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Empowered to Break the Silence: Applying Self-Determination Theory to Employee Silence

2019; Frontiers Media; Volume: 10; Linguagem: Inglês

10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00485

1664-1078

Dong Ju, Li Ma, Run Ren, Yichi Zhang,

Environmental Sustainability in Business

The paper studies how leaders can break employee silence. Drawing upon self-determination theory, we argue that empowering leadership can activate employees' intrinsic motivation such that employees are more willing to break the silence at work; furthermore, the effect is stronger when employees have high levels of job autonomy. We collected time-lagged and multi-source data in a large company to test our hypotheses. The results show that empowering leadership can reduce employee silence through enhancing their intrinsic motivation. The mediation effect and and the boundary effect of job autonomy on the mediation effect are all supported. This paper contributes to the literature on leadership, employee silence, and job design characteristics.