engleski

Remaining silent in eleven languages: Validating scales for employee silence motives across fifteen countries

Purpose The exchange of ideas, opinions, and concerns is vital for sustainable individual and collective development. If employees conceal information or withhold their views, potential for improvement and learning lays dormant and negative circumstances may endure which potentially harm, employees, organizations, and stakeholders. Research and media reports indicate that employee silence is an internationally occurring phenomenon. To facilitate research on employee silence, we validate a measure of four forms of silence based on their underlying motives (i.e., fear, resignation, prosocial, and opportunistic ; Knoll & van Dick, 2013) across fifteen countries (eleven languages). We expand this measure by two additional motives, namely disengagement and lacking confidence (Brinsfield, 2013), and examine whether relationships between the six motives and relevant antecedents (i.e., psychological safety) and outcomes (i.e., health) of silence differ across motives and samples. Design/Methodology We collected cross-sectional survey data in sixteen samples (N = 3’639) and inspected the scale’s reliability and validity across these using latent variable modeling. Results Measurement invariance holds across samples. Associations of psychological safety with the silence motives seem invariant across samples (but distinct with respect to motives) whereas the associations with health differ. Limitations We used convenience sampling. Research/Practical Implications We provide researchers with a validated scale of the six postulated motives of employee silence and explore international differences in silence motives and relationships of silence with psychological safety and health. Originality/Value Our large-scale international study is the first to develop and validate a fine-grained measure of silence motives and provides preliminary evidence for its usefulness

employee silence ; silence motives ; psychological safety and health ; validation ; international study

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