Authenticity, employee silence, prohibitive voice, and the moderating effect of organizational identification

Abstract

Authenticity is an important concept in positive psychology and has been shown to be related to well-being, health, and leadership effectiveness. The present paper introduces employee authenticity as a predictor of relevant workplace behaviors, namely employee silence and prohibitive voice. Converging evidence across two studies using cross-sectional and longitudinal designs demonstrates that when responding to hypothetical problematic workplace events (Study 1) or actual workplace experiences (Study 2), individual differences in employees’ authenticity predicted more self-reported voice behaviors and less silence that emanated from various motivations. Furthermore, authenticity scores consistently yielded predictive utility over and above the contribution of a broad set of individual and organization-based characteristics. Finally, organizational identification moderated the relation between authenticity and silence, such that for employees with high levels of identification, the relation between authenticity and silence was stronger.

Keywords:

• authenticity
• character strengths
• employee silence
• organizational identification
• positive organizational behavior
• positive organizational scholarship
• voice

Acknowledgments

We thank Oliver Weigelt and Bernd Marcus for their help with the data collection.