Journal ArticleDOI
Spirals of Silence: The Dynamic Effects of Diversity on Organizational Voice*
Frances Bowen,Kate Blackmon +1 more
TLDR
In this article, the authors argue that the fear and threat of isolation are particularly powerful for members of invisible minorities such as gay and lesbian employees, and propose a second, vertical "spiral of silence" may develop through processes at a more micro level within the workgroup and organization.Abstract:
When will individuals speak up about organizational issues, and when will they remain silent? We suggest that organizational voice will be significantly influenced by individuals’ perceptions of the attitudes towards an issue within their workgroup. In particular, individuals will be more likely to speak up when they believe that their position is supported by others, and remain silent when they believe that it is not. We explain this using the ‘spiral of silence’ proposed by Noelle-Neumann (1974, 1985, 1991) and widely used in public opinion research, which explains how majority opinions become dominant over time and minority opinions weakened.
Spirals of silence within groups can restrict the open and honest discussion that is essential to organizational improvement. Noelle-Neumann's spiral of silence emphasizes the horizontal pressures that the threat of isolation and corresponding fear of isolation exert to keep people from being open and honest about their opinions. We argue in this paper that the fear and threat of isolation are particularly powerful for members of invisible minorities such as gay and lesbian employees. We propose a second, vertical ‘spiral of silence’ may develop through processes at a more micro level within the workgroup and organization. This second spiral begins with the inability to fully express one's personal identity within the workgroup because of a negative climate of opinion towards a particular aspect of one's identity. This may be especially true for ‘invisible’ sources of diversity such as sexual orientation. Revealing a potentially disruptive identity might impair social cohesion: concealing it, however, can inhibit social exchange and task exchange and reduce self-efficacy, leading to organizational silence. However, an alternate virtuous spiral can result in which individuals will feel empowered to express organizational voice.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Making the invisible visible: fear and disclosure of sexual orientation at work.
TL;DR: Using a national sample of 534 gay, lesbian, and bisexual employees, this study examined the antecedents that affect the degree of disclosure of a gay identity at work and the factors that influence their fears about full disclosure.
Journal ArticleDOI
Disclosure Disconnects: Antecedents and Consequences of Disclosing Invisible Stigmas across Life Domains
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the effects of individual and environmental factors on disclosure decisions across life domains, and examined psychological states and outcomes associated with disclosure disconnects and offer directions for future research.
Posted Content
Employee Proactivity in Organizations: A Comparative Meta-Analysis of Emergent Proactive Constructs
TL;DR: In this paper, a meta-analysis of 103 independent samples provides a comparative evaluation of the relationships associated with four emergent proactive constructs including proactive personality, personal initiative, voice, and taking charge.
Journal ArticleDOI
Silenced by fear:: The nature, sources, and consequences of fear at work
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw on research from disciplines ranging from evolutionary psychology to neuroscience, sociology, and anthropology to unpack fear as a discrete emotion and to elucidate its effects on workplace silence, and present a deeper understanding of the nature of fear experiences, where such fears originate, and the different types of employee silence they motivate.
Journal ArticleDOI
Perceived organizational support for safety and employee safety voice: The mediating role of coworker support for safety.
TL;DR: This study evaluates the important role that coworkers can play in encouraging others to speak out about safety issues, and hypothesized and tested a mediated model predicting employee safety voice using a cross-sectional survey of urban bus drivers in the United Kingdom.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Social Identity Theory and the Organization
Blake E. Ashforth,Fred A. Mael +1 more
TL;DR: This article argued that social identification is a perception of oneness with a group of persons, and social identification stems from the categorization of individuals, the distinctiveness and prestige of the group, the salience of outgroups, and the factors that traditionally are associated with group formation.
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Psychological empowerment in the workplace: dimensions, measurement, and validation
TL;DR: In this paper, a multidimensional measure of psychological empowerment in the workplace has been developed and validated using second-order confirmatory factor analysis with two complementary samples to demonstrate the convergent and discriminant validity of four dimensions of empowerment.
Journal ArticleDOI
Organizational citizenship behavior: its nature and antecedents
TL;DR: A study of 422 employees and their supervisors from 58 departments of two banks found that citizenship behavior includes at least two separate dimensions Altruism, or helping specific persons, and Generalized Compliance, a more impersonal form of conscientious citizenship.
Journal ArticleDOI
Searching for Common Threads: Understanding the Multiple Effects of Diversity in Organizational Groups
TL;DR: This article reviewed and evaluated recent management research on the effects of different types of diversity in group composition at various organizational levels (i.e., boards of directors, top management groups, and organizational task groups) for evidence of common patterns.
Journal ArticleDOI
Top Management Team Demography and Corporate Strategic Change
TL;DR: The authors examined the relationship between the demography of top management teams and corporate strategic change, measured as absolute change in diversification level, within a sample of Fortune 500 companies, and found that top management team demography was correlated with strategic change.