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Employee silence is a pervasive workplace phenomenon that can cause severe economic losses to service organizations. Drawing on conservation of resource theory, the present research aims to investigate interpersonal antecedents of employee silence, specifically workplace ostracism while considering the moderating role of negative reciprocity beliefs (NRBs).

Two-wave data collected from 355 employees working in service organizations in Pakistan supported the theorized model. The study used SmartPLS (v 3.2.7) to examine the measurement model and the structural model.

As projected, the authors found that workplace ostracism was positively related to acquiescence silence and defensive silence, but not related to prosocial silence. Besides, this study’s findings supported two-way interaction involving workplace ostracism and NRB on acquiescence silence and defensive silence, but not on prosocial silence. In particular, the presence of high NRB makes the adverse effects of workplace ostracism even worse.

This study explores the boundary conditions under which employee silence is more likely or less likely to occur. This just makes the current research all the more salient that why and when ostracized employees resort to remain silent in the workplace.

Silencing behavior among project team members (PTM) poses a potential threat to project results. Hence, breaking silence in projects is critical to motivate team members and beneficial for project outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between transformational leadership (TL) of project manager (PM) and silence behavior of PTMs. It proposes a mediating role of feeling trusted (FT) to fill this gap by conducting an empirical research.

A theoretical model was developed and a series of hypotheses were proposed based on existing literature. Then, regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 219 team members of a diverse set of projects in China.

The paper empirically shows that TL of PM is significantly negatively related to team members’ defensive and prosocial silence (PS), but not with their acquiescence silence. In addition, the study also discovered that team members’ FT mediates the effects of TL on team members’ defensive and PS.

This study contributed to the project management literature by showing that feeling trusted link the relationship between TL of PM and PTMs’ silence. The studies’ findings also contribute to the silence theory in project context through discussions of the rationale behind the main effects. Practical implication is provided for PMs that making the most of TL can reduce the silence of PTM, through building trusted feelings. The limitation to this study is the research setting regarding culture-related issues that focused only on projects in China.

This research is one of the early studies that address the issue of silence behavior in project context, which is a contribution to the coordination and communication in project management.

Previous studies examined the relationships between trust, organizational commitment and the unitary construct of silence. The authors believe that previous studies’ primary shortcoming is the lack of an understanding of the motives of employees in withholding work related issues when they have a lack of trust in their organization and supervisor and a lack of knowledge regarding the form of silence that impacts more organizational commitment. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of trust in organization and trust in supervisor on acquiescent and defensive silence and examines the effects of acquiescent and defensive silence on organizational commitment.

The study utilized structured equation modeling to analyze data from 753 highly skilled employees in South Korea.

The findings revealed that trust in organization is associated with acquiescent silence; trust in supervisor is related with defensive silence and acquiescent silence demonstrated strong relationship with organizational commitment.

This study is the first to explore the associations between trust in organization and acquiescent silence and the relationships between trust in supervisor and defensive silence. Moreover, our study reports the strong link between acquiescent silence and organizational commitment.

To date, few empirical studies have explored the boundary conditions under which employees may choose to observe silence at work. Drawing on the conservation of resource (COR) theory, the present study bridges this gap by examining the interaction effect of leader-member exchange (LMX) on the relationship between social undermining and employee silence while considering the mediating role of emotional exhaustion.

Data were collected from 327 employees working in Pakistan's service sector through the purposive sampling technique and analyzed using PLS path modeling.

The findings support the authors’ projections such that social undermining, i.e., supervisor undermining, coworker undermining and customer undermining, are positively related to emotional exhaustion. Besides, emotional exhaustion partially mediates the associations between supervisor undermining and employee silence, coworker undermining and employee silence, and customer undermining and employee silence. Further, the results confirm the interaction effect of LMX. The harmful impact of social undermining is exacerbated in high-quality LMX relationships compared to those at low LMX relationships.

This study is one of the few efforts to understand the conditions under which employee silence is more likely or less likely to occur. The authors’ findings draw the attention of researchers and practitioners to understand the uniqueness of this linkage such that variations in leaders' behavior are more detrimental for “in-group” members than their counterparts (i.e. “out-group” members).

Extant research has shown that workplace ostracism (WO) elicits counterproductive work behaviors, such as employee silence (ES), culminating in reduced job performance. However, lesser is known about the factors that buffer against this underlying linkage. With an emphasis on conservation of resource (COR) theory and social identity theory, this study investigates the hitherto unexplored moderating roles of moral identification (MI) and organizational identification (OI) in the relationship between WO and ES.

The study employed a time-lagged design to collect multi-source data from 250 employees working in the service sector organizations in Pakistan. Data are analyzed in SMARTPLS (v 3.3.3) to assess the measurement model and the structural model.

Results reveal that WO is positively correlated with ES and negatively correlated with job performance. At the same time, ES mediates the negative relationship between WO and job performance. In addition, MI and OI buffer against the positive connection between WO and ES. The positive association between WO and ES is less pronounced at high levels of MI and OI and vice versa.

The findings indicate that there is potential value in developing MI and OI, for which several interventions are discussed.

This study is one of the few efforts to outstretch the boundary conditions of ES. Moreover, this is the first study to investigate the role of identity-based perspective in the relationship between WO and ES.

With a basis in the conservation of resource (COR) theory, this study examines the relationship between workplace ostracism and job performance while also investigating the mediating role of defensive silence and the moderating role of emotional intelligence.

The study uses a multisource, three-wave data collection technique to gather data from employees and their peers working in Pakistan's service sector organizations. Data are analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) (v 3.2.7) to assess the measurement model and the structural model.

The findings reveal that the perception of workplace ostracism provokes self-avoidance strategy, defensive silence, which attenuates job performance. However, defensive silence's mediating role is mitigated if employees can draw from their emotional intelligence ability, which induces a self-regulation mechanism that curbs workplace ostracism's negative consequences.

The study demonstrates how employees in collectivist, high-power distance cultural settings may strategically choose silence by exercising emotional intelligence to enhance job performance.

This study is one of the few efforts that examined defensive silence in non-Western cultural settings. This is also the first study that examined emotional intelligence's role in the proposed moderated mediation framework.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate dimensions of employee silence in Indian work context with regard to the supervisors and how job satisfaction mediates the relationship between silence and turnover intention. The study also explores the relevance of superior-subordinate relationship and self-image maintenance perspectives in Indian socio-cultural context to explain and understand the phenomenon of silence in India.

Qualitative (n=55) and quantitative data (n=334, n=314 and n=116) were collected from employees working in private, public and multinational organizations located in northern part of India. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to explore and validate the dimensions of silence behavior among Indian managers and structural equation analysis was carried out to see the meditating role of job satisfaction in the relationship of silence and turnover intention.

Results have indicated the existence of four major dimensions of silence in India namely; fear of retaliation, internal motivation, self-competence and self-image as the possible causes of silence. Further job satisfaction has mediated the effect of silence on turnover intention. This study showed the positive impact of silence on satisfaction which is contrary to the western studies. These results have supported the theoretical arguments developed in this paper in the Indian work context.

The results are useful in understanding the dynamics of silence in Indian organizations as employees might use silence in a strategic manner to regulate their satisfaction and in maintaining their membership with the organization.

The present study is among the first attempts to empirically examine the causes and consequences of employee silence in the high power distance and collectivistic cultural context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore employee voice and silence in the mobile telecommunication industry in Nigeria.

An exploratory qualitative case study methodology was employed in this study. Participant selection was done through a purposeful intensity sampling technique, which resulted in 30 employees from two different multinational organizations and an indigenous organization taking part in in-depth interviews.

Findings show the presence of fear of victimization in the Nigerian workplace embellished by the Sub-Saharan culture and the state of the labor market, which resulted in employee silence. The study revealed that the implementation of culturally adapted employee voice mechanisms within organizations in the mobile telecommunication industry in Nigeria promotes employee voice and organizational performance, whereas a lack thereof results in organizational failure.

A limitation is that the purposive sample of employees from three organizations in the mobile telecommunications industry only permits theoretical and analytic generalization.

A focus on the co-creation of a high-performance work environment and the development of a powerful employee value proposition would foster employee voice.

It will enable multinationals operating in Nigeria understand better how to operate employee voice in order to obtain optimal performance from workers in Sub-Sahara Africa.

This paper contributes to the literature on employee/industrial relations by showing that a high-power-distance national culture and a high unemployment rate affect employee voice and silence, which brings to the fore the importance of adequate employee voice mechanisms through which employees express their voice in order to arrive at beneficial individual and organizational outcomes.

The practice of cronyism is a pervasive problem for most businesses and a great hindrance for employees, but empirical literature on its outcomes is scant. In light of such gaps, the objective of this study is to examine the relationship between organizational cronyism and employees' silence behavior through the mediating role of felt violation and the moderating role of continuance commitment.

A time-lagged cross-sectional survey comprising 226 respondents is carried out in a metropolitan city of a developing country (Lahore, Pakistan). The respondents were selected using the convenience sampling technique.

The findings reveal that organizational cronyism influences employees' silence (acquiescent and quiescent) both directly and indirectly (via felt violation). However, continuance commitment was noted to work as a boundary condition only between felt violation and quiescent silence.

Although the study deals with common method bias by collecting data in two waves, it may restrict causality. The findings not only have implications for the academicians, but also contribute to the conservation of resources theory. This study suggests organizations develop and implement a comprehensive intervention strategy that focuses on both prevention and damage control as a result of organizational cronyism.

Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, this study adds value to the literature by empirically investigating the outcomes of cronyism at work. Moreover, the outcomes and mechanisms under consideration have largely been ignored in the literature.

Although employee silence is pervasive in organizations, its study has been neglected for a variety of reasons, including the assumption that it is a unitary concept meaning little more than inactive endorsement. We review disparate literatures to reveal additional meanings and conceptual complexities related to silence to stimulate its study in work organizations. We develop the concept of employee silence and introduce two attendant forms (i.e. quiescence and acquiescence) along with their behavioral, affective, and cognitive components. We also offer a model that explains why some mistreated employees become silent, how some break their silence, and what organizational contexts produce and reinforce employee silence. Implications of the model for human resource management as well as for future research are discussed.