Supervisor-Subordinate Communication: Hierarchical Mum Effect Meets Organizational Learning

Abstract

The authors provide nine propositions regarding the function and effects of supervisor-subordinate communication to encourage business communication researchers to go beyond a unidimensional view of this workplace relationship. Taken together, these propositions represent an argument that connects and clarifies the associations between micro-level supervisor-subordinate communication behaviors and macro-level organizational learning. We explain how command structures produce relational contexts that create consequences for communication behaviors between subordinates and their supervisors. Specifically, we explain how subordinates’ reluctance to disagree with supervisors results in silence or equivocation—what the authors label the hierarchical mum effect. In turn, we describe how this organizational suppression of dissent produces a barrier to organizational learning and adaptation.

Supervisor–Subordinate Communication Competence and Job and Communication Satisfaction

“…This implied that employees had a less compelling view of their supervisors' communication competence in relation to their overall job satisfaction, a position that was also found in Madlock (2008a, p. 69). But in the current study, the correlation between supervisor/manager job and communication satisfaction (r = .79) and the beta coefficient (β = .69), we speculate, may have to do with factors other than the supervisor-subordinate relationship, perhaps macro-level or hierarchical organizational factors that influence subordinate silence or equivocation (Bisel et al, 2012), but in our view not supervisor/managers in the same way. Another study by Sharbrough et al (2006, p. 333), however, reported a positive but weak relationship between communication competence and job satisfaction of r = .25, p < .004, which is not consistent with the findings of Madlock (2008a) and the current study.…”

“…It may well be that neither leader influence nor subordinate influence alone, but the dyadic interaction of the two, as well as other factors, accounts for worker (subordinate and supervisor) outcomes such as job and communication satisfaction. This is fascinating to us and suggests further avenues for research on outcomes for subordinates and supervisors who, despite their relative and mutual power influences, may be motivated by achieving not only organizational goals and outcomes (Madlock, 2008c;Teven, 2007) or macro-level organizational learning (Bisel et al, 2012) but micro-level personal ones as well.…”

Conceptualising and Connecting Francophone Perspectives on Learning Through and for Work

“…The organisational dimension of learning is addressed in reference to general organisational theory (e.g. Simon 1965), theory of organisational learning (Antonacopoulou and Chiva 2007;Clegg et al 2005;Elkjaer 2004;Gherardi et al 1998) and organisational communication (Bisel et al 2012;Brummans et al 2014. The assumption of learning as a dialogical process is mostly grounded in Bakhtin's work (Todorov 1984), as well as Erving Goffman's on interaction rituals and presentation of self (Goffman 1959(Goffman , 1967.…”

Power distance and its implications for upward communication and empowerment: crisis management and recovery in hospitality services

“…On the other hand, in higher power distance cultures, inequalities among the members of the society are considered more appropriate and there is greater reliance by the less powerful on those people who have power, centralization is the norm and subordinates are likely to be separated from the superiors by wide differentials in salary, privileges and status symbols (Hofstede 1991;Patterson et al 2006;Botero and Van Dyne 2009;Reisinger and Crotts 2010;Chen, Okumus, Huan and Khaldoon 2011;Bisel, Messersmith and Kelley 2012).…”