This chapter introduces the background, problem statement, purpose, research questions, significance, and key term definition of this study.
Background of the Study
The conservative attitude held by employees, regardless of positive or negative influences, which keeps employees silent and withhold information from their superiors, is called employee silence. There has been an increasing research interest in employee silence over the past ten years. Previous research indicates that employee silence is negatively related to employee performance, employee trust, motivation and morale (Vakola & Bouradas, 2005).
Furthermore, the information and details that can have some positive influences on the development of the organization or company can sometimes be hidden back inside from exposure by employees (Beer & Eisenstat, 2000). Literature suggests that factors which influence employees’ decision to voice out or not can be classified into individual factors and contextual factors (Edwards, Ashkanasy, & Gardner, 2009). Individual factors, for example, Pinder and Harlos (2001) indicate that employees who are high in neuroticism and low in self-esteem are more likely to remain silence when they see problems and issues in the organization.
This suggests that an individual characteristics can function as an important factor to determine someone will speak out or not when observing problems in the organization. This topic is especially important for non-profit organization such as political parties.
In the volatile and democratic background of the whole society in Taiwan, non-profit organization plays an important role to represent multiple opinions that public sectors overlook (Ciucescu, 2009). Therefore, breaking the silent environment in non-profit organization is crucial to accept perspectives from different parties in Taiwan. To this end, non-profit organizations not only need to encourage and train their existing workers to speak up when discovering any potential or current issues, but also make sure their potential workers are those who naturally like to voice. In other words, recruiting those with right personalities associated with voice tendency and behavior could be one of the effective approaches for non-profit organizations to create a work environment with a salient voice atmosphere. As literature has shown that one’s personality trait is one of the influential factors of employee silence behavior, it is important for practitioners and researchers to identify which personality traits are important antecedents of employee silence behavior. This study thus intends to investigate a personality
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trait, locus of control, to see if it is an important determinant of employee silence behavior.
According to the previous research, the definition of locus of control has been elaborated quite clearly and specifically. The extent to which people have confidence in controlling over a certain issue can be referred as locus of control, and this definition has been widely accepted and perceived; On one hand, people who believe they are the master of what happens in their life are internal locus of control. On the other hand, people who believe what happens in their life are due to external forces that they are unable to control belong to external locus of control (Rotter, 1954). Based on previous studies, locus of control is an important predictor of job motivation, job performance, job satisfaction, and leadership (Spector, 1982). For those who are internal control usually show higher degree of job motivation, job performance, job satisfaction, and leadership than those who are external control. In the literature, most previous studies on the topic of self-evaluation focus on the work-related outcomes in the workplace.
However, little attention is paid to explore the relationship between locus of control and employee silence. Therefore, in order to provide comprehensive theoretical framework for future research, this study tries to investigate the relationship between locus of control and employee silence.
In addition, this study also proposes two other personality trait; agreeableness and extraversion would be two important moderator for the relationship between locus of control and silence behavior. Agreeableness refers to the number of sources from which one takes one's norms for right behavior. The behavioral tendencies are typically associated with this factor include being courteous, flexible, trusting, good-natured, cooperative, forgiving, soft-hearted, and tolerant (Barrick & Mount, 1991). In work contexts, agreeable employees show higher degrees of interpersonal competence (Witt, Burke, Barrick & Mount, 2002) and collaborate effectively when joint action is needed (Mount, Barrick, & Stewart, 1998). Therefore, it is reasonable that employees high on agreeableness are more inclined to perform organizational citizen behavior (OCB). Since voice behavior is kind of organizational citizenship behavior, it is reasonable to infer that agreeable employees will show more silence behavior instead of voicing their opinions because of harmony reasons.
Extraversion refers to the level of sensory stimulation with which one is comfortable. The behavioral tendencies used to measure this factor include being sociable, gregarious, assertive, talkative, and active (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Barrick (2005) have described extraversion as key dispositional determinant of social behavior. Based on the study which has been published before, extraversion and agreeableness are important predictors of OCB (Bakhshi, Kumar, &
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Rani, 2009) Thus, those who are highly extraverted display more flexible behaviors that make them more likely to show OCB. We can infer that extraverts are more inclined to voice instead of keeping silent.
Problem Statement
It has been discussed frequently in the organizational behavior literature that many organizations are facing a dilemma in which most employees are aware of some potential problems but do not speak up in the workplace (Huang, Vliert, & Vegt, 2005; Pinder & Harlos, 2001; Morrison & Milliken, 2000; Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008). Even though some organizations try to create a work environment in which it is safe for employees to share their opinions, when facing concerns or problems, most employees still choose to be silent instead of speaking out. Literature suggests that the causes of employees’ unwillingness to speak out can be attributed to internal and external factors. Internal factors, for example, Premeaux and Bedeian (2003) indicate that personality traits such as self-esteem, self-monitor will affect employee voice behavior and Brinsfield (2013) indicates that neuroticism is positively related to employee silence. This suggests that a person’s personality trait can function as an important factor to determine he or she will speak out or not when observing problems in the organization.
Therefore, it is important for practitioners and researchers to identify important personality traits that can predict employee silence.
Although there already has a growing research interest on identifying important personality traits which can predict employee silence in the literature, little research has been done on the relationship between locus of control and employee silence, especially in nonprofit organization. Nonprofit organization is important because it represents public voices and is able to develop and improve public policies in a number of different ways. Having various parties’ voice from different perspectives will help to see many ignored public issues.
Furthermore, nonprofits organization also pushes forwards new forms of public policy nowadays in Taiwan (Agard, 2011). Thus, it is essential to identify important factors that lead to silence in nonprofit sectors in order to encourage multiple voices in the whole society.
In addition, existing research in employee silence also pays little attention to the association between agreeableness and extraversion and employee silence. Hence, in order to fill these gaps, this study aims to investigate whether locus of control has a significant relationship with employee silence, and whether two personality traits, extraversion and agreeableness, have significant moderating effect for the relationship between locus of control and employee silence.
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Purpose of the Study
This study has two main purposes. Firstly, this study aims to investigate the relationship between locus of control and employee silence. Secondly, this study aims to investigate how agreeableness and extraversion moderate the relationship between locus of control and employee silence.
Research Questions
According to the research purposes, this study aims to answer the following research questions:
1. Is there any significant relationship between locus of control and employee silence?
2. Does agreeableness have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between locus of control and employee silence?
3. Does extraversion have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between locus of control and employee silence?
Significance of the Study Contribute to Organizational Management
This study will help organizations to identify the reason why employees keep silent in the workplace, 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.
Contribute to HR Practitioner
In terms of recruiting and selection, three personality traits 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. Furthermore, 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.
Contribute to Research
Although many studies in the literature have discussed the variables (locus of control,
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employee silence, agreeableness and extraversion) of this study, very few focuses on the connection between locus of control and employee silence. Also, limited number of studies consider the moderating effect of big five personality trait. 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.
Definition of Terms Employee Silence
The definition of employee silence has been discussed widely according to the research which has been published before. It refers to the circumstances where employees are either intentionally or unintentionally involuntarily sharing any information or details that can be of great importance to a certain organization to which they belong (Pinder & Harlos, 2001). What mentioned above occurs mostly when employees are not willing to report what they have perceived to their managers, supervisors or anyone that is assuming a higher rank of position (Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008). In this study, I adopt employee silence definition from Pinder and Harlos (2001).
Locus of Control
Based on previous study, locus of control is considered to be an important personality variable in organizational research and theory (Spector, 1982).Furthermore, it is view as a stable trait, not easily changed over time. Those who have confidence in holding the full control over their own life and believe they can attribute their great success to their efforts spent on work show the sign that they possess an internal locus of control. On the other hand, those who have the tendency to ascribe their success or failure to the impacts that occur outside have an external locus of control. What mentioned above implies that people with an internal locus of control tend to blame themselves for any failure that they perceive whereas those with an external locus of control may well impute any challenges and failure to the factors that they believe they fail to impose any influences on (Rotter, 1954). A recent review study regarding future research directions for locus of control also adopt Rotter’s definition (Galvin, Randel, Collins, & Johnson, in press).
Extraversion
In psychology, the Big Five personality traits are five broad factors or dimensions of personality discovered through empirical research (Goldberg, 1993). These factors are
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neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Each factor consists of a number of more specific traits. For example, extraversion includes such related qualities as sociability, excitement seeking, and positive emotions(Goldberg, 1993).
Extraversion is a person's tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others. This personality dimension includes attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other prosocial behaviors (Barrick & Mount, 1991). Extraversion focuses on sociability and where individuals derive their energy from. Low scores on this dimension tend to indicate a more internal source of energy, while high scores denote an external source of energy. The six facets of extraversion include warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness activity, excitement-seeking and positive emotions.
Extraversion is the state of primarily obtaining gratification from outside oneself.
Extraverts tend to enjoy human interactions and to be passionate, loquacious, self-assured, and sociable. Extraverts are energized and thrive off being around other people. They take pleasure in activities that involve large social gatherings, such as parties, community activities, public demonstrations, and business or political groups. They also tend to work well in groups (Watson & Clark, 1997). In this study, I adopt Barrick and Mount’s (1991) definition.
Agreeableness
The first personality model, Big Five, was developed by McCrae and Costa (1985) and is the most widely used model to generally describe how a person engages with the world. The model includes five primary categories, or dimensions. Agreeableness is one of dimensions (John & Srivastava, 1999).
Agreeableness is a person's tendency to be compassionate and cooperative toward others (Thompson, 2008). In contemporary personality psychology, agreeableness is one of the five major dimensions of personality structure, reflecting individual differences in cooperation and social harmony. Those who score high for agreeableness may show the characteristics of being dependable, generous and honest. Most of the time, they have the tendency to be mild-mannered and regard loyalty as a value of significant importance. On the opposite, those who have a low score for agreeableness tend to have low expectations of other people, which may give rise to the result that they can be sneaky. Generally speaking, they tend to be suspicious of others, instead of showing any trust toward other people surrounding them. In this study, I adopt Thompson’s (2008) definition.
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