Abstract:
Organizational silence is an important and prevalent phenomenon for the organizations.
Organizational silence is a collective level phenomenon which occurs when employees
deliberately choose to withhold opinions and concern about issues and problems
pertaining to their job and the organization. The reason behind withholding of opinions
and concerns could be protecting from negative consequences of speaking up or the
perception that speaking up does not make a difference. It develops from certain
organization and managerial conditions and characteristics which are conducive to
silence such as centralized decision making, lack of upward communication and
managerial attitude towards employees input. The study is intended to investigate the
relationship between organizational silence and its consequences; employee’s feeling of
not being valued and lack of organizational trust. In addition the study is intended to
investigate the role of employee demographics in shaping organizational silence such as
gender, supervisory status and union membership. The study is quantitative and
explanatory field research and first time going to be conducted to the best knowledge of
the researcher. Target industry is public banking sector of Pakistan. Data was collected
from the employees of National Bank which is a largest public sector bank. Multi stage
sampling was applied and self-administered printed and e-mail questionnaires were used
to collect the data. Correlation together with the regression analyses was used to
investigate the relationship and the predictive affects between the variables. Study results
reveal that there is negative and significant relationship between organizational silence
and employee’s feeling of being valued and organizational trust. Study results further
reveal that level of organizational silence is different with respect to employee
demographics. The study has provided recommendations for both academicians and the
practitioners.
