Employees often have ideas, information, and opinions for constructive
ways to improve work and work organizations. Sometimes these employees exercise
voice and express their ideas, information, and opinions; and other times they engage
in silence and withhold their ideas, information, and opinions. On the surface,
expressing and withholding behaviours might appear to be polar opposites because
silence implies not speaking while voice implies speaking up on important issues
and problems in organizations. Challenging this simplistic notion, this paper presents
a conceptual framework suggesting that employee silence and voice are best
conceptualized as separate, multidimensional constructs. Based on employee motives,
we differentiate three types of silence (Acquiescent Silence, Defensive Silence, and
ProSocial Silence) and three parallel types of voice (Acquiescent Voice, Defensive
Voice, and ProSocial Voice) where withholding important information is not simply
the absence of voice. Building on this conceptual framework, we further propose that
silence and voice have differential consequences to employees in work organizations.
Based on fundamental differences in the overt behavioural cues provided by silence
and voice, we present a series of propositions predicting that silence is more
ambiguous than voice, observers are more likely to misattribute employee motives for
silence than for voice, and misattributions for motives behind silence will lead to
more incongruent consequences (both positive and negative) for employees (than for
voice). We conclude by discussing implications for future research and for managers.