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This study aims to explore academic women’s silence from the perspective of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), by examining the triadic influences of the individual, environment and behaviour, which impacts their silence. The study examines how women use personal, proxy and collective agency (Bandura, 2018) to reduce silence.

Interviewing 22 academics (20 women, 2 men) at a leading Polish university, this study used the Gioia et al. (2013) method to analyse the interviews, creating first- and second-order codes and final aggregated concepts.

This study finds, from an environmental perspective, that societal-level gendering, which is underpinned by critical social factors and institutional logics that are part of Poland’s culture promoting gender stereotypes and family values influences women’s silence. There is clear evidence for the regression of women’s rights, which compounds women’s silence. These societal-level factors influence a hierarchical, bureaucratic organizational structure, alongside gender segregation. From an individual perspective, reasons for silence include socialization, fear, women’s lack of power, inequality and self-silencing to mitigate harassment or discrimination. Collective agency was a strongly mentioned theme to help reduce silence, which includes implementing training and development initiatives, creating a safe platform to voice concerns, structural transformation and cultural change.

This study contributes to literature regarding women’s silence by exploring reasons for silence through the lens of Bandura’s social cognitive theory and agentic perspective, which demonstrates how silence could be reduced through collective action, in the understudied context of Poland, which highlights how country context intersects with organizational context and individual experience, influencing women’s silence.

Drawing upon social exchange theory, this study investigates how witnessed incivility is related to psychological distress for employees. In addition, scholars dug deep into the potential moderating effect of self-esteem that links witnessed incivility, employee silence and psychological distress.

In data were obtained from 292 bankers at family-owned banks. In this work, data analysis was performed using Smart-PLS covariance-based SEM version 4.

The study results indicate that employee silence mediates witnessed incivility and psychological distress. Findings also suggest that high self-esteem can mitigate the harmful effects of witnessed incivility, indirectly causing silence and psychological distress among employees.

Family-owned bank management should encourage employees to speak up, demonstrate self-esteem and share their concerns. Thus, reducing witnessed incivility increases well-being, stress, and mental health in Pakistani family-owned enterprises which operate in diverse industries.

In the context of family-owned banks, our study adds context and theory to the existing body of knowledge by illuminating the underlying process that relates incivility with psychological distress By exploring the use of social exchange theory.

This performance autoethnography may or may not be interpreted as a continuation of a conversation regarding the experiences of those with devalued statuses in academic settings. The authors rely on “strange accounting” to consider their experiences in the academy from various standpoints: before and after promotion, before and after leaving academia. While reflecting on our past experiences, we introduce the concept of “everyday precariousness” as a way of explaining the normalization of instability, insecurity, and negative affect that is part of everyday life for those with devalued statuses in academic settings and beyond. Everyday precariousness is an embodied experience for those in vulnerable positions. Normalized exposure to risks, such as discrimination, harassment, bullying, or structural instability, produces an undercurrent of threat that permeates academic culture. Our stories of everyday precariousness span race, ethnicity, class, academic roles, and gender boundaries (among many others). Analyzing these experiences furthers previous work on the uses of strange accounting as well as the dynamics of status silencing. In the final analysis, unresisted and unabated, everyday precariousness and status silencing can lead to institutional failure and resonance disasters.

Our chapter explores the impacts of genderwashing practices within Hockey Canada (HC), a national organization that governs major and minor hockey leagues in Canada. A 2018 case involving allegations of sexual assault by members of the U20 junior men's hockey team acted as a catalyst to expose HC's organizational practice of silencing victims and covering up bad behavior. Through the application of media content analysis, we argue that HC's responses to the case (financial settlements, Nondisclosure Agreements, and a new educational and training program) reflect genderwashing practices and exemplify a superficial attempt to address sexual violence within the organization. What results is a culture of silence, poor leadership, and the normalization of violence within HC. Our chapter contributes to the genderwashing literature, through the development and application of genderwashing as a conceptual framework that can be applied to responses to allegations of sexual assault.

Expressing views on organizational information security (IS) by employees is vital for improving security processes, policies and trainings, while non-communication may conceal the true state of the human factor of IS and lead to security breaches. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of opinion expressing about organizational IS, provide an explanatory model based on the theory of spiral of silence and offer its empirical validation.

Data from a web-based survey among the employees of one the universities in the European Union (n = 504) was analyzed with regression analysis to investigate the proposed hypotheses.

The study reveals that employees with positive opinions about IS will be more willing to share their opinions with coworkers and management. However, when employees perceive that their pro-IS opinions are not shared by other coworkers, they will remain silent, which increases the risk of problematic opinions spreading throughout the organization.

The study highlights the need to focus on the communication perspectives of organizational information security, an area often overlooked in the human factor of information security research.

The results highlight the need to examine the gap between the dominant climate of opinion about IS in the organization and the display of compliant IS behaviors in order to strengthen IS endeavors. Organizations are encouraged to facilitate open dialogue about IS processes, policies and training and implement mechanisms for considering employees’ feedback in order to improve the organization’s IS.

The study contributes to a growing body of research that moves beyond viewing employees merely as subjects of compliance, recognizing instead their agency in IS issues that can enhance organizational resilience. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to apply the spiral of silence theory in the IS field, thereby helping to overcome the lack of communication science perspectives in organizational IS research.

The main aim of this paper is to explore the influence mechanisms of perceived organizational politics (POP) on employee performance (EP). Drawing on the job demands-resources theory (JD-R), this paper investigates opportunistic silence (OS) as a mediating factor and job level as a moderating effect in the POP-OS-performance relationship.

This study’s data were collected from 203 employees working in Indian high-power distance organizations (HPDOs), such as the military, police and security forces. Mediation and moderation analysis were conducted using PLS-SEM, and the moderated mediation index was calculated using Hayes PROCESS Macro.

The results indicate that OS fully mediates the POP-performance relationship – specifically, POP as a job demand activates OS, which acts as an energy/resource depleting mechanism and further deteriorates task performance. Interestingly, the overall negative influence of POP and OS on EP was stronger for employees at lower job levels than those at senior job levels.

This paper offers a unique set of findings that enrich the understanding of factors responsible for employees’ performance in the highly political environments of HPDOs. By using the lens of JD-R theory, this paper draws attention towards the tendency of employees to indulge in self-serving behaviours like OS in politically charged contexts which is detrimental to their performance and may also undermine overall organization’s productivity. Furthermore, this paper also highlights the conditional effects exerted by job level in the unique nexus of POP, OS and EP.

Previous research has demonstrated that social-relational factors are instrumental to employee voice. An essential aspect of this relates to notions of respect or disrespect. Although nurses commonly report experiencing professional disrespect in their interaction with doctors, earlier studies have focused on how the professional status hierarchy and power imbalance between doctors and nurses hinder speaking up without considering the role of professional disrespect. Addressing this gap, we explore how professional disrespect in the doctor–nurse relationship in surgical teams influences the willingness of nurses to voice legitimate concerns about threats to patient safety.

Fifty-seven semi-structured interviews with nurses drawn from a range of specialities, ranks and surgical teams in three hospitals in a West African Country. In addition, two interviews with senior representatives from the National Registered Nurses and Midwifery Association (NRNMA) of the country were undertaken and analysed thematically with the aid of NVivo.

Disrespect is expressed in doctors’ condescending attitude towards nurses and under-valuing their contribution to care. This leads to safety concerns raised by nurses being ignored, downplayed or dismissed, with deleterious consequences for patient safety. Feeling disrespected further motivates nurses to consciously disguise silence amidst speech and engage in punitive silence aimed at making clinical practice difficult for doctors.

We draw attention to the detrimental effect of professional disrespect on patient safety in surgical environments. We contribute to employee voice and silence by showing how professional disrespect affects voice independently of hierarchy and conceptualise the notion of punitive silence.

This chapter presents a genderwashing critique of UK historic universities. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it conceptualizes genderwashing and gender-based violence (GBV). Underpinned by feminist subjectivity, raising consciousness to women's situated lived experiences, examples of public declarations of gender equality by UK historic universities are considered alongside women's experiences of GBV. Using Walter's (2022) genderwash varieties, university hypocrisy is illustrated by women academic handmaidens, abuse of women in Professional Services, and women standing up to GBV. This chapter contributes “Eradicating and Silencing Women’”and “Asking the Minority to Fix It” as genderwash processes, theorizing how genderwashing (or genderbleaching) in historic universities not only perpetuates the falsehood of practicing equality but also provides a veil to conceal GBV.

In recent years, in research and policy circles, there is growing interest in the subject of speaking up (and silence) within the health sector, and there is a consensus that it is a major issue that needs to be addressed. However, there remain gaps in our knowledge and while scholars talk of a voice system – that is the existence of complementary voice channels designed to allow employees to speak up – empirical evidence is limited. We seek to explore the notion of a voice system in a healthcare organisation as comprising structures and cultures as seen from different stakeholder perspectives. What do they see and how do they behave and why? To what extent do the users see a voice system they can access and easily navigate?

Interviews and focus groups were conducted with a voice stakeholder group (e.g. designers of the system from senior management and HR, which comprised 23 staff members) as well as those who have to use the system, with 13 managers and 26 employees from three units within a metropolitan hospital: an oncology department, an intensive care unit and a community health service. Overall, a total of 62 staff members participated and the data were analysed using grounded theory to identify key themes.

This study revealed that although a plethora of formal voice structures existed, these were not always visible or accessible to staff, leading to confusion as to who to speak up to about which issues. Equally other avenues which were not designated voice platforms were used by employees to get their voices heard.

This papers looks at the voice system across the organisation rather than examining a specific scheme. In doing so it enables us to see the lived perceptions and experiences of potential users of these schemes and their awareness of the system as a whole.

This study explores the under-researched phenomenon of workplace bullying against women in male-dominated Pakistani society, highlighting its severe impacts and bridging the research gap on intersectional effects of gender and cultural dynamics in developing countries.

Using a mixed-method research approach, we conducted two-wave surveys with 308 female workers in Pakistan's educational and health sectors. Data analysis examined relationships between workplace bullying and job outcomes like productivity and satisfaction, complemented by insights from in-depth interviews with 18 female workers.

The study reveals that workplace bullying significantly undermines job productivity, increases emotional exhaustion mediated by job anxiety and decreases job satisfaction among female workers. Bullying persists due to weak institutions and inadequate law enforcement, with perceived social support found to be an insignificant moderator.

The study findings underscore the economic implications of workplace bullying, as it drives female workforce attrition, hindering economic development. The study recommends conflict resolution strategies, effective HR policies, national law enforcement and supportive social networks to combat bullying and create a conducive work environment.

This study aligns with the UN's SDG goals #5 (gender equality) and #8 (decent work and economic growth), addressing pertinent issues related to workplace bullying in pursuit of these global objectives.

This study represents a unique attempt to address the intersectional dynamics of gender and culture concerning workplace bullying in Pakistan.