The Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences of Employee Silence

Abstract

Employee Silence (ES) is a pervasive phenomenon. It has serious effects on an individual, team, and organizational level. However, given its pervasiveness little, there is still a lot to be known about its antecedents and consequences. The objectives of the study were to explore the antecedents, correlates and consequencs of ES at individual level. It is imperative to find these factors since the researchers argue that ES has far more negative effects than positive. Using the survey method, the data was collected by administering the adapted questionnaire (n=229) from the banking sector. The analyses confirmed the hypotheses in line with the extant employee silence literature. The instrumental climate had been found to significantly affect ES. Similarly, the ES was found to be negatively related with job satisfaction and have significant positive effect employee wellbeing. The theoretical framework of the research has extended the current themes of research in the employee silence literature which has opened up avenues for the practitioners. It is receommneded that the organizational climate should be fostered as conducive, so ES is reduced leading to better employee wellbeing. Further, as part of future research, it has been recommended that the dispositional factors and laboratory settings may be utilized to better understand the underlying phenomena driving employee silence.