in Bisel and Arterburn, 2012, p. 218)

I. Negative Feedback as Sensemaking

Negative feedback in sensemaking is examined by Bisel and Arterburn (2012) and report that the need is perceived on the part of workers to make some sense of interactions in the workplace. However, when action is engaged in that result in difficulty in terms of interpreting those actions then employees become confused and are stressed out. Sensemaking experiences difficulty when their occurrence "violate[s] expectations about how work will unfold." (Bisel and Arterburn, 2012, p. 219) When an employee is in dissent with workplace practices or policies of the organization and when the subject of the disagreement is related to actions of supervisors "representative of the organization's practices and policies" resulting is the employee's perception of a violation of how the relationship between the employee and supervisor should unfold. Employees are quite often in fear of giving negative feedback to superiors due to the idea that they may lose their job. The research question addressed by Bisel and Arterburn (2012) is one that asks the question of: "In what ways do employees make sense of their decision to refrain from providing upward negative feedback to their supervisor about their supervisor?" (p. 219)

II. The Study

The study conducted by Bisel and Arterburn (2012) involved a sampling of 226 working adults. Participants are reported to have been recruited from the professional networks of the researchers and researchers requested that each of these forward an email of solicitation to five other working adults. The emails are reported to have directed the participants to a survey online. The participants signed consent forms and provided information about their demographics and then participated in an experiment and were asked the question of: "Have you ever been in a situation in which you wanted to provide negative feedback to your supervisor about your supervisor but decided against it? If so, why did you decide against it? Please respond in the box below." (Bisel and Arterburn, 2012, p.219) In some cases, respondents provided more than one reason and each reason was separately treatment with a total of 213 reasons stated. The projected cost-benefit analysis was engaged in by the participants in which the participants weighed the results of speaking out against the benefits of staying silent.

III. The Findings

The findings in the study report as follows:

"First, workers made sense of their decision by evoking expectations about how speaking up would unfold (although such projections are sensemaking devices and uncertain in that they had not yet happened). At times, participants themselves were the target of accounts; in such cases, participants predicted that speaking up would result in their harm. In other retrospective accounts, participants' supervisors were the target of accounts; in such cases, participants projected that such interactions would be futile in that supervisors would fail to give heed. Second, workers made sense of their decision by evoking identities. At times, participants drew on their identities as subordinates to make sense of their own understanding as likely deficient; in these cases, participants identified themselves as insufficiently expert to speak." (Bisel and Arterburn, 2012, p.222)