The Silence of the Professionals

Abstract

Silence research has increased over the last decades, still, until today, almost no efforts to scrutinize one of the allegedly most exposed industries – professional service firms – have been undertaken. In this paper, we examine the phenomenon of silence in the organizational context of these firms. We derive connections between antecedents for a climate of silence and the constituent characteristics of professional service firms from theory. After conducting 29 expert interviews in a consulting, and an auditing firm, we can demonstrate that various antecedents for silence are prevalent in professional service firms and that withholding information, problems, or concerns is widespread within the organization. Furthermore, we find that employee motives not to speak up differ in their expression from previous studies in the research area of silence. Quiescent and especially opportunistic intentions play a meaningful role and are driven by the desire for advancement in the competitive up-or-out career model, which is distinctive to professional service firms. We are the first to show that professional service firms are susceptible to silence due to their culture and organizational circumstances. Furthermore, we contribute to the research on silence by demonstrating that the underlying motives that lead to different types of silence vary according to organizational characteristics.