Background and purpose: Organizational silence, seen as the greatest obstacle to the success of organizations and expressed as a refraining from expressing feelings, and ideas about problems encountered in their organizations, is identified as the avoidance of voluntary reporting in aviation organizations. The main purpose of this research is to identify and develop a tool to measure the various reasons for aviation employees’ remaining silent about the unsafe acts and events they witness, and the factors causing them to refrain from adopting safety enhancement proposals. Methodology: Within the scope of the study, a data collection tool was developed. Explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis of the data obtained from 483 employees was conducted to test the reasons for not reporting voluntarily in aviation. Results: As a result, it was found that employees did not participate in voluntary reporting due to factors of silence based on relational and prosocial factors, disengagement, quiescence and acquiescence, along with fear and defensiveness. Conclusion: Accordingly, organizations need to acknowledge and act with the awareness that organizational silence is a common phenomenon. The importance of voluntary reporting should be explained to employees at every opportunity and the number of quality voluntary reports should be increased. However, this should go beyond the simple slogans of ‘Safety comes first in this workplace’ or ‘Safety first’ hanging on the wall of every organization.

Defined in the organizational behavior literature as employee avoidance of expressing their feelings, thoughts and ideas, the concept of organizational silence refers to the failure to submit reports voluntarily in the context of aviation safety. Due to various factors, aviation employees may avoid reporting. However, managers need voluntary reports from their employees to prevent future accidents. The primary purpose of this study is to find out why air traffic controllers, one of the most critical safety components of flight operation, fail to do voluntary reporting. In addition, whether controllers are involved in real-life voluntary reporting and whether the factors that prevent voluntary reporting vary by demographic variables. The data collected from 212 controllers were subjected to Confirmatory Factor Analysis by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 24 program and the reasons for their failure to do voluntary reporting were identified. Furthermore, the study concluded that approximately 27% of controllers did not submit voluntary reporting on unsafe situations or safety-enhancing recommendations they had seen.

Örgütsel davranış yazınında işgörenlerin duygu, düşünce ve fikirlerini dile getirmekten kaçınmaları olarak ifade edilen örgütsel sessizlik kavramı, havacılık emniyeti bağlamında gönüllü raporlama yapmama şeklinde karşılık bulmaktadır. Bu bağlamda çalışmanın amacı, havacılık çalışanlarının gönüllü raporlama davranışlarında mesleki farklılıklarının rolünün olup olmadığını tespit etmektir. Bu amaç doğrultusunda çalışma yaşamlarına Türkiye’de devam eden pilot, havaaracı bakım teknisyeni ve hava trafik kontrolöründen toplamda 538 katılımcının yer aldığı veri seti elde edilmiştir. Elde edilen veriler SPSS Statistics 23 ile SPSS AMOS 23 programı ile analiz edilmiştir. Analiz sonucu havacılık çalışanlarının mesleklerinin, gönüllü raporlama davranışları üzerinde etkili olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Araştırmada ayrıca ilgili havacılık çalışanlarının, yaklaşık %20’sinin gördükleri emniyetsiz durumlar ya da emniyeti arttırıcı önerilerle ilgili gönüllü raporlamada bulunmadıkları sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Buna ek olarak gerçekleştirilen korelasyon analizleri sonucuna göre, gönüllü raporlamamayı oluşturduğu düşünülen her bir alt boyutun birbirleriyle istatiksel açıdan pozitif yönlü güçlü ilişkiler içinde olduğu tespit edilmiştir.