Breaking the silence: The moderating effects of self-monitoring in predicting speaking up in the workplace

Whereas both management scholars and practitioners emphasize the importance of employee input for improving workplace practices, research suggests that many employees are hesitant to express their opinions or voice their views because doing so might lead to retaliation. Consequently, they remain silent rather than speak up about workplace happenings, actions or ideas of others, needed changes, and other job-related issues. Drawing on various literatures, we developed and tested a conceptual scheme for examining the influence of self-monitoring on the relationships between two individual (locus of control and self-esteem) and two contextual (top-management openness and trust in supervisor) factors and speaking up. Data from 118 telecommunications employees and their coworkers provided supporting evidence. As predicted, low self-monitors, in comparison to high self-monitors, spoke up more often as internal locus of control, self-esteem, top-management openness, and trust in supervisor increased. The theoretical and practical implications of our results are discussed.