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We argue that these are powerful forces in many organizations that cause widespread withholding of information about potential problems or issues by employees. We refer to this collective-level phenomenon as "organizational silence." In our model we identify contextual variables that create conditions conducive to silence and explore the collective sensemaking dynamics that can create the shared perception that speaking up is unwise. We also discuss some of the negative consequences of systemic silence, especially for organizations' ability to change and develop in the context of pluralism.
Imagine an organization where the CEO has no clothes. The CEO's lack of clothes is apparent to all who set eyes upon him or her. Yet employees never mention this. Some employees even compliment and praise the CEO's attire. The CEO takes pride and comfort in the fact that subordinates recognize his or her fine taste in clothing and easily dismisses those few trouble-- makers who look at him or her strangely or who dare to suggest that the CEO's taste in clothing is anything less than impeccable. Yet, behold, these employees are not blind. Behind the safety of closed doors and in veiled whispers, they talk of their leader's lack of clothing. They all clearly know that the CEO is naked, but only the foolish or naive dare to speak of it in public.
Is this a mere fairy tale? We believe that it is not and that far too many organizations are caught in an apparent paradox in which most employees know the truth about certain issues and problems within the organization yet dare not speak that truth to their superiors. This proposition can be supported from sources going back more than 20 years, although there has been little systematic exploration of why the situation occurs. Argyris (1977), for example, discussed the idea that there are powerful games and norms that often prevent employees from saying what they know about technical and policy issues. Similarly, Redding (1985) argued that many organizations implicitly convey to employees that they should not "rock the boat" by challenging corporate policies or managerial prerogatives. Other scholars likewise have noted that organizations are generally intolerant of dissent and that employees, thus, are reluctant to speak up about problems (Swing, 1977; Nemeth, 1997;...