Examining Organizational Communication in Terms of Relationships Between Organizational Dissent, Perceived Organizational Power Distance and Psychological Capital
Authors: SEÇKİN Emir , MAMACI Merve 
Published: December 2022

Objectives: Employees' job satisfaction and organizational commitment is very important for the steady growth and development of an organization. Today, with the increase in the competitive environment, the attempts of organizations to understand how to ensure this stability have also increased. Also, it is seen that the high psychological capital of the employees and their dissent behavior increase the performance, while the high organizational power distance both reduces the performance and constitutes an obstacle in exhibiting the organizational dissent behavior. It is known that one of the most important factors contributing to the growth and development of organizations is that employees’ expression of the problems that arise in the functioning of the organization and their dissatisfaction. There are many individual, relational and organizational factors that affect organizational dissent, which expresses the ability of employees to express their views openly. One of the individual factors is the psychological capital level of the employees, and one of the organizational factors is the perceived organizational power distance. The concept of psychological capital expresses the individual's awareness of who he is and his cognitive capacity. Positive psychological capital has defined as a new movement that goes beyond economic capital, which refers to what we have, human capital, which refers to what we know, and social capital, which refers to who we know, to express who we are. According to this approach, discovering the strengths of individuals and enabling them to reveal these strengths in the most effective way contributes to individual well-being, while positively reflecting on performance and increasing productivity. Positive psychological capital provides competitive advantage by enriching the knowledge and human capital at the individual and organizational level. Organizational power distance is related to how the power balance in the subordinate-superior relationship is perceived. The concept of power distance was first aimed to explain the structure of societies. In the concept of organizational power distance, the inequality of power distribution between superiors and subordinates in organizations is mentioned. The participation of the members of the organization in organizational decisions, the level of initiative and responsibility also express the power distance. Studies have shown that high psychological capital increases organizational dissent behavior, while high power distance reduces dissent behavior. Accordingly, this research aimed to give insight for organizational communication by examining the relationships between perceived organizational power distance, psychological capital and organizational dissent.

Design/methodology/approach: The sample of the study consists of 300 participants who voluntarily participated in the study with the snowball sampling method. Demographic form, organizational power distance scale, organizational dissent scale and psychological capital scale were used to gather data.

Results: Findings showed that there is a significant and positive relationship between organizational dissent and psychological capital. Also it has founded that there is a negative significant relationship between organizational power distance and psychological capital, organizational dissent.

Practical implications: This research draws attention to the importance of individual factors such as psychological capital in organizational communication. It provides an empirical basis for the initiatives of workplaces to increase the psychological capital levels of their employees. In addition, by drawing attention to the spread of organizational dissent culture, it paves the way for organizations to conduct cultural analysis.

Originality/value: In the Turkish sample, organizational dissent, perceived organizational power distance and psychology capital concepts are evaluated together and it has a unique value in terms of being a research that reveals empirical data with quantitative study.