Frances J. Milliken

An Exploratory Study of Employee Silence: Issues that Employees Don’t Communicate Upward and Why

ABSTRACT There is evidence from a variety of sources that employees often do not feel comfortable speaking to their bosses about organizational problems or issues that concern them. The purpose of this study was to shed light on the types of issues that employees are reluctant to raise, and identify why employees sometimes decide to remain silent rather than voice their concerns. We interviewed 40 employees and found that most had been in situations where they were concerned about an issue but did not raise it to a supervisor. Silence spanned a range of organizational issues, with several of our respondents indicating that they did not feel comfortable speaking to those above them about any issues or concerns. The most frequently mentioned reason for remaining silent was the fear of being viewed or labeled negatively, and as a consequence, damaging valued relationships. From our data, we develop a model of how the perceived consequences of voice contribute to silence, and a model of how the social and relational implications of speaking up can take away employees’ ability to have influence within an organizational setting.

Explaining Organizational Responsiveness to Work-Family Issues: The Role of Human Resource Executives as Issue Interpreters

A multitheoretical approach was used to explore why organizations vary in the degree to which they have adopted policies designed to help employees manage their work and family lives. Our findings ...

Speaking Up, Remaining Silent: The Dynamics of Voice and Silence in Organizations

Within organizations, people often have to make decisions about whether to speak up or remain silent whether to share or withhold their ideas, opinions, and concerns. In many cases, they choose the safe response of silence, withholding input that could be valuable to others or thoughts that they wish they eould express. Researchers have referred to this as employee silence (Morrison and Milliken, 2000; Pinder and Harlos, 2001). There are many different types of issues that people in organizations are silent about and many reasons why people may elect to be silent. An employee may keep quiet about unethical practices that he or she has observed, for example, out of fear of being punished. Members of a group may choose to not express dissenting opinions in the interest of maintaining consensus and cohesiveness in the group. Thus, silence can be caused by fear, by the desire to avoid conveying bad news or unwelcome ideas, and also by normative and social pressures that exist in groups.

Racioethnic Diversity and Group Members’ Experiences The Role Of The Racioethnic Diversity Of The Organizational Context

This study examines the effects of a group’s racioethnic diversity on its members’ experiences in two organizational contexts: one that is relatively heterogeneous in racioethnicity and another that is more homogeneous. Additionally, this study examines the effects of diversity on the deeper level trait of collectivism, in both contexts. The authors propose that the extent of racioethnic diversity in the organizational context will determine whether group members pay attention and react to racioethnic category differences or focus on deeper level differences in values and attitudes within their groups. Consistent with this notion, it was found that a group’s racioethnic diversity has stronger negative effects on its members’ experiences in the more homogeneous context than in the more heterogeneous one. The authors also found that a group’s diversity in collectivism has significant negative effects on its members’ experiences in the more heterogeneous context but not in the more homogeneous one.

Understanding Organizational Adaptation to Change: The Case of Work-Family Issues

The last 10–15 years have seen dramatic changes in the nature of the U.S. workforce and in the structure of family life in the United States. Organizational managers face the difficult task of interpreting these changes and of deciding how to adapt the organization’s human resource policies to these changes. In this paper, we examine the processes that underlie organizational adaptation to environmental changes, focusing particular attention on describing the processes by which changes are noticed, interpreted, and elicit action. We argue that the same demographic facts are likely to get different amounts of organizational attention and may be interpreted quite differently, depending on the characteristics of the organizational context and on how work-family issues are framed. Human resource professionals have an extremely important role to play in determining both the likelihood and nature of an organization’s actions with respect to work-family changes by shaping the interpretation process.

Power Differences in the Construal of a Crisis: The Immediate Aftermath of September 11, 2001

In this research, we examine the relationship between power and three characteristics of construal—abstraction, valence, and certainty—in individuals’ verbatim reactions to the events of September 11, 2001, and during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. We conceptualize power as a form of social distance and find that position power (but not expert power) was positively associated with the use of language that was more abstract (vs. concrete), positive (vs. negative), and certain (vs. uncertain). These effects persist after controlling for temporal distance, geographic distance, and impression management motivation. Our results support central and corollary predictions of Construal Level Theory (Liberman, Trope, & Stephan, 2007; Trope & Liberman, 2003) in a high-consequence, real-world context, and our method provides a template for future research in this area outside of the laboratory.

PERCEPTIONS OF TIME IN WORK GROUPS: DO MEMBERS DEVELOP SHARED COGNITIONS ABOUT THEIR TEMPORAL DEMANDS?

Achieving temporal synchronization may require that work groups develop shared cognitions about the time-related demands they face. We investigated the extent to which group members developed shared cognitions with respect to the three temporal perceptions: time orientation (present vs. future), time compression, and time management (scheduling and time management). We argue that group members are more likely to align their perceptions to temporal characteristics of the group or organizational context (e.g. time compression, scheduling, proper time allocation) rather than to each other’s individual time orientations. Survey data collected from 104 work groups are largely consistent with these expectations. The implications of shared cognitions on time for work group functioning and performance are discussed.

In-basket exercises as a methodology for studying information processing

In-basket exercises have the potential to be an important research tool for examing how managers allocate attention and respond to information in their environment. This article describes the in-basket methodology outlines various issues in organizational information processing and decision making to which this methodology might be applicable, and discusses some of the advantages and disadvantages of using in-baskets to examine information processing in a simulated organizational context.

A Conversation on Uncertainty in Managerial and Organizational Cognition

Abstract This book on uncertainty comprises the initial volume in a series titled “New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition”. We asked Frances Milliken and Gerard P. Hodgkinson, two well-known scholars who have made important contributions to our understanding of uncertainty to join us in this opening chapter to introduce this project. The brief bios found at the end of this volume cannot do justice to the broad range of their contributions, but our conversation gives a flavor of the kind of insights they have brought to managerial and organizational cognition (MOC). The editors thank them for helping launch the series with a decisive exploration of what defining uncertainty involves, how that might be done, why it is important, and how the task is changing. We were interested to discover that all five of us are currently involved in research that considers the nature and impact of uncertainty, and we hope that readers similarly find that paying attention to uncertainty contributes to their current projects. Working together, we can advance understanding of organizational settings and effective action, both for researchers and practitioners.

How Boards of Directors Interact as Decision-making Groups

We explore here the functioning of boards as decision-making groups. We contend that understanding boards as groups requires us to pay attention to the actual processes by which boards interact. We then conduct a brief review of the current state of knowledge in this area, paying particular attention to a model of board processes that identifies effort norms, cognitive conflict and the use of knowledge and skills as critical determinants of board effectiveness. We conclude by considering the implications of these ideas for research and practice.