Critical
Analysis: Organizational Silence
By: Jody
R. South
The
purpose of this essay is to briefly summarize Bisel & Arterburn’s article
entitled “Making Sense of Organizational Member’s Silence: A
Sensemaking-Resource Model” (2012, pp. 217-226), including the authors’ intent
and theory. Further, the essay to follow
shall endeavor to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article as well
as my personal, subjective opinions of the material as it is presented.
Intent
and Theory
The major theme of the article was the sensemaking abilities of, and reasons for, employee reluctance to provide negative feedback to their managers and supervisors. Out of a sample of 226 adult employees, “180 (79.65%) were able to recall a situation in which they refrained from providing negative feedback” (Bisel & Arterburn, 2012, p. 219). Staff defended their quietness by employing both identity and expectation as sensemaking resources (p.219). Workers reasons for not reporting negative feedback are contained in the later portions of this paper. The article closes with a recommendation for further research into the causality of organizational silence (p. 224).
The article is rooted in several
theories and philosophical perspectives which informed the authors’
research. Among these perspectives are
the frequency and commonality of employee reluctance to report issues to
supervisory personnel (Perlow & Williams, 2003), as well as theories
related to the type of issues that result in employee silence (Milliken,
Morrison, & Hewlin, 2003). Other
perspectives include the possible consequences of delivering negative
information (Withey & Cooper, 1989) and the ethics of employee silence
(Miceli, Near, & Dworkin, 2008).
A theory postulated by Morrison and
Milliken (2000) regarding the subtleties that lead to employee silence and how
that silence thwarts organizational change, is a guiding concept that they
employ throughout the article. A large
part of this theory centers on the possibility that corporate culture and
sensemaking mutually affect each other (Morrison & Milliken, 2000).
The research performed by Bisel and
Arterburn (2012) supplements the theory of Morrison and Milliken (2000) by
studying how employees make sense of their decision to remain silent when
presented with the opportunity to present negative feedback to management. They then explain the procedure that they
believe creates a silent culture. The
research question posed by the authors’ to those surveyed was as follows: “In
what ways, do employees make sense of their decision to refrain from providing
upward negative feedback to their supervisor, about their supervisor (i.e.,
remain silent)?” (Bisel & Arterburn,
2012, p. 219).
Methodology
The methodology employed in the
study included the subjective responses of the aforementioned sample of 226
employees, of which 180 “were able to recall a situation in which they
refrained from providing negative upward feedback” (Bisel & Arterburn,
2012, p. 219). The sample that included
those employees who refrained from reporting negative information was comprised
of roughly 65 percent females and 35 percent males, and an average of 40.86
years of age (p. 219). These respondents
were primarily based in one of 25 American states with the exception of a
single Australian (p.219). The
experience level of the employees ranged from new employees to seasoned workers
on the verge of retirement age who had zero to 45 years of experience in a
supervisory role (p. 219).
The methodologies employed to
measure and investigate failure to report negative upward feedback included the
recruitment of individuals from the researchers’ networks of professional
contacts (Bisel & Arterburn, 2012, p. 219).
These workers were then instructed to solicit five of their professional
contacts, and so forth, until the desired sample size was achieved (p.
219). The individuals that agreed to
participate in the study were then directed to take a survey over the
Internet. The survey included a
permission form, a demographic questionnaire, an experiment, and lastly, the
aforementioned research question (p.219).
The authors’ used a form of
inductive, thematic data analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), which was
employed to isolate, evaluate, and note the major thematic data arrays. Of the 180 responses to the research
question, 213 reasons were cataloged (Bisel & Arterburn, 2012, p.
220). Responses were then collected into
two major sensemaking resource banks and five motivation categories (p.220).
Results
The five motivation categories and percentage of responses generated by thematic analysis included the following:
·
Predicting harm to themselves (70.42%)
·
Constructing the supervisor as responsible
(13.62%)
·
Questioning their own expertise (5.63%)
·
Predicting supervisors’ deafness (5.63%)
·
Constructing timing as inopportune (4.69%) (Bisel
& Arterburn, 2012, pp. 219-220)
These
motivation categories were sorted into two significant sensemaking sources to
explain the respondents’ resolutions to remain silent: “perceptions of their
own and the others’ identities and expectations about the future as informed by
hierarchy” (p. 220).
According to the data, the
motivations for not communicating negative information vertically indicated
that most affected employees fear that voicing negative information would have
an adverse effect on them personally (Bisel & Arterburn, 2012, p. 220). Fears included anxieties about managers
terminating the employee’s employment, reducing their compensation, and diminishing
the likelihood of future advancement prospects (p. 220). These fears often originated from past
experiences.
Bisel and Arterburn (2012) noted that
“although this study explores workers’ retrospective accounts, case studies
would offer more contexts from which to understand organizational silence” (p.
224). They proposed an auxiliary
investigation of employee silence by reviewing case studies with the purpose of
furthering comprehension of the factors that propagate a culture of silence
(p.224).
Critique
I believe that the scope of the
article was much too large for the manner in which it was conducted and
reported. Had the hypothesis of the
study had been limited to a more constrained dataset (e.g. mid-western, United
States citizens in white-collar professions, etc.), the results would have been
refined enough to predict motivations for employee silence with reasonable
confidence. This report further failed
to characterize deeper demographic data that might have influenced employee
motivations. Demographics such as race,
religion, and education have the potential to impact the study and should be
considered and reported. Demographics
could have been taken into account to study relationships between numerous
combinations of employer/employee associations.
As an example, it might be useful to note the interactions between
Asian, males, between the ages of 20 and 25, in white collar professions to
female Indian supervisors between the ages of 50 and 55. These deep datasets seem cumbersome, but are
easily achievable through the use of relational databases.
I further believe that, given the
latitude of study, the sample size was much too small to produce the confidence
intervals required for predicting the outcome of such a large population parameter. The confidence interval should represent
“values for the population parameter for which the difference between the
parameter and the observed estimate is not statistically significant at the 10%
level” (Cox & Hinkley, 1974, p.214).
Therefore, if the significance of the factor exists outside of a 90
percent confidence interval, then the probability of the event occurring by
chance is less than or equal to 10 percent.
The authors’ believe that the
findings of the study add to the previously noted studies by Morrison and
Milliken (2003). Further, they believe
that their sensemaking-resource model is a groundbreaking structure for
comprehending the “cultural expectations from which workers draw to justify their
silence as a reasonable course of action” (Bisel & Arterburn, 2012, p.
224). They also foresee their model employed
to enlighten senior leadership on the subject of employee silence as well as to
promote and encourage the constructive vertical criticism that successful
organizations necessitate (p. 224).
The findings of this study, in my
opinion, were largely predictable. Some
of the most interesting information that might have been extrapolated from the
data was not presented by the authors.
For instance, Bisel and Arterburn (2012) noted, en passant, that those
employees who refrained from reporting negative information was comprised of
roughly 65 percent females and 35 percent males (p. 219). What does the disproportional number women to
men say about female silence in the workplace?
This subject alone would have made a more compelling, and more
utilitarian study.
To end on a positive note, I
appreciated the methodology in which the study participants were solicited, so
long as the pool of candidates remained indicative of the intended population
under study. Further, as a prerequisite
to understanding the authors’ methodology for reasoning, I enjoyed reading
about the dissimilarity between inductive and deductive reasoning from adscititious
sources external to this report (Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett, & Thagard,
1989).
References
Bisel, R. S., & Arterburn, E. N. (2012). Making sense of organizational members’ silence: A sense-making resource model. Communication Research Reports, 29(3), 217-226.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative
Research in Psychology, 3(2) (pp. 77-101).
Cox, D. R., & Hinkley, D. V. (1974). Theoretical statistics. London: Chapman and Hall.
Holland, J. H., Holyoak, K. J., Nisbett, R. E., Thagard, P. R. (1989). Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning, and Discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Morrison, E.W., & Milliken, F.J. (2000). Organizational Silence: A barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world. Academy of Management Review, 25, 706-725.
Miceli, M.P., Near, J.P., & Dworkin, T.M. (2008). Whistle-blowing in organizations. New York, NY: Routledge.
Milliken, F.J., Morrison, E.W., & Hewlin, P.F. (2003). An exploratory study of employee silence: Issues that employees don’t communicate upward and why. Journal of Management Studies, 40, 1453-1476.
Perlow, L., & Williams, S. (2003). Is silence killing your company? Harvard Business Review, 81, 52-58.
Withey, M.J., & Cooper, W.H. (1989). Predicting exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect. Administrative Science Quarterly, 34, 521-539.
