Employee silence: Commitment to status quo among liberals and conservatives with high social dominance (early view)

Abstract

Nowadays employees are committed to status quo specially to retain their jobs or to attain promotion. They remain silent and conform to all the decisions taken by the top management. Most studies have treated the causes of this silence as unobserved intervening mechanisms and named them black boxes. This study aims to investigate those unobserved psychological characteristics of employees. More clearly, it investigates the employee’s psychological ideology namely; liberalism and conservatism in affecting Commitment to Status Quo mediated by Employee Silence and moderated by Social Dominance. This study proposes that employee ideologies (liberalism and conservatism) effects their voicing behaviour and ultimately their resistance or acceptance to the status quo. Data from 219 faculty members from different universities in Karachi, Pakistan was gathered. The study hypothesized that liberals will tend to voice their opinions and resist the managements status quo while conservatives not voice their opinions and endorse status quo. They will accept management’s decision and will not question their actions. The results stipulated that liberals have an indirect relationship with silence, i.e. they do not remain silent. Also, silence had an indirect relationship with status quo. Even though they are silent but they do not endorse status quo. Further, it was found that silence mediates the relationship between liberals and Commitment to status quo. While, it was also identified that conservatives also endorse status quo but there was no relationship between conservatives and silence. Further, silence did not mediate the relationship between conservatives and status quo. Moreover, Social dominance orientation strengthens or moderates the relationship between silence and status quo.