Abstract: Individuals in organizations face a choice between speaking up and remaining silent about their concerns at work. Silence is the manifestation of hesitation to speak up about an issue that is important to the individual, department, or organization. The decision to be silent about issues or problems is important and should be understood not only because it has the potential to undermine the reporting of unethical and illegal practices and the likelihood of effective organizational learning but also because it affects the lives of the individuals making these decisions. Over time, the feeling of being unable to speak up about issues and concerns may result in a sense of helplessness, reduced job satisfaction, turnover, and other more long-lasting personal consequences. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to try to better understand the construct of employee silence and how organizations can help create conditions that facilitate employees’ speaking up about problems or issues.
First, we conducted interviews and a survey to obtain items for the Employee Silence Scale (ESS). Second, empirical and statistical methods were employed to assess the structure and psychometric properties of the ESS. By investigating a total of 928 employees, the paper discussed the construct dimension of employee silence. The exploratory factor analysis on the first half of the sample showed that employee silence contains three dimensions. The three dimension constructs were tested using a confirmatory factor analysis on the other half of sample. The internal consistency of the ESS suggested that it was a reliable measure. Finally, with all the samples, we applied stepwise linear regression to validate the relationship between employee silence, employee trust in supervisor (ETS), and employee trust in organization (ETO).
The three-dimensional structure of employee silence included acquiescent silence, disregardful silence, and defensive silence. Acquiescent silence is based on resignation when the employees perceive that they are incapable of changing the present situation, implying passive obedience. Defensive silence is the interpersonal barrier when employees avoid expressing their opinions. Disregardful silence means keeping idea passively when the employees have low commitment to and involvement in the present job or organization, which implies that they ignore the organization’s benefit. The results also revealed that ETS has a negative impact on all the three dimensions of employee silence, and ETO has a negative impact only on acquiescent silence and disregardful silence, with a non-significant impact on defensive silence.
The author proposes that employee silence has three dimensions, namely, acquiescent silence, defensive silence (same as Dyne’s research), and disregardful silence (not mentioned in past research). Furthermore, the overseas silence questionnaires were not tested on the sample. The paper concluded that organizations should create a climate of trust to reduce employee silence

Key words: employee silence, employee trust in supervisor, employee trust in organization