New paper published | The role of silence on employees’ attitudes “the day after” a merger.

Personnel Review | The role of silence on employees’ attitudes “the day after” a merger.

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the role of organizational silence and trust on employees’ attitudes in a post-merger stage.

Design/methodology/approach – The results of two independent studies are presented; participants completed measures of organizational trust, organizational silence and merger attitudes (organizational commitment and employee satisfaction) a few months following the announcement of the merger. Hierarchical regression analyzes were used to explore the hypotheses.

Findings – The results show that organizational trust is negatively related to organizational silence and positively to merger attitudes. Further, the significant role of organizational silence in a post-merger state was also identified through the negative relationships with merger attitudes, but mainly through the significant mediating effect of silence between organizational trust and merger attitudes.

Research limitations/implications – The study used self-report measures, but necessary actions were taken in order to reduce the effect of common method variance. Therefore, it should be cross-validated with different research designs (e.g. longitudinal research) in other countries.

Practical implications – The findings provide further support on the significance of organizational silence in work settings, especially at major organizational turnarounds.

Originality/value – The most significant contribution of the study is that it explores for the first time the role of organizational silence in a post-merger stage and its relationship to organizational trust.