 How strategic silence enables employee voice to be valued and rewardedMichael R. Parke, Subrahmaniam Tangirala, Apurva Sanaria and Srinivas Ekkirala Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2022, vol. 173, issue C Abstract: We challenge the predominant viewpoint in the literature that employee silence is inherently harmful. We theorize that employees can engage in strategic silence, or the intentional withholding of untimely ideas or concerns, in order to raise issues that resonate better with managers when they do speak up. More specifically, we propose that employees’ voice is deemed higher quality by managers, and as a result, earns them higher performance evaluations and rewards, when those employees also engage in strategic silence. In a qualitative study (Study 1), we document the dimensions and real-life examples of strategic silence. In two multi-source survey-based field studies (Study 2a and Study 2b) and a pre-registered online experiment (Study 3), we demonstrate support for our theoretical model. Through our findings, we highlight that strategic silence is a functional and useful type of silence that employees use to gain more positive appraisal of their voice from managers. Keywords: Voice; Silence; Strategic silence; Voice quality; Performance; Rewards (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:173:y:2022:i:c:s0749597822000760 DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2022.104187 Access Statistics for this article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes is currently edited by John M. Schaubroeck More articles in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes from Elsevier |
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