Abstract:

During day-to-day activities in organizations, employees of all types and levels may confront problems associated with their work and find out ways to improve organization. For a variety of reasons, most employees choose to withhold potentially useful ideas and suggestions. While employee silence behavior may exert a number of negative impacts, it has not yet been widely concerned. Especially, limited research has examined the impact of the interplay between leader and employee factors on silence behavior. Drawing on the social information processing perspective (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978) and regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997), the current study examined how leader and employee factors interact to affect employee silence behavior. Chinese versions of established English scales were used for this study. These measures were created following Brislin’s (1980) translation-back-translation procedure to ensure that content was parallel. Data were collected from full-time employees from work groups in Beijing. The data collection process resulted in survey data from 447 employees nested in 82 groups from a variety of industries. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) was applied to test the hypotheses. We first examined the cross-level relation of leader power distance orientation with employee silence, and how this relationship was mediated by voice utility and psychological safety. In addition, we tested the moderating effects of regulatory focus on the indirect effects between leader power distance orientation and employee silence using moderated path analysis (Edwards & Lambert, 2007). Consistent with our hypotheses, results indicated that: (1) Leader power distance orientation and group members’ silence behavior were positively related. This relationship was fully mediated by employee voice utility and partially mediated by psychological safety. In addition, the mediation effect of psychological safety became nonsignificant after controlling for voice utility. (2) Employee regulatory focus moderated the indirect effects of leader power distance orientation on employee silence. Specifically, promotion focus accentuated the indirect path of “leader power distance orientation?voice utility?employee silence”, such that this indirect effect was stronger for employees with high versus low promotion focus. Moreover, prevention focus attenuated the indirect path of “leader power distance orientation?psychological safety?employee silence”, such that this indirect effect was stronger for employees with low versus high prevention focus. The current study offers three theoretical contributions: First, we discussed why employees intentionally withhold information by considering both leader and employee factors, and tested hypotheses in a cross-level moderated mediation model. Second, in response to recent appeal of cultural value scholars, we explored the main effect rather than moderating effect of power distance orientation. Last, we extended the theoretical landscape of the employee silence literature by merging it with regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997). Moreover, this study also has managerial implications for leader and employee selections, providing new practical perspectives to reduce employee silence.