"Have you heard!?" The narrative roots of organizational silence
Pferner's qualitative longitudinal study asks how implicit voice theories, beliefs such as that speaking up is risky, spread and become embedded in an organisation. Over nearly three years at a German automotive site of about 5,000 people, she interviewed 48 foremen, group leaders and department heads repeatedly, 128 interviews in all. In autumn 2017 Karl, a quality inspection foreman, asked at a four-weekly meeting of about 100 to 150 managers, where questions were explicitly encouraged, why one production area was assessed on a quantitative unit rather than quality metrics. A few days later he received what he called a disciplinary measure involving personal coaching. Thirteen other interviewees referred to the event. Karl recounted that a few months on, the works council's deputy chair told him the CEO had asked why no foreman asked questions in the open Q&A session any more.
Pferner reads the spread through observation, storytelling and Myers's coactive vicarious learning, along chains that no longer involved Karl, though interviewees dwelt on the event rather than on how or when they heard of it. First, implicit voice theories can emerge or be consolidated without a bad experience of one's own: some with open exchanges with their own supervisors still had their image of the organisation shaped by colleagues' negative experiences. Second, an event like Karl's can be identified in retrospect as a tipping point of the kind Perlow and Repenning describe, past which acts of silence consolidate into norms; Pferner adds that acts of voice can also reinforce that dynamic. Third, in a micro-macro paradox, fear and resignation were directed mainly at the organisation, often meaning top management, while direct supervisors were generally excluded and some reported higher psychological safety with them. She calls the pattern contagious silence; interviewees said they would pass the story on to future colleagues, a call for silence that Pferner reads as protective. Formal voice structures, she argues, are necessary but insufficient without examining how power responds to voice.
Interviewees were all white, all but two male, with a median tenure over 15 years. Pferner notes the risk of distorted memory in retrospective accounts, common method bias not entirely ruled out, the low generalisability of narrative data, and that other experiences between interviews may have shaped attitudes; she discloses a previous collaboration that gave her informal, direct insight into the company.
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