The silent potential: coworkers’ voicing in workplace meetings
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Purpose The article aims to increase the understanding of how coworkers perform voice (i.e., do voicing) in internal meetings while embedding the phenomenon in wider organizational and social contexts. It answers the following research questions: 1. How do coworkers perform voicing in team meetings at an international manufacturing company? 2. How do coworkers experience voicing in meetings? Design/methodology/approach The qualitative study is based on empirical material collected through 11 observations and 16 semi-structured interviews at a multinational organization within the transportation and infrastructure sector. Findings Work meetings remain largely silent even though coworkers perceive their workplace as safe, open and transparent. Coworker’s voicing is therefore postponed or transformed into a form of pseudo-communication, influenced by a discourse of productivity, effectivity and efficiency, hybrid ways of organizing, and both enabling and constraining character of a meeting structure. Additionally, the study uncovers a new form of unobtrusive managerial control, i.e. wellbeing talk. Coworker’s voicing is a complex communication process influenced by various social, cultural, organizational, individual and team-based norms. Research limitations/implications The article offers a three-fold contribution to communication scholarship: (1) identification and exploration of new communicative phenomena emerging in organizations; (2) problematization of silence and voice theories and (3) challenging the theoretical assumption that open organizational environments, psychological safety and transparency automatically result in coworkers’ voicing. Practical implications Our results raise several practical challenges that teams must address, such as who is responsible for facilitating coworker’s voicing and what is reasonable to expect from coworkers. Some members’ silence might not mean they are unsatisfied or suppressing their voicing. Instead, they might need more time to reflect before their performance. Ideally, coworker’s voicing becomes a habitualized practice, replacing the currently normalized silence. Originality/value The study departed from the fact that work meetings, i.e. everyday organizational communicative events, are commonly taken for granted, and the importance of coworker’s voicing in organizing processes remains overlooked. This article problematizes the current dominant voice scholarship, which is strongly influenced by normative managerial thinking and a limited understanding of communication. Voicing is not merely a voluntary, rational and reactive communicative process. Instead, we propose voicing is a complex interplay between various situational, structural, social, cultural and team-based influences governed by norms and power dynamics.
Authors: Karolina Bohacova, Mats Heide
Institution: Lund University
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4404832748