Employee Silence; Mediating Role in Organizational Factors and Organizational Commitment: Empirical Evidence from Banking Sector in Khyber Pukhtunkhaw

Abstract

Organizational factors such as lack of leader openness to voice, lack of open communication opportunity and defensive norms of organizational culture, may lead to the employees’ cognitive decision to intentionally engage in silence behavior. This ultimately results in low levels of organizational commitment. Yet, less consideration has been given to empirically explore these mechanisms while providing theoretical underpinnings. Hence, this study applied the theoretical lens of expectancy theory to understand how these organizational factors influence employee’s conscious decision to intentionally engage in silence behavior, which in turn impacts organizational commitment, in the new empirical context of banking sector of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Moreover, this study used mixed method, sequential explanatory design in which first quantitative part of the study aimed at investigating the mediating role of employee silence between organizational factors and organizational commitment, whereas second qualitative part aimed at explaining the reasons behind the significant and insignificant findings of the study and to re-conceptualize expectancy theory based employee silence model. During the first quantitative phase, probability sampling (two step stratified random sampling) was used to get sample of 1243 bankers in 258 branches of 8 commercial banks from 12 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan. The Questionnaire was used for data collection and reliability / validity of the instruments were established through Cronbach alpha and confirmatory factor analysis respectively. The regression analysis, Sobel’s test and structural equation modeling were used for mediation analyses. Furthermore, in the qualitative phase, semi structured interview was conducted while incorporating thematic coding and causal networking techniques. The results revealed that all the hypotheses regarding the direct relation between organizational factors, employee silence and organizational commitment were accepted, except one hypothesis. Moreover, the hypothesized mediated models regarding the intervening role of employee silence between organizational factors and organizational commitment were partially supported, thus extending theory to new empirical context. Additionally, the second qualitative phase provides immense theoretical contribution, by providing explanation for significant and insignificant findings of the study, and presents expectancy theory based employee silence models for the banking sector of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Thus, through

triangulation of data, the findings of this study add to the existing body of knowledge and provides valuable insights for bank management, policy makers and HR managers in identifying the areas that needs their attention. Thus, all these factors make this research work significant and, also timely. The limitations, future research avenues, and implications are also discussed.