This chapter indicates conclusion of this study based on the findings provided in the previous chapter and the limitation caused by research samples. Moreover, some suggestions and recommendations for future study are demonstrated in the last session.
Conclusions
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among locus of control, agreeableness, extraversion and employee silence .Table 5.1 demonstrates the results of the data analysis of this research, elaborated by a more explicit statement of each supported hypothesis.
External Locus of Control was Positively Related to Employee Silence.
The finding of this study show that external locus of control is positively related to employee silence. Based on the result of this study, personality trait does play an important role in voice intention .People with internal LOC are described as having more self-confidence.
When they discover some potential problems in the workplace, they believe they can make changes if they try to speak out. Instead, for those employees who are external LOC, they demonstrate a more negative attitudes towards their work, therefore; when they identify potential problems in the workplace, they are more likely to hide their true thought and consider speaking up will make no difference.
Agreeableness Strengthened the Relationship Between Locus of Control and Employee Silence.
The results indicate that agreeableness moderates the relationship between locus of control and employee silence. People who are high in agreeableness tend to value harmony in the workplace, which means that they are more likely to avoid speaking up when the problems might cause conflict. Therefore, it is crucial to avoid selecting agreeable employees in terms recruiting and selection if the organization want to solicit more people willing voice.
Furthermore, the organization should shape a safe environment and provide incentives to motivate agreeable employees to speak up as well.
Extraversion Weakened the Relationship Between Locus of Control and Employee Silence.
The current study also presents that extraversion moderates the relationship between locus of control and employee silence. People with high extraversion are considered to be more talkative and sociable, which means that extroverts tend to talk more often and voice their
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opinions in the organization. LePine and VanDyne (2001) indicated that out-going employees are more inclined to speak up than introverts in the workplace. Therefore, recruiting extravert employees might be a good way to benefit nonprofit organization.
Research Limitation
This study has several limitations. Because of the time limitation, the researcher only adopt quantitative method in this research. It is highly recommended to adopt qualitative and quantitative simultaneously in the future. Since quantitative approach has a notable limitation in that it is difficult to investigate the real opinions from the participants in this study.
Data was mainly collected from KMT and DPP in Taiwan because of the time limit and the researcher’s connections, this might cause sample bias contributing to limitations of results generalizability. Furthermore, data for this study was collected only from one nation (i.e., Taiwan), so whether the proposed model of this study can be applied to different samples from different countries is questionable. Future studies should be conducted on a cross-national sample to address this generalizability concern. Common method bias is also another limitation that need to be noticed. Data utilized were self-reported and all independent and dependent variables were obtained from the same raters (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003).
This research did not separate the source of independent and dependent variables due to great difficulties in linking the data together while protecting subjects’ anonymity. It is strongly recommended that future studies should set stricter research procedures to minimize this issue.
Cross sectional design is another limitation of this study, which could limit the ability to observe the changing patterns of subjects across time. It might also cause misidentification of the causal relationship between independent and dependent variables. Future research should address such issues by using longitudinal analysis to detect and monitor variations and trends among subjects.
The last limitation of this study is social desirability bias. Since this questionnaire concludes some sensitive questions, it is better to prevent the participant’s managers to gather the data in the organization. Otherwise, the participants of this study won’t be very honest when they answer certain questions in this study. Therefore, it is highly recommend researcher to pay attention to this problem in the future.
Implications of the Study
The findings of this study provide some implications for nonprofit organizations, especially for Taiwan’s political parties. Findings clearly indicate that an individual’s personality trait is likely to influence his/her intention to voice in the workplace .Therefore,
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developing strategies to create an open-minded environment is the first important task. This study will help organizations to identify the reasons why employees keep silent in the workplace from personality perspective, and try to find solutions to this problem. Breaking the silent atmosphere in the workplace will promote employees to voice, which will provide the organization useful suggestions to improve work performance and enhance organizational innovation .If we can create a safe environment for employees to voice their opinions in the organization, it will be beneficial to enhance job satisfaction and increase revenue at the same time.
In terms of recruiting and selection, big five personality trait and locus of control can be important indicators for selecting right new hires. If HR practitioners want to recruit employees that are more willing to voice their opinions, they should consider less on selecting those employees whose trait is positively related to employee silence during the recruiting and selecting process. Based on the results of this study, HR practitioners should consider attracting and recruiting more employees who are more internal rather than external locus of control since external locus individuals are likely to remain silent when they see problems and issues in the organization. In addition, HR practitioners should target those who are more extravert but less agreeable since these two personality traits are found to weaken and strengthen employee silence behavior, respectively. Likewise, for existing workforce, managers should pay a particular attention to those whose trait is positively related to employee silence and encourage those people to voice their opinions.
Trait activation theory can also help an organization understand how to optimally motivate workers by offering them rewards suited to their individual traits. When organizations understand how different organizational cues lead to expression of traits, this knowledge allows organizations the opportunity to create situations that "activate" the traits they most value, and to select employees based on those traits. However, to understand fully the traits needed for different occupational roles, including team contexts, management scholars recommend organizations conduct Personality-Oriented Work Analyses to improve selection and promotion processes.
Specifically, it is important to train and encourage those who are more external locus of control to voice their opinions. Since employees working in the political party usually shared the same organizational culture and value, it is difficult for such organization to accommodate various point of view. Based on the researcher’s personal experience, most of them consider members who express different opinions and concerns for the organization as troublemakers
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or rebels in the political party. However, more and more young generations start joining political parties and become one of the important groups of political parties. Younger generations also like to challenge and voice their opinions. Therefore, political parties should start considering taking different views and opinions as positive. Nowadays, many political parties already tend to gather young people’s opinions and recruit new blood from Generation Y. Therefore, motivating introverted, external locus of control and agreeable employees to voice in such organization becomes a priority.
Although previous studies in the literature have discussed the variables (self-esteem, employee silence, neuroticism) of this study, very few focus on the connection between locus of control and employee silence. Also, a limited number of studies considered the moderating effect of agreeableness and extraversion. For researchers, this study will help them uncover internal factors that lead to employee silence in the organization. This study can thus contribute to the current literature by addressing these research gaps.
Suggestions for Future Research
For future researchers, studies can further investigate whether the western country will get the same result just like in Taiwan. Because Taiwan belongs to Chinese culture, it is questionable that this research can fit into western cultures. Moreover, for the future researcher, studies can adopt the qualitative approach and quantitative approach at the same time. Since the data are gathered through questionnaires instead of the interview, some employees’
opinions and suggestions for their organization and manager cannot be comprehensively obtained.
Since this research has several limitations (social desirability bias), it is important to prevent such bias in the future. Therefore, during the data collection process, the researcher need to protect the participants’ privacy in order to make sure their manager cannot view the questionnaire without researcher’s permission. Researchers should also fully inform participants that their participation is completely anonymous and has no information that will identify them. Since employees in political parties might feel sensitive to take the survey, future research should strive to create a safe and comfortable status for participants to respond the survey questions more truly and accurately.
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