Why and when are silent employees less satisfied with their jobs? A conservation of resources perspective
Journal of Managerial Psychology
ISSN: 0268-3946
Article publication date: 26 November 2021
Issue publication date: 8 April 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Employee silence is pervasive in the workplace and can be severely detrimental to employees' job satisfaction. However, research on why and when employee silence undermines job satisfaction remains poorly understood. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, the authors proposed and tested a moderated mediation model wherein employee silence predicted job satisfaction through vigor, with positive affectivity acting as a dispositional moderator.
Design/methodology/approach
Two-wave time-lagged data were collected from a sample of 183 employees in Taiwan. A moderated mediation analysis with latent variables was conducted to test the hypotheses.
Findings
Results indicated that employees' vigor mediated the negative relationship between employee silence and job satisfaction only for employees with low positive affectivity.
Originality/value
By identifying vigor as a psychological mechanism explaining the negative effect of silence on job satisfaction and positive affectivity as a buffer against the detrimental effect of silence on vigor and, indirectly, job satisfaction, the results provide a more nuanced understanding of why and when silent employees are less satisfied with their jobs.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Citation
Hsieh, H.-H. and Huang, J.-T. (2022), "Why and when are silent employees less satisfied with their jobs? A conservation of resources perspective", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 319-331. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-03-2021-0184
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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