Abstract
The paper studies how leaders can break employee silence. Drawing upon self-determination theory, we argue that empowering leadership can activate employees’ intrinsic motivation such that employees are more willing to break the silence at work; furthermore, the effect is stronger when employees have high (vis-à-vis low) levels of job autonomy. We collected time-lagged and multi-source data in a large company to test our hypotheses. The results show that intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and employee silence. That is, empowering leadership can reduce employee silence through enhancing their intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, this mediation effect will be stronger when employees have high levels of job autonomy. This paper contributes to the literature on leadership, employee silence, and job design characteristics.
Highlights
Employees operating on the front line know best about how their organizations can improve, but they often keep silent about their opinions (Tangirala and Ramanujam, 2008a)
Based on self-determination theory (SDT), we examined the effects of empowering leadership on employee silence via intrinsic motivation
Empowering leadership was positively related to intrinsic motivation (r = 0.43, p < 0.01) and negatively related to employee silence (r = −0.25, p < 0.01)
Summary
Employees operating on the front line know best about how their organizations can improve, but they often keep silent about their opinions (Tangirala and Ramanujam, 2008a). Employee silence is defined as “the withholding of ideas, suggestions, or concerns about people, products, or processes that might have been communicated verbally to someone inside the organization with the perceived authority to act” (Kish-Gephart et al, 2009, pp 166–167). If employees frankly present their concerns and suggestions about possible changes to work activities, their organizations can enjoy improved work processes and innovation (Argyris and Schon, 1978; Glauser, 1984) and higher levels of organizational performance (Argote and Ingram, 2000). We believe that all of these mechanisms help break employee silence
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