Investigating the Impact Of Organizational Climate On Organizational Silence In Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

A favourable organizational climate is vital for the effective functioning of organizations, as it promotes the exchange of knowledge and information in the team, develops the competencies of employees, motivates them to manage the organization, predicting that they will express themselves and respond to problems in the working environment and beyond. Organizational silence is a term used to denote the phenomenon of collective behavior of employees when they do not want to discuss their thoughts, feelings and organizational problems, express their suggestions during meetings, hide information about potential difficulties or challenges, etc. Organizational silence can lead to “suppression of the collective voice”, limited communication from the bottom up, a decrease in the level of corporate involvement of employees, the effectiveness of organizational changes, the emergence of explicit or latent organizational conflicts, deformations in the organizational culture and inhibition of decision-making dynamics. The article, based on the example of the University of Setif2, Algeria, examines how the teachers of this university evaluate the organizational climate in their team, whether they feel the presence of the problem of organizational silence and at what level, whether there is a relationship between the corporate environment and organizational silence, and to what extent they influence each other. On one, what factors of the organizational climate can affect the reduction of organizational silence. The basis of the study was a survey of 50 teachers from various departments of the university in 2021: a simple random sample, the questionnaire contains 39 items, and a Likert scale was used for assessing the responses; the Cronbach’s alpha scale has been utilized to determine the scales’ reliability. SPSS version 26 software was used for data analysis, frequency analysis, simple regression, multiple regression, descriptive statistics, and stepwise multiple regression. The results showed a moderate relationship between organizational climate and organizational silence (the partial correlation coefficient of organizational climate is 0.708). In addition, it has been proven that the organisational environment influences organizational silence, not vice versa. Leadership turned out to be the most significant of the investigated determinants of the organizational climate (leadership, organizational structure, working conditions, participation in decision-making, and communication), which allows for reducing organizational silence. The leader’s behaviour plays a vital role in mitigating the negative consequences of organizational silence, can strengthen employees’ trust, and strengthen their sense of identification or attachment to their organizations. Communication has the most significant influence, and organizational structure has the most minor influence of all the determinants of organizational climate. The article studied two types of organizational silence: submissive silence and defensive silence, and the first was more significant from teachers’ perceptions than the second. The results of this study can be helpful in the management of universities and other educational institutions to adapt the current organizational structure, create conditions for direct dialogue between management and employees, help more active agents of positive change, increase the overall level of decision-making efficiency, create more opportunities for teachers to take on themselves more responsible, improve working conditions in universities, etc.