This chapter presents the conclusions and suggestions based on results obtained from the data analysis, concerns of the research limitations, and also lists some recommendations for future research.
Conclusions and Discussion
The aim of this research is intended to investigate the organizational behavior among different types of employee silences, employee well-being, mentoring relationship and work engagement. The results of these primary hypothesis had led to several important conclusions in this study. First, the results indicated that different types of employee silences will not have the same effect on work engagement. This finding is similar to the ideas offered by Van Dyne et al. (2003) who had proposed that silence is not only passive but intentional behavior which might have different results. In order to understand the relationship between silence behavior and work engagement, employee well-being was discussed to have mediating effect which is an important factor between silence and engagement. Furthermore, mentoring relationship was also discussed as moderator to influence silence and engagement behavior. Both the mediator and the moderator were seen as the improvement factors among employees and organizations.
After the statistical analysis was performed, different types of employee silences have been confirmed to not show the same effect on work engagement, depending on various reasons resulting in different effect on working conditions. Take acquiescent, defensive and opportunistic silences for example, employees who have these types of silence behavior will have bad influence on their performances or psychological conditions. However, employees who have pro-social silence behavior which means they consider others’ needs more will help them to have positive influence on engagement and well-being. In general, organization will have four types of employee silence behaviors at the same time.
Furthermore, employee well-being was proved to have significant mediating effect (full or partial) from different types of employee silence to work engagement. This means when employees’ well-being (e.g., psychological conditions or job satisfaction) is taken care of, they will be more engaged in their work. Also, statistical analysis results showed that employee well-being has a full mediating effect between acquiescent, defensive, opportunistic silence and work engagement, while having only a partial mediating effect
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between pro-silence silence and work engagement. According to the result, pro-social silence was the only one that has a positive effect on work engagement.
On the other hand, mentoring relationship was found to have significant moderating effect on the relationship among different types of employee silence and work engagement.
In the research, samples are all perceived to have mentoring support in organization.
However, there are no significant moderating effect on most types of silence behavior and work engagement by mentoring relationship. There was only one significant interaction effect between opportunistic silence and work engagement by mentoring relationship. The definition of opportunistic silence was “employees who wanted to protect their knowledge advantages.”, which means this group of employees are good at finding their way up the career ladder. When these employees perceive higher mentoring support, which means the mentor is watching their performance more closely, this may make them more engaged at work than those employees who exhibit other types of silence behavior.
In the organization, when employees intentionally withheld information related to workplace, it will have great impact on the improvement of organization (Van Dyne et al., 2003). The phenomenon may partly result from top management because silence behavior is systemic in many workplaces (Morrison & Milliken, 2000). In this research, it shows that employee silence behavior has significant effect on employees’ work conditions, such as well-being and engagement which are important factors to influence work-related performances. In order to reduce negative consequences, organizations should put more attentions on employees’ silence behavior to provide better working life.
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Practical Implications
This research investigated organizational behavior and mostly focus on employees’
feelings in organization ,such as employee silences, employee well-being, work engagement and mentoring relationship. It shed the light on deepening the issues of working conditions and problems which will be faced by employees in a company. The results may contribute to many individuals in organizations, such as managers, employees, mentors, HR personnel and others.
Firstly, this research helps the managerial level gain more knowledge about specific types of silence situations and also help avoid negative silence consequences in organizations. After understanding more ideas about specific types of employee silence behavior, organizations can be more considerate about employees’ conditions to understand why employees have these behaviors. In order to reduce these situations, it could help organizations to upgrade the working environment, organizational climate, policies, compensations and psychological care of employees. Furthermore, it helps organizations get more knowledge about mentoring relationship, specifically how it works for different types of employee silences to help organizations make good plans for better mentoring programs.
Secondly, for general employees, this research help employees understand more about what they are going through and the typical situations they are suffering in organization, which could help employees avoid silence situations and not being negative in organization.
Furthermore, the implication to mentors is to provide more information about silence behavior, which could help mentors figure out better solutions or ideas for helping employees. The good cooperation between employees and mentors was found to slightly influence the silence behavior in organization, which means good mentoring program and relationship is important for organizational effectiveness.
Lastly, according to the supportive role of HR, one of the responsibility is to balance the relationship between the organization and employees. This research provides the ideas about the relationship among different types of employee silence to employees’ well-being and engagement, which helps HR make plans to become a bridge to solve these problems.
For example, HR can categorize specific types of employees and design customized programs and policies to directly solve problems. Also, HR can gain more knowledge about the importance of reducing silence behaviors to enhance employee well-being and work
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engagement in organizations, which could also help HR successfully demonstrate their value.
Research Implications
This study provides valuable research implications since it points out empirical information about specific types of employee silence behavior which are rarely researched in Taiwan. Although little research has discussed about related topic, silence behavior frequently happens in daily working life. This research helps to draw more attentions to the fact that different types of employee silence behavior will cause positive or negative effects on work-related situations, such as employee well-being and work engagement. The construct of employee silence was mostly seen as negative factors to influence performances and development of organization, thus the relationship of different types of employee silences and work performances was rarely associated in discussions. This research benefits researchers who are interested in investigating silence behavior and other variables related to this topic, such as the field of organizational behavior and business management research. Furthermore, the specific types of employee silence represents different reasons and causes of work-related situations. Depending on each typical situation, a researcher can connect these silence behaviors with other related working variables. This research provides empirical relationships among different types of employee silences and working behavior to broaden the issues of silence behavior in organization. Thus, this research serves as a small step to advance the discussion on the effect of specific types of employee silence to employee well-being and work engagement, as well as the importance of mentoring relationship in organization.
Research Limitations
Because the independent variables are different types of employee silence, which represent the negative behavior of employees, some respondents might feel reluctant to report the true level when they filled out the questionnaire. Another limitation is that little literature was conducted to analyze specific types of employee silence. Therefore, it is difficult to develop research hypothesis based on strong theoretical argument. Moreover, one of the sample criteria was having mentoring relationship in the organization, which already screened out many respondents in data collection process, so the sample size was limited in this research.
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Future Research Suggestions
Besides a quantitative research approach by analyzing data to conclude the results, future researchers could use qualitative research, such as face to face interview, to collect more information about employee silence behavior. In this research, the sample are not limited for specific industries and mostly are general staff. However, the phenomenon may change in different industries or for different positions. Researchers are suggested to investigate and compare employee silence behavior across different industries and positions. In addition, employee silence behavior is assumed to have negative relationship with many outcomes. However, if researchers could make assumptions about employee silence having positive relationship with other related variables, such as a better leader-member exchange relationship (Wang, Zhang, Ding, & Cheng, 2018) this will make the research more interesting. Moreover, the mentoring relationship could be divided into different types of supporting functions. Future researchers can also examine the relationship among different types of mentoring relationships and other related variables.
It will be more valuable for company, HR and researcher to have more knowledge of this specific field.
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Driving fear out of the workplace: Creating the high-trust, high-performance
Driving fear out of the workplace: Creating the high-trust, high-performance