Organizational Silence and Organizational Commitment: Empirical Evidence from the Greek Public Sector

Abstract

Organizations perform better and have less employee turnover when the latter voice their suggestions and concerns. This study explores how organizational silence factors affect organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Given the limited related empirical evidence, this study investigated a randomly selected sample of 205 participants currently employed in a Greek public organization. To collect data, a structured questionnaire was used and multiple linear regression analysis was implemented to test hypotheses. Results showed the existence of the silence climate that leaded to employees’ silence behavior and negatively affected all dimensions of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. This study may help public entities’ management, especially in cases of countries with bureaucratic inefficiencies in the public administration, in order to successfully implement structural changes enhancing communication channels reducing thus silence and increase employee commitment and satisfaction.

Keywords

organizational silence organizational commitment communication opportunities job satisfaction public sector

Introduction

Human resource practices that include communication as a process of exchange of ideas, opinions, and information in the workplace are able to positively influence employee commitment to change (Mahmmud, Hassan, and Shaharudin 2019). However, it is a common phenomenon the prevalence of organizational silence where employees in organizations appear reluctant to share information, ideas and opinions and hierarchical superiors also discourage open communication (Morrison 2023). Organizational silence negatively affects organizational commitment and job satisfaction, especially in public organizations, and leads, among others, to weakening organizational effectiveness (Kim and Park 2019; Vakola and Bouradas 2005).

Public organizations face numerous external and internal challenges that threaten the implementing of successful strategies regarding the fulfillment of their mission. To avoid missing out on opportunities, public entities should remove barriers that are concerned with bureaucratic structures that impede communication and information gathering and foster climate of silence and talent loss (Brown, Kaur, and Khan 2020). Public organizations today need not only to recruit but also to retain and enhance commitment of their employees, especially the talented ones as they implement the actual public sector changes (Sun 2021). Committed employees are those who work in an organization which promotes open communication, collaboration, and encouraging employee involvement in decision-making processes, training and development and rewards and recognition (Coffie, Boateng, and Coffie 2018).

Although organizational silence is widely explored in organizations, there is little empirical evidence investigating the effects of its factors on the forms of organizational commitment especially in countries where public sector faced structural reforms toward modernization, which is paramount to ensure high quality provision of public goods and services (Athanassiou et al. 2019). Our study contributes to the existing literature by attempting to explore, into a previously unexplored area, the effects of the perceived organizational silence climate and employees’ silence behavior (Vakola and Bouradas 2005) on each of organizational commitment’s dimensions, namely, affective, continuance and normative commitment according to Allen and Meyer’s (1990) typology and to job satisfaction, in the context of Greek public administration.

Theoretical Framework and Hypothesis

The Organizational Silence Phenomenon

Morrison and Milliken (2000) first used the term “organizational silence” to describe the phenomenon that prevent organizations from hearing their employees’ voice and employees deliberately withhold information, opinions, or concerns about problems or issues related to the organization they work.

Various concepts of silence have been explored in the literature (see Prouska and Psychogios 2019 for a comprehensive overview). Employees may exhibit “loyalty” choosing not to “voice” their dissatisfaction but to stay and employ their energies to improve the organization (James and John 2021). Also they may appear reluctant to express negative thoughts or report a problem in order to avoid communication of unpleasant information upward in the organization’s hierarchy. This is the so-called MUM effect (Ramingwong and Snansieng 2013). Distortion of messages, a result of the MUM effect, reduces transparency and accountability and can have negative consequences such as the Challenger space shuttle explosion (Whiteside and Barclay 2013).

Also, organizations often fail to respond to employees’ complaints (deaf ear syndrome) promoting silence (Knoll and Redman 2016) while, employees’ enhancing perception of weak support of their opinions in many issues within the organization may lead to continuous silence, the so-called “spiral of silence” (Matthes, Knoll, and von Sikorski 2018).

Dimensions of employee silence are distinguished from each other according to their underlying motives. Acquiescent silence is based on employees’ sense of resignation and their futile feelings concerning inability to make a difference. Quiescent silence or defensive silence is related to employees’ purposeful self-protective behavior stemming from their fear about the negative consequences they have if they speak (Van Dyne, Ang, and Botero 2003). Prosocial silence can serve as a protective behavior with the goal of benefiting other people and is based on the principles of altruism and organizational citizenship behavior (Brinsfield 2013). However, employees’ expedient actions of protecting a knowledge advantage or avoiding additional workload, guided primarily by self-interested motives may lead to opportunistic silence or deviant silence (Knoll and Van Dick 2013).

As a multidimensional concept, organizational silence is related not only to the personal characteristics of employees of an organization and also to the specific characteristics of the organizational and environmental conditions, for example high concentration of decision-making and low employee involvement, implicit managerial beliefs about the value of employees’ contributions, managers’ attitudes toward dissent and lack of feedback mechanisms (Morrison and Milliken 2000; Nafei 2016).

Causes and Effects of Organizational Silence

Organizations’ top management often employs silence in the context of proactive crisis management strategies to reduce reputational damage In US and Hong Kong silence was found to be commonly practiced by ministries and corporations, respectively, while, in Croatia, in contrast, 16.3 percent of companies are likely to use silence during a crisis (see Le et al. 2019 for an overview of international cases).

Within an organization, the main antecedents of the phenomenon of organizational silence that consist of the perceived, macro and micro, climate of silence and lead to employees’ silence behavior, are (1) the imposition of silence by top management in order to limit employees’ negative feedback, (2) the supervisor’s support of silence, mainly due to subordinates’ fear of repercussions if they express a contrary view and (3) the lack of communication opportunities, which are related to the absence of openness and trust in communication and information sharing that lead employees to the feeling that their input will not be taken seriously (Vakola and Bouradas, 2005). According to Morrison (2023), other investigated antecedents of silence are associated with individual-level characteristics (i.e., emotions and perceived power) and leaders’ style and behavior (i.e., abusive supervision and knowledge hiding). Employees also may strategically combine silence with voice, expressing ideas or concerns to managers when the latter really need them in order to gain positive performance evaluations and job rewards (Parke et al. 2022). While employees tend to respond to opportunity-enhancing managerial practices with voice, organizations must reinforce mechanisms for meaningful participation intended to enhance talented employees’ motivation and involvement (Chamberlin, Newton, and LePine 2018; Formit 2018). Less voice opportunities among employees seem to reduce employees affective commitment (Wang et al. 2014), organizational commitment and satisfaction (Vakola and Bouradas 2005) and have negative psychological effects on employees such as fear and frustration, lack of motivation and self-confidence, leading to increased employee absenteeism and turnover (Fard and Karimi 2015) and decreased public organizations performance (Boufounou and Avdi 2016; Morrison 2014).

Thus, we propose the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1 (H1): The attitudes of top management and supervisors toward silence, communication opportunities, and employees’ silence behavior are significant predictors of organizational commitment among employees.

Hypothesis 2 (H2): The attitudes of top management and supervisors toward silence, communication opportunities, and employees’ silence behavior are significant predictors of job satisfaction among employees.

Conceptualization of Organizational Commitment

Organizational commitment refers to the extent to which individuals accept and internalize the goals and values of the organization they work, making every effort to achieve its goals and have a strong sense of staying and continuing their career in the organization (Al- Jabari, and Ghazzawi 2019). Allen and Meyer’s (1990) three component model (TCM) have been widely adopted and employed across several contexts (Klein et al. 2012; Meyer and Allen 1991) becoming the predominant theory for understudying the concept. In this model, organizational commitment is defined as “a psychological state that characterizes the employee’s relationship with the organization, and has implications for the decision to continue or discontinue membership in the organization” (Meyer and Allen 1991:67) and three dimensions of commitment are distinguished: (1) affective commitment, which refers to the employees’ emotional and psychological attachment with the organization; (2) continuance commitment, which is related to the cost of the employees’ leaving the organization (prestige, socioeconomic reasons); and (3) normative commitment, which reflects the sense of moral obligation to continue working in the organization.

The improvement of employees’ commitment reduces absenteeism (Khan et al. 2016) and enhances organizational performance (Al Zefeiti and Mohamad 2017; Liang, Shu, and Farh 2019; Meyer and Herscovitch 2001) with affective commitment being the most important dimension toward employees voluntarily willingness to exert effort on the organization’s behalf (Cho and Huang 2012). Also, the positive relationship between organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior has been confirmed (Liu 2009), while according to Grego-Planer (2019), in public entities, employees more often engage in citizenship behavior presumably due to the less favorable financial working conditions that usually exist in public sector organizations which strengthen employees’ willingness to provide mutual assistance. Regarding job satisfaction, if employees are satisfied, they are organizationally committed (Loan 2020).

The Effects of Factors of Organizational Silence on the Dimensions of Organizational Commitment. The Greek Central Public Administration as an Instrumental Setting

The industry in which an organization operates seems to affect organizational commitment (Bodjrenou, Xu, and Bomboma 2019). Fantahun et al. (2023) concluded that the overall level of organizational commitment is low in public sector employees while Genevičiūtė-Janonienė and Endriulaitienė (2014) found that private sector employees have higher affective and normative commitment compared to public sector employees. Suzuki and Hur (2020) in their comparative survey of public sectors in 20 EU countries, concluded that in public organizations, which are usually organized according to the Weber’s bureaucracy (Weber 1947), employees show higher continuance commitment as the security of their job position and the benefits they enjoy (as pension and insurance schemes) create a greater sense of obligation to stay in the organization.

Although there is a substantial research activity, especially over the last decade, regarding the relationship between organizational silence and organizational commitment (Table 1) the relationship between the factors of organizational silence, that is the perceived climate of silence, according to Vakola and Bouradas (2005) typology and employees’ silence behavior on organizational commitment and its most discussed dimensions, namely, the affective, normative and continuance commitment (Allen and Meyer 1990), seems to remain an understudied issue.

Table 1.

Summary of Last Decade Studies in the Relationship Between Organizational Silence and Organizational Commitment.

Author	Field/sector	Measures regarding silence and commitment	Major findings
Olanipekun and Oderinde (2024)	Retail	Researchers-made questionnaire	Positive weak relationship
Afzal et al. (2023)	Education	Researchers-made questionnaire	Negative relationship
Kızrak and Yeloğlu (2023)	Health	Silence: Van Dyne et al. (2003) Commitment: Calantone, Cavusgil, and Zhao (2002)	Positive relationship with prosocial silence
Keshk (2021)	Clothing	Researchers-made questionnaire	Negative relationship with affective commitment
Rayan, Ali, and Moneim (2020)	Education	Silence: Brinsfield (2013); Morrison and Milliken (2000); Pinder and Harlos (2001); Vakola and Bouradas (2005) Commitment: Morrow (1983)	Negative relationship
Cetin (2020)	Sport	Silence: Van Dyne et al. (2003) Commitment: Meyer and Allen (1991)	Positive relationship with prosocial silence only
Kim and Park (2019)	Public (Sport)	Silence: Van Dyne et al. (2003) Commitment: Meyer, Allen, and Smith (1993)	Positive relationship with prosocial silence only
Hozouri, Yaghmaei, and Bordbar (2018)	Public (Municipality)	Researchers-made questionnaire	Negative relationship
Korkmaz (2018)	Public (Health)	Silence: Van Dyne et al. (2003) Commitment: Allen and Meyer (1990)	Positive weak relationship
Hussain et al. (2016)	Education	Çakici (2008)	Positive relationship
Qazelvand and Shahtalebi (2016)	Education	Silence: Vakola and Bouradas (2005) Commitment: Allen and Meyer (1990)	Negative relationship
Dedahanov and Rhee (2015)	Heavy industry companies	Researchers-made questionnaire	Negative relationship
Fard and Karimi (2015)	Education	Silence, job satisfaction and commitment: Vakola and Bouradas (2005)	Negative relationship
Mirmohhamd and Marefat (2014)	Health	Silence and commitment: Vakola and Bouradas (2005)	Silence does not mediate the relationship between silence and commitment
Laeeque and Bakhtawari (2014)	Education	Silence: Brinsfield (2009) Commitment: Wasti (2000)	Negative relationship

To this end, we assume that the perceived climate of silence and employees’ silence behavior have negative effect on each of organizational commitment’s dimensions and job satisfaction, especially of public organizations employees. Thus, we propose the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 3 (H3): The attitudes of top management and supervisors toward silence, communication opportunities, and employees’ silence behavior are significant predictors of affective commitment among employees.

Hypothesis 4 (H4): The attitudes of top management and supervisors toward silence, communication opportunities, and employees’ silence behavior are significant predictors of continuance commitment among employees.

Hypothesis 5 (H5): The attitudes of top management and supervisors toward silence, communication opportunities, and employees’ silence behavior are significant predictors of normative commitment among employees.

The above relationships (H1-H5, see Figure 1) may offer practical implications to policymakers regarding the impact of each of the factors of organizational silence on the different dimensions of organizational commitment and job satisfaction especially in case of public bureaucratic organizations where employees are particularly reluctant to share ideas and provide inputs (Kim et al. 2019) and exhibit low organizational commitment with detrimental behavioral and performance consequences (Kjeldsen and Hansen 2018). The quality of the functioning of a country’s public administration has implications and consequences to economic performance and to the well-being of its citizens since the prevalence of silence negatively affects organizational commitment (Morrison 2023) being a potentially dangerous impediment to organizational change and development (Toosi and Hosini 2020).

Figure 1.

Conceptual framework and hypothesis testing.

Public organizations management strategies must be developed that reduce bureaucracy and conflicting demands, increase professional influence and enable a continuous and open dialogue between their employees (Kim et al. 2019; Welander, Astvik, and Isaksson 2019).

Methods

After 2007–2008 global financial crisis, Greece, as most of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2016) countries, has been approaching civil service reforms primarily intended to control cost and to maintain the commitment and motivation of employees in the face of difficult retrenchment programs. As silence is affected by the structural reforms an organization endures (Wynen et al. 2020), Greece constitute an instrumental setting for examining the impact of organizational silence factors, primarily, on all forms of organizational commitment and also on job satisfaction.

With quantitative methodology being the dominant research framework allowing a detailed exploration of the relationship between organizational silence and commitment (see Table 1) this study, conducted a mixed exploratory and confirmatory research design. The exploratory research goal was to identify the levels of the perceived climate of silence and the employees’ silence behavior within the organization. The confirmatory goal was to identify whether organizational silence climate factors and employees’ silence behavior (Vakola and Bouradas 2005) can predict organizational commitment and its most discussed dimensions, namely, the affective, normative and continuance commitment, according to Allen and Meyer’s (1990) typology, and also job satisfaction. Research hypotheses H1-H5 were tested through a series of five multiple linear regressions analyses each with one of the following variables affective, continuance, normative, organizational commitment and job satisfaction among employees, as dependent variable and top management attitudes toward silence, supervisors attitudes toward silence, communication opportunities and employees’ silence behavior as predictors.

Respondents and Procedure

The population was consisted of 431 employees working in government departments (central Greek public administration). Stratified sampling was chosen as the sampling method in order to ensure the representation of each part of the population (Parsons 2014). Data collection took place from May to August 2021, in the late second phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, using mainly electronic questionnaires. Inclusion criteria were used to determine which employees belong to each stratum, specifically (1) employees must belong to the permanent staff of the public body under consideration, (2) to be excellent speakers of the Greek language, and (3) give their informed consent. The only exclusion criterion was that all participants sampled should meet all the selection criteria. Then, the population of the study was divided into strata-subgroups, according to gender, and non-proportional stratified sampling was followed. A random sample is then taken from each subgroup (in direct proportion to the size of the stratum compared to the population) and combined to create the sample size which amounted to 205 participants or 47.6% of the population. 280 questionnaires were given and the response rate was 73.2%. As seen in Table 2, the majority of the sample consisted of permanent employees, females, aged between 45 and 54, holding a university degree, working 11–20 in the organization and 6–8 years in their current position.

Table 2.

Demographics.

Item	Category	N	f %
Gender	Male	58	28.29%
Gender	Female	147	71.71%
Age	25–34	4	1.95%
	35–44	34	16.59%
	45–54	81	39.51%
	55–64	71	34.63%
	65+	15	7.32%
Level of education	Secondary	45	21.95%
	Technological	22	10.73%
	University	63	30.73%
	Postgraduate	62	30.24%
	PhD	13	6.34%
Time worked in the organization (years)	0–10	32	15.61%
	11–20	83	40.49%
	21–30	77	37.56%
	30+	13	6.34%
Time worked in post (years)	0–2	18	8.78%
	3–5	47	22.93%
	6–8	78	38.05%
	9–11	43	20.98%
	12+	19	9.27%
Position in the organization (hierarchical)	Permanent employee	149	72.68%
	Deputy Head of Department	16	7.80%
	Head of Department	25	12.20%
	Deputy Head of Directorate	10	4.88%
	Head of Division	5	2.44%

Measures

Data were collected by means of an original questionnaire. It consisted of 62 questions including Vakola and Bourada’s 5-point Likert-type scale (Vakola and Bouradas 2005), which allows the measurement of the impact of the organizational silence factors on organizational commitment and Allen and Meyer’s 7-point Likert-type scale (Allen and Meyer 1990) for the measurement of the three dimensions of organizational commitment, namely, affective, continuance and normative commitment.

In order to test content validity, as the present study’s sample differed significantly from the ones used by the scales’ creators, the questionnaire was submitted to exploratory factor analysis (Fabrigar and Wegener 2011) which conducted twice, firstly in the pilot study’s sample (N = 33) and flowingly in the main study’s sample (N = 205) with satisfactory results. The pilot study of the questionnaire was carried out in a decentralized service of a Greek public organization. All members of the workforce of the said organization that were eligible for participation (n = 33), matching the same criteria that were later used in the main study, participated in the pilot study. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy was performed (Kaiser 1958) and scores were 0.609 and 0.511, respectively, above the commonly accepted 50% cut-off for social sciences (Field 2013) where 79.88% of Allen and Meyer’s scale’s variance and 75.33% of Vakola and Bourada’s scale’s variance explained by the factor structure. Regarding the main study’s sample, Allen and Meyer’s scale achieved a KMO score of 0.926 and 74.21% of the scale’s variance explained by the factor structure and 23 out of the 24 questions been assigned to the correct factor (95.83%). CMV score was calculated at 49.69 supporting the viability of an exploratory factor analysis. Αt the same time, the Vakola and Bourada’s scale, achieved a KMO score of 0.848 with 67.58% of the total scale’s variance explained by the factor structure and 19 out of the 21 items assigned in the correct factor (90.48%). Organizational commitment and job satisfaction scale exhibited very good results in both the pilot and the main study. In the pilot test the scale scored a KMO of 0.862 and 72.43% of the scale’s variance explained by the factor structure which was verified for eight out of nine questions (88.89%). In the main study the scale had a KMO of 0.917 with 75.54% of the scale’s variance explained by the factor structure which was confirmed for seven out of nine questions (77.78%).

Regarding internal consistency (“reliability”) of the questionnaire, values of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (Cronbach 1951) were satisfactory in the pilot study, ranging 0.741–0.941. In the main study, alpha coefficient ranged 0.736–0.950 (see Table 3). Τo assess the possibility of a common method bias/variance (CMV) (Podsakoff et al. 2003), a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted.

Table 3.

Reliability Analysis.

Factor	Items	KMO	Alpha	AVE	CR	Factor loadings
Affective commitment	8–10, (11–13) R, 14, 15R	0.926	0.950	0.565	0.91	0.484–0.877
Continuance commitment	(16, 19) R, 17–18, 20–23		0.908	0.558	0.909	0.562–0.851
Normative commitment	(25, 26, 31) R, 24, 27–31		0.927	0.607	0.915	0.691–0.841
Top management attitudes to silence	(32–33) R, (34–35)	0.848	0.736^a
Supervisors’ attitudes to silence	(37–41) R		0.901	0.560	0.879	0.386–0.861
Communication opportunities	42–46		0.805	0.552	0.831	0.662–0.813
Employees’ silence behavior	(47–53) R		0.909	0.551	0.895	0.645–0.859
Organizational commitment	54R, 55–58	0.917	0.901	0.564	0.865	0.635–0.874
Job satisfaction	59–62	0.917	0.848	0.532	0.817	0.569–0.858

Cut offs: KMO ≥ 0.5, AVE ≥ 0, α ≥ 0.7, CR ≥ 0.7, Factor loadings ≥ 0.35. R: Reverse = question reversal.

Removed question 36 because α < 0.7.

Results

Descriptive data and 95% confidence interval of the dimensions of perceived climate of organizational silence and silence behavior in the organization suggest that, on average, employees perceive top management and supervisors to have a relatively high attitude toward silence (see Table 4).

Table 4.

Descriptive Data and 95% Confidence Interval of the Dimensions of Perceived Climate of Organizational Silence and Employees’ Silence Behavior in the Organization.

Variables	M	SD	95% lower limit	95% upper limit
Top management attitudes to silence	3.30	0.64	3.21	3.39
Supervisors’ attitudes to silence	3.25	0.77	3.15	3.36
Communication opportunities	2.65	0.58	2.58	2.73
Employees’ silence behavior	3.18	0.77	3.07	3.29

Table 5 summarizes the results of the multiple regression analysis with organizational silence factors as independent variables and organizational commitment, job satisfaction, affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment as the dependent variables, respectively, to explore H2–H5. Results show that top management attitudes to silence have the most negative and significant relationship with organizational commitment Also, supervisors’ attitudes toward silence, communication opportunities, and employees’ silence behavior are important predictors of organizational commitment among employees. The model explains a significant proportion of the variance in organizational commitment, indicating that these factors are important for understanding this type of commitment.

Table 5.

Results of the Multiple Regression Model With Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, Affective Commitment, Continuance Commitment, and Normative Commitment as the Dependent Variables and Organizational Silence Factors as Independent Variables.

Dependent variable	R	R ²	Adj. R²	F(4, 200)	p
Organizational commitment	0.760	0.577	0.569	68.232	<0.001
Independent variable	B	Std. B	t	p	VIF
Constant	5.124	-	11.107	<0.001	-
Top management attitudes to silence	−0.435	−0.341	−5.706	<0.001	1.688
Supervisors’ attitudes to silence	−0.252	−0.237	−4.135	<0.001	1.549
Communication opportunities	0.259	0.182	3.008	0.003	1.725
Employees’ silence behavior	−0.202	−0.190	−3.315	0.001	1.561
Dependent variable	R	R ²	Adj. R²	F(4, 200)	p
Job satisfaction	0.670	0.449	0.438	40.744	<0.001
Independent variable	B	Std. B	t	p	VIF
Constant	4.527	-	9.304	<0.001	-
Top management attitudes to silence	−0.320	−0.272	−3.982	<0.001	1.688
Supervisors’ attitudes to silence	−0.070	−0.071	−1.087	0.278	1.549
Communication opportunities	0.266	0.202	2.932	0.004	1.725
Employees’ silence behavior	−0.277	−0.283	−4.311	<0.001	1.561
Dependent variable	R	R ²	Adj. R²	F(4, 200)	p
Affective commitment	0.620	0.384	0.372	31.219	<0.001
Independent variable	B	Std. B	t	p	VIF
Constant	7.233	-	7.229	<0.001	-
Top management attitudes to silence	−0.698	−0.304	−4.220	<0.001	1.688
Supervisors’ attitudes to silence	−0.374	−0.195	−2.825	0.005	1.549
Communication opportunities	0.425	0.166	2.280	0.024	1.725
Employees’ silence behavior	−0.196	−0.103	−1.481	0.140	1.561
Dependent variable	R	R ²	Adj. R²	F(4, 200)	p
Continuance commitment	0.317	0.100	0.082	5.570	<0.001
Independent variable	B	Std. B	t	p	VIF
Constant	6.784	0	7.235	<0.001	-
Top management attitudes to silence	−0.409	−0.230	−2.638	0.009	1.688
Supervisors’ attitudes to silence	−0.232	−0.156	−1.870	0.063	1.549
Communication opportunities	0.077	0.039	0.443	0.658	1.725
Employees’ silence behavior	0.138	0.093	1.115	0.266	1.561
Dependent variable	R	R ²	Adj. R²	F(4, 200)	p
Normative commitment	0.596	0.355	0.342	27.510	<0.001
Independent variable	B	Std. B	t	p	VIF
Constant	6.712	-	7.022	<0.001	-
Top management attitudes to silence	−0.897	−0.419	−5.675	<0.001	1.688
Supervisors’ attitudes to silence	−0.158	−0.088	−1.250	0.213	1.549
Communication opportunities	0.363	0.152	2.035	0.043	1.725
Employees’ silence behavior	−0.071	−0.040	−0.562	0.575	1.561

Cut off: p ≤ 0.05.

Also, top management attitudes to silence have negative and significant relationship with job satisfaction while, on the contrary, supervisors’ attitudes to silence have a negative but not statistically significant relationship with job satisfaction. Employees’ silence behavior has a negative and significant relationship with job satisfaction, while, on the contrary, communication opportunities have a positive and significant relationship with job satisfaction. Overall, the model explains a moderate proportion of the variance in job satisfaction, indicating that there may be other important factors that influence job satisfaction beyond the organizational silence factors included in this study. Moreover, top management and supervisors’ attitudes to silence have a negative and significant relationship with affective commitment. Communication opportunities have a positive and significant relationship with affective commitment while employees’ silence behavior does not have a statistically significant relationship with affective commitment. Overall, the results suggest that top management and supervisors’ attitudes toward silence and communication opportunities are important predictors of affective commitment among employees. Finally, top management attitudes toward silence are important predictors of continuance and normative commitment among employees while supervisors’ attitudes to silence, communication opportunities and employees’ silence behavior do not have a significant impact. However, the model only explains a small proportion of the variance in continuance commitment and a moderate proportion of the variance in normative commitment, indicating that there may be other important factors that influence these types of commitment.

Results confirmed the reported results of previous studies about the existence of negative correlation between organizational silence factors and organizational commitment and its dimensions (see Tables 1 and 6).

Table 6.

Results of the Hypothesis Testing.

	Hypothesis	Acceptance/Rejection
H1	Organizational silence factors^a predict Organizational commitment	Accepted
H2	Organizational silence factors^a predict Job satisfaction	Accepted
H3	Organizational silence factorspredict Affective commitment	Accepted
H4	Organizational silence factors^a predict Continuance commitment	Accepted
H5	Organizational silence factors^a predict Normative commitment	Accepted

Top management attitudes to silence, supervisors’ attitudes to silence, communication opportunities and employees’ silence behavior.

Cut offs: multiple linear regression’s ANOVA p ≤ 0.05.

Discussion

The findings reveal an interesting picture on the impact of organizational silence factors on the dimensions of the organizational commitment of employees in a public organization. Although this study has limitations, the findings make key contributions to the research literature and have direct implications for utilization as they will have consequential effect on the employee commitment. This commitment could either take the form of the affective type, normative or continuance type, with affective one being preferred since it relates with positive behavioral constructs, as job satisfaction (see Cho and Huang 2012).

Implications

In cases of public bureaucratic organizations employees seem reluctant to share ideas and provide inputs (Kim et al. 2019) and usually exhibit low organizational attachment with detrimental behavioral and performance consequences due to their hierarchical structure (Kjeldsen and Hansen 2018; Luu 2018). To this end, hierarchical superiors should reinforce employees’ affective commitment, ensuring open communication, increasing access to information and giving employees the chance to participate in organization’s or department’s decision making (Charles, Francis, and Oaya Zirra 2021).

Furthermore, public organizations’ top management should rethink support of employees, especially during organizational changes, with reward programs, recognition and other defined benefit packages which may increase employees’ continuance commitment so talented and experienced employees, would probably wish to maintain their employment relationship with the organization in order to protect their accrued side-bets. This may also help not only to achieve the set goals in cases of countries under public administration adjustment programs but also to overcome the barriers concerning demographic changes to effective knowledge transfer between public sector organizations’ employees (OECD 2021).

Conclusions

While in previous researches, employees remain silent in order not to face negative effects mainly from their supervisor and then from top management (Vakola and Bouradas 2005), here, on the contrary, top management’s role was proved to be instrumental for employees keeping silent. These pieces of evidence is attributed to the specific bureaucratic structure of the examined public organization where the role of supervisors seems to be more mediating than substantive as the majority of regular duties and responsibilities are assigned to employees from top management. As the organization are not only a workplace, but also a place of contact between employees who develop interpersonal relationships, the prevalence of silence climate shows that it has become a belief among employees that differences in power distribution (high power distance) prevails within the organization (Kwon, Farndale, and Park 2016) as decisions are made mainly by top management and then by the supervisors and disagreement with these decisions is perceived as a lack of loyalty, discouraging upward communication, reinforcing employee silence climate and having strong negative effect mainly on employees’ affective commitment and on their job satisfaction (Tahmasebi, Sobhanipour, and Aghaziarati 2013). This effect is partly hedged by the existence of communication opportunities between employees, so the enforcement of the climate of silence is moderated. Specifically, experienced employees aged fifty five years and above and/or have been working more than thirty years in the organization perceive that strong communication opportunities do exist in the organization. This causal basis is consistent with the outcome that employees with more than eight years in their current position are less likely to believe that the supervisor triggers the climate of silence in the organization, less likely to exhibit silent behavior, and more likely to believe that communication opportunities do exist in the organization. This is partly understandable, as younger and talented employees when appointed show enthusiasm and willingness to change for the better the organization and the relationships between them by introducing innovative ideas. However, as the years go by, they find out that the prevailing climate of silence is a hindrance, so they compromise and become familiar with it, maintaining mostly personal relationships with their peers and hierarchical superiors, tending to be less concerned with the issues of the organization (Hazen 2006; Nikolaou, Vakola, and Bourantas 2008). Also, silent behavior is higher among employees who are in low levels in the organization’s hierarchy compared to other positions (supervisor, director, etc.) and also tend to see more likely negative outcomes related to voice behavior, since they possess little power within the organization and fear that they will not be taken seriously if they speak up (Milliken, Morrison, and Hewlin 2003).

When employees’ opinions are not heard by the hierarchical superiors, organizational commitment is seriously negatively affected. But, going beyond, this study found the existence of negative correlation between organizational silence factors and all of the dimensions of organizational commitment. When silence climate prevails, employees’ normative commitment (moral obligation to stay at work) is reduced and they feel less emotional attached to the organization and to the department they service (affective commitment). As for continuance commitment, employees do not seem to prefer to change organization, instead their perceived benefit is to remain in the organization but to continue their tenure in other department, expecting to be treated differently under a future new administrative hierarchal structure.

Limitations

The results of the study must be viewed with caution given its limitations. The sample size comprises of only the people employed in central office of the organization so there is no wide geographical scope (e.g., nationwide). Additionally, a larger sample of public sector employees could be reached through cross-sectional design. Furthermore, since triangulation offers richness and clarity to research, the use of several data collection methods such as interviews and observations would enhance the validity and credibility of the findings, mitigating the presence of any research biases. Also, the distribution of the questionnaires and the interviews were conducted at specific time periods that coincided with the COVID-19 epidemiological crisis and with announcements by the political leadership of rapid organizational changes involving the transfer of responsibilities and personnel.

Future directions

This paper provides an intriguing and avenue of research on the impact of organizational silence factors on the dimensions of the organizational commitment of employees in a public organization, aiming at enriching specific knowledge in the above field, assisting public organizations’ top management to reduce the phenomenon of organizational silence and encouraging civil servants to voice their concerns and share their knowledge, ideas, and opinions in order to reinforce organizational commitment enhancing thus organizational effectiveness. This may trigger more research exploring further organizational silence in public sector as for example the effects of the separate forms of organizational silence, that is, defensive, acquiescent and prosocial silence (Van Dyne et al. 2003) and quiescent, acquiescent, prosocial and opportunistic silence (Knoll and Van Dick 2013) on the dimensions of organizational commitment. Also, this paper gives insight about the role that public managers may play in changing the governance of routines promoting their beliefs, that have to be explicit and shared, and also employees’ participation in knowledge sharing and decision making. Otherwise, organizational silence rises and all forms of organizational commitment and employees’ job satisfaction are negatively threatened. We hope that this

paper will place organizational silence high on the agenda in public sector’s management development programs allowing the implementation of policies that encourage employees to express their feedback and thoughts openly and safely.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Andreas Efthymiopoulos

Aspasia Goula

Author Biographies

Andreas Efthymiopoulos is a PhD candidate at the University of West Attica. He holds a Master in Educational Studies (2016), a Master in Applied Economics (1999), and a Bachelor in Economics (1996). He currently works in a government finance organization and has 22 years’ work experience at financial and educational organizations developing management expertise. He has made publications and has active participations in international and national conferences.

Aspasia Goula is a professor of Organizational Culture and Organizational Change in Health Services at the University of West Attica. She has been involved as a researcher in 23 research projects concerned the organization of health care services and employment, the improvement and autonomous living of people with disabilities, the development of a standard model of health care, the self-care and rehabilitation of patients with neoplasia, and the development of systems’ quality in health services.

Alexandros Psychogios is a professor of Leadership & International HRM at Loughborough University. He is also an Affiliated Professor at ALBA Graduate School of Business and visiting researcher at the South-Eastern European Research Center. His research interests are associated with international HRM, leadership, management practices in SMEs, organizational neuroscience and complexity, and performance/reward management. He has published widely in academic journals and co-authored the books Neuroscience for Leaders (2016 and 2020) and Managing People in Small and Medium Enterprises in Turbulent Contexts (2019).

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. 2020. “Just Keep Silent. . . Defensive Silence as a Reaction to Successive Structural Reforms.” Public Management Review 22(4):498–526. doi:10.1080/14719037.2019.1588358.