ReviewSilenced by fear:: The nature, sources, and consequences of fear at work
Section snippets
Silence in organizations
Employee silence is defined here as the withholding of ideas, suggestions, or concerns about people, products, or processes that might have been communicated verbally to someone inside the organization with the perceived authority to act. Silence is thus foregoing opportunities for “challenging organizational citizenship behavior” (Van Dyne, Cummings, & McLean Parks, 1995). Though silence can be driven by multiple motives (Milliken et al., 2003, Van Dyne et al., 2003), we focus here on silence
Fear and workplace silence
Anyone who has experienced fear – from startle at the sight of a spider to fear of the shadowed dangers in a dark alley – can easily recall how this powerful, unpleasant emotion overwhelms one's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors (Kreitler, 2004). Fear is often accompanied by feelings of apprehension, foreboding, and helplessness (Rachman, 1990), and represents the body's natural protection against potential threat – whether physical or psychological (Dozier, 1998, MacDonald et al., 2005). As a
Origins of fear-based silence
In the previous section, we described the differential intensity of fear triggered by threat cues associated with different types of potential voice situations. In this section, we examine the types and origins of cues that signal threat in the first place. To develop a broader understanding of the reasons why individuals fear speaking up to authority, we explore the more distal evolutionary and learned origins of this fear. As reviewed below, fear of challenging authority has long been a
Overcoming fear-based silence
Thus far, we have argued for the persistent, resilient, and powerful influence of fear on employee workplace silence. Indeed, we believe fear is a far more common experience among employees faced with opportunities to speak up to authority figures than is widely recognized. An implication of this perspective, however, is that to challenge authority, employees must find a way to overcome the tendency to resort to silence. In short, individuals must be spurred to act courageously – that is, to
Discussion
Fear, a powerful and pervasive emotion, influences human perception, cognition, and behavior in ways and to an extent that we find underappreciated in much of the organizational literature. This chapter draws from a broad range of literatures, including evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and anthropology, to provide a fuller understanding of how fear influences silence in organizations. Our intention is to provide a foundation to inform future theorizing and research on fear's
Acknowledgments
We extend a special thanks to the ROB editors, Art Brief and Barry Staw, as well as to Ethan Burris, Dan Chiaburu, Russell Cropanzano, Stephen Humphrey, Vilmos Misangyi, Terrance Mitchell, Nathan Pettit, Michael Price, Sean Tucker, Glenda Fisk, Sean Martin, and members of the ORG seminar in the Management and Organization Department, Smeal College of Business, The Pennsylvania State University for feedback on earlier drafts.
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