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This article has three objectives. Firstly, we seek to demonstrate the relevance of voice and silence-that is, whether employees contribute or withhold information, ideas, views and/or concerns at work-for the sustainable development of individuals, organizations and societies. Our second objective is to identify emerging (and enduring) issues-conceptual, theoretical and methodological-that have not yet been adequately addressed in voice and silence research. These issues include the relationship between voice and silence, how they may manifest in organizations, their manifold antecedents inside and beyond organizational boundaries, their potentially positive and negative effects for internal and external stakeholders, and methodological questions. The third objective is to propose opportunities for addressing these issues with the ultimate aim

Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. 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 Authenticity, employee silence, and prohibitive voice 2 Authenticity, employee silence, prohibitive voice, and the moderating effect of organizational identification Authenticity, one of the key concepts in positive psychology research (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 12), "involves owning one's personal experiences, be they thoughts, emotions, needs, wants, preferences, or beliefs" and "expressing oneself in ways that are consistent with inner thoughts and feelings" (Harter, 2002, p.382). Although practitioners and researchers agree that authenticity is important for psychological well-being (e.g., Rogers, 1961;Schlegel & Hicks, 2011), they question the appropriateness of authenticity at work. Studies have revealed that employees are often required to act in specific ways (e.g., Grandey, 2003;Hewlin, 2009;Hochschild, 1983) and that adjusting to others' expectations might be advantageous with regard to supervisor evaluations (Blickle et al., 2011 We think that the potential benefits of authenticity may lie dormant because in some situations, employees who are true to themselves could be beneficial for organizations. One such situation is when employees face problematic situations at work (e.g., transgressions, ineffectiveness). If employees engage in prohibitive voice ...

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

In the business context, there is a broad spectrum of practices that potentially harm others, yet might benefit the organization. We examined the influence of individual and situational differences in predicting (un)ethical behavior in these moral gray zones using an in‐basket exercise that included covert moral issues in which managers could give unethical instructions to their followers. Results show that individual differences in moral disengagement directly predicted unethical behavior and functioned as a mediator of the relationship between authenticity and unethical behavior. Furthermore, effects differed in weak compared to strong situations. Study 2, replicated the results from Study 1, developed a direct test of the situational strength hypothesis, and showed that high versus low situation strength moderated the relation of moral disengagement to unethical behavior.

Employee silence, the withholding of work-related ideas, questions, or concerns from someone who could effect change, has been proposed to hamper individual and collective learning as well as the detection of errors and unethical behaviors in many areas of the world. To facilitate cross-cultural research, we validated an instrument measuring four employee silence motives (i.e., silence based on fear, resignation, prosocial, and selfish motives) in 21 languages. Across 33 countries (N = 8,222) representing diverse cultural clusters, the instrument shows good psychometric properties (i.e., internal reliabilities, factor structure, and measurement invariance). Results further revealed similarities and differences in the prevalence of silence motives between countries, but did not necessarily support cultural stereotypes. To explore the role of culture for silence, we examined relationships of silence motives with the societal practices cultural dimensions from the GLOBE Program. We found relationships between silence motives and power distance, institutional collectivism, and KNOLL ET AL.

Basic research suggests that authenticity is a potential important antecedent of responsible organizational behavior and occupational health. However, ambiguities concerning the concept’s content and boundaries and measurement problems limit cumulative theory building and easy adaption in organizational research. We address these barriers by integrating existing conceptualizations into a two-dimensional model of authenticity comprising a self-directed and an expression-oriented dimension and developing and validating an instrument for organizational research. We furthermore use the newly developed scale to address two controversies in authenticity research: Order of causality between authenticity and well-being and health and self-other agreement on authenticity and its correlates. Results from multiple samples provide evidence for content, discriminant, and criterion validity, as well as internal and temporal consistency of the integrated short scale. Self-reports and others’ ratings support both dimensions’ relevance for work-related variables and revealed insights into how others estimate authenticity. Longitudinal data provided evidence for antecedents and consequences and uncovered differences in the malleability of the dimensions.

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