• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.31-62
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• 2017

It found that employee silence negatively impacts both organizations and their employees as shown in findings from many studies and recently there has been a growing interest in it. Silence is described as intentionally withholding job-related ideas, information, concerns, and opinions. Employee silence may decrease organizational change and innovation and reduce employee learning motivation and knowledge sharing engagement as well. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among silence motivations, perceived silence climate, and employee silence; the relationships among employee silence, learning inertia and knowledge sharing disengagement; the mediating role of employee silence between antecedents of employee silence and consequences additionally. The results that analyzed using data from 225 employees in 42 organizations are as follows. First, the impact of silence motivation and perceived silence climate on employee silence are positively significant. Second, the influence of defensive silence motivation on the acquiescent and relational silence motivation is positively significant. Third, the influence of employee silence on learning inertia and knowledge sharing disengagement is positively significant. Forth, employee silence mediates the relationship between silence motivation and perceived silence climate and learning inertia and knowledge sharing disengagement. These results suggest that employee silence is another strong expression and message for organizations to try to establish a learning organization from the perspective of knowledge management.