TY - JOUR
T1 - International differences in employee silence motives
T2 - Scale validation, prevalence, and relationships with culture characteristics across 33 countries
AU - Knoll, Michael
AU - Götz, Martin
AU - Adriasola, Elisa
AU - Al-Atwi, Amer Ali
AU - Arenas, Alicia
AU - Atitsogbe, Kokou A.
AU - Barrett, Stephen
AU - Bhattacharjee, Anindo
AU - Blanco, Norman D.
AU - Bogilović, Sabina
AU - Bollmann, Grégoire
AU - Bosak, Janine
AU - Bulut, Cagri
AU - Carter, Madeline
AU - Černe, Matej
AU - Chui, Susanna L.M.
AU - Di Marco, Donatella
AU - Duden, Gesa S.
AU - Elsey, Vicki
AU - Fujimura, Makoto
AU - Gatti, Paola
AU - Ghislieri, Chiara
AU - Giessner, Steffen R.
AU - Hino, Kenta
AU - Hofmans, Joeri
AU - Jønsson, Thomas S.
AU - Kazimna, Pazambadi
AU - Lowe, Kevin B.
AU - Malagón, Juliana
AU - Mohebbi, Hassan
AU - Montgomery, Anthony
AU - Monzani, Lucas
AU - Pieterse, Anne Nederveen
AU - Ngoma, Muhammed
AU - Ozeren, Emir
AU - O'Shea, Deirdre
AU - Ottsen, Christina Lundsgaard
AU - Pickett, Jennifer
AU - Rangkuti, Anna A.
AU - Retowski, Sylwiusz
AU - Ardabili, Farzad Sattari
AU - Shaukat, Razia
AU - Silva, Silvia A.
AU - Šimunić, Ana
AU - Steffens, Niklas K.
AU - Sultanova, Faniya
AU - Szücs, Daria
AU - Tavares, Susana M.
AU - Tipandjan, Arun
AU - van Dick, Rolf
AU - Vasiljevic, Dimitri
AU - Wong, Sut I.
AU - Zacher, Hannes
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Organizational Behavior published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - Employee silence, the withholding of work-related ideas, questions, or concerns from someone who could effect change, has been proposed to hamper individual and collective learning as well as the detection of errors and unethical behaviors in many areas of the world. To facilitate cross-cultural research, we validated an instrument measuring four employee silence motives (i.e., silence based on fear, resignation, prosocial, and selfish motives) in 21 languages. Across 33 countries (N = 8,222) representing diverse cultural clusters, the instrument shows good psychometric properties (i.e., internal reliabilities, factor structure, and measurement invariance). Results further revealed similarities and differences in the prevalence of silence motives between countries, but did not necessarily support cultural stereotypes. To explore the role of culture for silence, we examined relationships of silence motives with the societal practices cultural dimensions from the GLOBE Program. We found relationships between silence motives and power distance, institutional collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance. Overall, the findings suggest that relationships between silence and cultural dimensions are more complex than commonly assumed. We discuss the explanatory power of nations as (cultural) units of analysis, our social scientific approach, the predictive value of cultural dimensions, and opportunities to extend silence research geographically, methodologically, and conceptually.
AB - Employee silence, the withholding of work-related ideas, questions, or concerns from someone who could effect change, has been proposed to hamper individual and collective learning as well as the detection of errors and unethical behaviors in many areas of the world. To facilitate cross-cultural research, we validated an instrument measuring four employee silence motives (i.e., silence based on fear, resignation, prosocial, and selfish motives) in 21 languages. Across 33 countries (N = 8,222) representing diverse cultural clusters, the instrument shows good psychometric properties (i.e., internal reliabilities, factor structure, and measurement invariance). Results further revealed similarities and differences in the prevalence of silence motives between countries, but did not necessarily support cultural stereotypes. To explore the role of culture for silence, we examined relationships of silence motives with the societal practices cultural dimensions from the GLOBE Program. We found relationships between silence motives and power distance, institutional collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance. Overall, the findings suggest that relationships between silence and cultural dimensions are more complex than commonly assumed. We discuss the explanatory power of nations as (cultural) units of analysis, our social scientific approach, the predictive value of cultural dimensions, and opportunities to extend silence research geographically, methodologically, and conceptually.
KW - context
KW - cross-cultural research
KW - culture
KW - employee silence
KW - voice
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104311133&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/job.2512
DO - 10.1002/job.2512
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85104311133
SN - 0894-3796
VL - 42
SP - 619
EP - 648
JO - Journal of Organizational Behavior
JF - Journal of Organizational Behavior
IS - 5
ER -