Antecedents and consequences of silence at work: an exploratory study

Abstract

Discovering the antecedents and consequences of employees' silent behaviour may reveal important contingencies that can explain why employees choose to adopt such behaviours and which are the consequences for both individuals and organizations. We interviewed 30 full-time employees working for a range of industries such as pharmaceuticals, banking, shipping, consulting, coming from both the public and the private sector. Our analysis showed many causes of remaining silent at work such as individual characteristics, organizational characteristics, interpersonal relationships and fear of suffering the consequences. This work shed light to various reasons behind employees' silent behaviours to different recipients such as supervisors, colleagues and subordinates. Our research identified individual-level such as stress and job dissatisfaction, team-level such as distant or toxic interpersonal relationships and organizational level consequences such as low morale.