What Does Employee Silence Mean? the Role of Organizational Climate and Burnout
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34190/ecmlg.20.1.2913Keywords:
Authentizotic Psychological Climates,, Burnout,, Employee SilenceAbstract
The avoidance of employees to express and share their ideas and opinions about organizational issues leads to the multidimensional concept of employee silence. From an organizational perspective, it is necessary to take in consideration that individuals tend to remain silent about situations that are less positive in the organization. But silence is not just the absence of voice or communication. Silence prevents individuals from carrying out their work in the most appropriate way, can act as a barrier to organizational change and can influence the employee well-being. Acquiescent silence is the retention of information considered relevant, based on resignation and submission (passive retention) and quiescent silence comes from fear of the negative consequences from sharing information, being used as a form of self-protection. Prosocial silence is related to altruistic motives and opportunistic silence is used to obtain personal advantages. It becomes relevant to determine the factors associated with this silence and what are the implications of employee silence on employee well-being. Thus, the objectives of this study are i) to study the of employee silence motives, ii) to understand whether two of the dimensions of the authentizotic organizational climate (leader´s trust and credibility and opportunities for learning and personal development) are antecedents of employee silence and iii) to study the consequences of employee silence motives on burnout. A quantitative study is conducted, using a questionnaire survey applied to a sample of 222 individuals, working in different portuguese organizations. The confirmatory factor analysis identifies four employee silence motives. The regression analyses highlighted that authentizotic psychological climate dimensions, namely learning and personal development opportunities, were predictors of the three dimensions of employee silence: quiescent silence, aquiescent silence and opportunistic silence. Regarding the impact of employees’ silence on burnout, aquiescent silence stood out as the main predictor of different burnout dimensions: emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment and depersonalization. Finally, it can be concluded that acquiescent silence seems to stand out as the silence variable most explained by authentizotic organizational climate and the one that most explains the appearance of burnout. The findings can be used by human resources managers.