Organizational Silence and Organizational Commitment: A Study of Turkish Sport Managers

Background. There is a limited number of studies investigating the relationship between organizational commitment and organizational silence, especially in the sports sector. Objectives. This study aims to examine the effects of organizational silence perception on organizational commitment behaviors of employees in the sports sector in Istanbul. Methods. The participants of this study were 294 professional employees from sports organizations in Istanbul, Turkey. Participants completed the organizational silence scale (Van Dyne, Ang and Botero, 2003) and the corporate commitment scale (Meyer and Allen, 1991). The relations between sub-dimensions of organizational silence and organizational commitment are tested with factor analysis, correlation analysis and SEM Partial Least Squares. Results. The results of this study have shown that there is a relationship between organizational silence and organizational commitment. While examining the sub-dimensions of both variables, acquiescent silence was a negative effect on the continuation and normative commitment; defensive silence was also a negative effect on affective and normative commitment; prosocial silence was the only positive effect on continuance commitment. Conclusion. Defensive silence and acquiescent silence affect organizational commitment negatively, whereas prosocial silence has a positive effect on it. The reason for these different results that organizational silence and organizational commitment variables may be subjected to statistical analysis based on sub-dimensions in this study.