This chapter presents an overall description of this study, and it includes the background of the study and problem statement, followed by the purpose of the study, which guides readers to the purposes of this research, the research questions, delimitations and finally definitions of the key terms that are applied in the study.
Background of Study
Nowadays, organizations are asking more stringent requirement from their employees such as voicing up and taking more responsibility because of intensive competition within business environment, and higher customer expectations indicating a continuous environment of change (Quinn & Spreitzer, 1997). It is very common to find that employees only provide positive reports to supervisors for fear of being blamed or just have no confidence on their recommendations being adopted by organizations or being labeled negatively. Also, this research put more focus on the effect of specific types of employee silence behavior among employee well-being and work engagement. This describes one of the organizational behaviors called employee silence, which is harmful for organizational development and learning (Morrison & Milliken, 2000). Those who are capable of improving organizational performance are withholding their ideas and unwilling to speak up especially in Asia. Some employees are fearful of being blamed for speaking up and are unwilling to voice their opinions. Depending on the magnitude of this phenomena, employee silence could be seen as a serious potential problem of organizational development and other organizational behaviors, such as employee well-being and work engagement, which are also affect performances.
On the other hand, the rapid change of economy, technology and the globalization of many industries result in intensive competition between organizations. The soft power of human capital is getting important and has been taken into consideration in organizational performance and success. In order to enhance the manpower also obtain capable
employees, organizations are more focused on employees’ feelings or so called “well-being”. More and more well-being indicators and company branding are invented, which means companies are more willing to engage the relationship with employees. Also, the academic research claimed that the higher level of employee well-being will lead to higher work engagement (Brunetto, Teo, Shacklock, & Farr-Wharton, 2012).
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Consequently, organizations now put more focus on improving employee psychological feeling and health (Danna & Griffin, 1999) because “the happy workers are assumed to be more productive workers” (Zelenski, Murphy, & Jenkins, 2008) which is also the main purpose of this study.
Problem Statement
The researcher observed some employee behaviors which could be harmful between the organization and employees. One of the potential problems is so called employee silence which has been seen to be multidimensionality (Pinder & Harlos, 2001). For instance, the traditional industrial relations between the employer and the employees has been more damaging from employer-driven employee silence behavior (Johnstone, Barry, & Clarke, 2013). Employees’ unwilling to voice up about work-related matters has resulted in many negative consequences for individual and organizations, such as weaken organizational innovation and learning behavior (Argyris & Schön, 1978), employee’s stress and work-related mental problems (Cortina & Magley, 2003) lower organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Vakola & Bouradas, 2005). However, academic research has put more emphasis on general silence behavior rather than every different type of silence also the antecedents of employee silence rather than the consequences of employee silence behavior.
In this research, the researcher investigates separately three dimensions of employee silence and their relationship to employee well-being and work engagement.
Furthermore, the adult and career developmental research proposed that mentoring relationships have great potential to effectively help protégé to accomplish employees' career development and psychological supports (Kram & Isabella, 1985; Levinson, 1978;
Zey, 1984). That is, mentoring relationship is assumed to possibly strengthen or weaken the relationship between different types of employee silences and work engagement.
However, little is known about how mentoring relationship moderates the relationship between employee silence and work engagement.
By investigating the gap from employee silence to work engagement, this research aims to provide a more extensive understanding of the effect of employee silence to organizational and employees’ performances, which can ultimately assist organizations’
managerial levels to solve this employee silence problem more effectively.
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Purpose of Study
The aim of this research is to provide the following contributions. Firstly, it seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the effect of employee silence to organizational and employees’ performances in Taiwan. Secondly, it attempts to understand the effect of specific types of employee silence to employee well-being and work engagement. Thirdly, it seeks to extend the knowledge of the relationship between employee silence, employee well-being and work engagement, while examining how mentoring relationship moderates the relationship from employee silence to work engagement. By conducting this study, the researcher hopes to help the managerial level to get better organized by using mentoring programs to avoid the phenomena of silence behavior in Taiwan.
Research Questions
According to previous research, employee silence has been claimed to have bad influence on employees’ and organizational performances. The extent to which the silence behavior will be harmful and how it damages employee well-being and work engagement is still unknown. Furthermore, the mentoring relationship which support employee’s career development is investigated as a moderator to affect the relationship between employee silence and work engagement. In conducting this research, the researcher seeks to answer the following research questions.
Question 1:Will different types of employee silences have different effect on employee well-being and work engagement within organizations in Taiwan?
Question 2: Will work engagement increase when employees’ well-being is taken care of by the organization?
Question 3: Will the relationship between different types of employee silences and work engagement be affected by mentoring relationship?
Question 4: Will employee well-being have mediating effect between different types of employee silences and work engagement?
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Significance of the Study
The aim of this paper was to investigate employees’ behaviors in an organization. For example, the relationship between different types of employee silences, employee well-being and work engagement. In this research, the specific types of employee silence considered as one typical situation to discuss further relationship with other work-related variables. The mentoring relationship is considered to moderate the relationship between different types of employee silence and work engagement, which has little research reported in the literature. The research investigates the view from employees’ feelings about their organization to evaluate the level of employee silence and how it affects employees’ psychological and work performance. Consequently, the findings of this research could help business management to avoid silence phenomena and enhance employees’ relationship in their organizations, thereby improving employees’ engagement, and increasing firms’ overall competitiveness.
Delimitations
This study has some delimitations that help set the scope of this research. Delimiting the scope is necessary to make the research more feasible. Firstly, the delimitation is to extend the knowledge of specific types of employee silence, which has little research reported in Taiwan. Secondly, this study will investigate only the effect of mentoring relationship among employee silence, employee well-being and work engagement from different industries, which could provide more perspectives and data in different organizations.
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Definition of Key Terms Employee Silence
Pinder and Harlos (2001) defined employee silence as employee’s behavior of
“withholding of any form of genuine expression about their behavioral, cognitive and affective evaluations of their organizational circumstances to persons who are perceived to be capable of affecting change (p. 334)”. There are four types of employee silence as Acquiescent, Defensive, Pro-social and Opportunistic Silence. Silence is one of the main potential problems to affect organizational innovation and development (Morrison &
Milliken, 2000).
Work Engagement
According to Kahn (1990), employees who drives personal energies (physical, cognitive and emotional) into their work role can be characterized by a higher motivation and strong identification with their work (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008). Work engagement has been define as “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.” (Schaufeli, Martinez, Pinto, Salanova, & Bakker, 2002).
Employee Well-Being
Ryan and Deci’s (2001) categorized the reviews of well-being into two broad dimensions:
one refers to happiness, the other dealing with human potential (Ryan & Deci, 2001;
Waterman, 1993). Employee well-being consists of not only work-related matters but also employees’ psychological experiences, which can be determined primarily by work and can be influenced by workplace interventions. (Page & Vella-Brodrick, 2009). It can be referred to as general well-being and job satisfaction (Vanhala & Tuomi, 2006).
Mentoring Relationship
The mentoring relationship refers to the strength of a relationship between a mentor and a protégé which develops when an experienced mentor assists with the protégés’ career, psychosocial and professional development (Ragins & McFarlin, 1990). It shows a continuum of care from the informal (short-term) to the formal (long-term) relationship, when a mentor supports a protégé with beneficial experience, knowledge and skills (Noe, 1988).
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