An exploratory study towards conceptual framework of employe silence

Employees, with their different views and the knowledge they have, are pretty valuable and cheap resources for the administrative echelons. Because, those employees who have a variety of expertise are the most important sources of information, which creates awareness of what really happens inside and outside the organization. Nevertheless, the employees having those information to get silent is recently examined by the scholars due to several reasons. This common phenomenon in the organizations is conceptually defined as Employee Silence/ Organizational Silence. Employee Silence/ Organizational Silence is generally defined as the information not to be conveyed to the related positions conciously and purposely by the employees. This study seeks to answer the question of how and why the employees who are vital resources for the organizations get silent. Hence, this study aims to propose a conceptual model explaining the components of the silence phenomenon with an explorative method and a descriptive view. Research sample consists of the individuals at various levels, working for different types of organizations (private sector, public sector, local organizations, non-governmental organizations, political organizations) in Turkey. In this study designed with a qualitative approach, semi-structered in depth interviews and focus groups used as data collection techniques. The obtained data is coded thematically, after being subjected to qualitative content analysis. The encoded data that have been collected then classified under specific themes. Factors that result in silencing the employees and the employee silence were coded based on the research findings under two main themes. Those are the environmental factors within the organization and the personal factors. Concerning the environmental factors, the employees are mostly affected by the managerial applications and attitudes. As the organizational structure and its properties considered in the same context mainly emphasizes the structural silence, it makes the employees silent on intellectual foundations. In the context of personal factors, employees remain silent because of several personal and demographic characteristics. One of the main orientations of this study is the effort to conceptualize. In this context, new definitions are made to differentiate the concepts of Employee silence and Organizational Silence and to eliminate the confusion between these concepts. In this study, the concept of Behavioral Silence is being used instead of Employee Silence, and the differences between those two notions are being discussed. Furthermore, the dimensions of Behavioral and Organizational Silence have been found out based on research findings and for each dimension the required definitions are made. In this section, also a taxonomy for the forms of silence and a conceptual model based on research findings has been developed.