Designing a Paradigm Model of Organizational Silence: Emphasis on the Strategic Role of Employees’ Empowerment in Silence BreakingCase Study: National Iranian Oil ‎Company

Organizational silence is one of the prevalent phenomena in public ‎organizations. Organizational silence has been considered by many ‎researches. The innovation of this research is in examining the possibility of using employees’ empowerment strategies in breaking it. Hence, the purpose of this study is to design a paradigm model of ‎organizational silence with emphasis on the strategic role of employee’s empowerment ‎in its breaking in public organizations. This study is developmental-applied in terms of purpose employing mixed-method strategy. In the qualitative phase, using grounded theory methodology, 17 university professors and 20 managers in National ‎Iranian Oil Company were interviewed. Findings identified 6 types of silence ‎including conservative, protesting, altruistic, utilitarian, hopeless, and passive. As well, findings show 6 strategies based on empowerment approach to ‎break organizational silence. In the quantitative phase, in order to ‎validate the model, the structural equation modeling and smartPLS software ‎were employed. For this purpose, the questionnaire distributed among 185 managers and human resource ‎management specialists randomly selected in the National Iranian Oil Company. The coefficient of determination for ‎organizational silence, strategies, and consequences is respectively 0.458, 0.523, 0.588. ‎Finally, the results show that silence in public organizations is a multifaceted, complicated phenomenon and employee’s-empowerment based strategies are ‎needed to break it.