The Relationship between Organizational Silence and Employees Performance

In most of the contemporary organizations, employees avoid declaring their comments and concerns about the problems of organization. This plural-organizational phenomenon is named “organizational silence” which may influence on employees’ desired performance. Therefore, this study intends to investigate the relationship between organizational silence and employees’ performance in order to provide strategies to develop and improve staffs performance. This research was descriptive-correlation. Statistical population was the medial level staffs of the Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences which were 340 persons and among them, based on Krejcie and Morgan table, 181 people were randomly selected as the samples. The data of the research were gathered by two organizational silence questionnaires and the employees’ performance. Data was analyzed using the descriptive statistics (i.e. mean and standard deviation) as well as inferential statistics (i.e. one sample t test, Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariate regression). Findings show that there was a negative significant relationship between organizational silence and employees’ performance; also there was negative significant relationship between employees’ performance and role clarity, organizational support, motivation of staff, partnership in the decisions, evaluation, and organizational environment. But there was no significant relationship between organizational silence and the staff ability. Findings from multiple variable regressions show that organizational environment; partnership in the decisions, and role clarity was predictors of organizational silence. Findings revealed that there was negative significant relationship between organizational silence and employee performance which means that with an increase in silence, performance decreases and vice versa. Therefore, managers should be aware of this issue so their behavior and management approach do not create a silence climate and subsequent decrease in employee performance.