Investigating the Effect of Organizational Silence and Voice on Employees’ Performance Based on the Mediating Role of Ethical Leadership: A Case Study of Tehran Metropolitan Fire Station

The lack of expressing opinions of employees working in organizations can cause a phenomenon called organizational silence. Organizational silence has a damaging effect on employee’s productivity. The organizational sound and silence about organizational performance are currently one of the fundamental organizational challenges.

In this descriptive, correlational study, regression analysis was used to analyze the relationship between the studied factors. Using the Morgan table and stratified random sampling method, 317 subjects were selected and assessed by the structural equation modeling (SEM) with SmartPLS software.

The results showed a significant relationship between organizational silence and performance with a path coefficient of 0.179 and a significant difference of 3.289. Also, there was a significant relationship between organizational voice and performance with a path coefficient of 0.393 and a significant level of 6.766. Besides, a significant relationship existed between organizational voice and ethical leadership with a path coefficient of 0.247 and a significance level of 3.883, and finally, between the focal variables (silence and organizational voice) and organizational performance with moral leadership with a path coefficient of 0.315 and a significance of 5,485. Accordingly, the results indicated the suitability of the model.

The results showed a significant relationship between organizational sound and silence and employee’s performance, considering the mediating role of moral leadership in the organization. It can be concluded that one of the essential tasks of firefighters and firefighting leaders and managers is to identify and break the climate of silence and motivate the employees to talk in their workplace for subsequently improving their performances.