A Study of the Relationship between Organizational Identity and Organizational Silence among Employees of the University of Isfahan (2014)

Introduction As a competitive advantage in organizations, identity has become significant in recent years. It is a unique quality that distinguishes one person from others and is communicated through appearance, behavior and values of the person the concept can be equally applied for an organization as well. Positive identity can help an organization to prevent a phenomenon which is called isolation of internal staff or organizational silence, that is, refraining from expressing ideas and opinions in an organization .The realization of organizational behavior depends on employees' behaviors and employees' behavior is in turn influenced by the power of organizational identity. Organizational identity is also affected by the perceived external behavior. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between organizational identity and organizational silence. At first, we introduce these two concepts and their dimensions. Then research methodology and University of Isfahan are research subject are described. Finally, the findings and conclusions of the study are discussed. Materials and Methods In terms of the purpose, this is an applied research and examines both qualitative and quantitative data. The research methodology is based on survey and correlation. Variables are divided into two categories: dependent and independent. Independent variables include components of organizational identity and the dependent variable is organizational silence. The research instruments include two standard questionnaires: organizational identity by Cheney (1983) containing 18 questions, and Vakola and Bouradas's questionnaire of organizational silence which has 17 items. To confirm face and content validities of the instruments we benefited from experts' opinions and factor analysis, respectively. Also, Cranachâs alpha coefficient was used to confirm the reliability of the instruments with 0.95 and 0.82 for each of the variables respectively. Discussion of Results and Conclusions The results of the study indicate that the identity of the organization in which people work, strongly affects them. If it is intended that this identity provides a positive image of the organization, good management is essential to eradicate the silence in the room, so no threat comes from management to employees when they express their ideas. According to the findings, there is a high correlation between organizational identity and organizational silence in the sense that the stronger the organizational identity, the more the organizational silence in the organization. In summary, the results of this study showed a significant relationship between organizational identification and employee's organizational silence. In addition, a positive correlation was found between the duration of membership in organization, and employees' loyalty and similarity (with the head of the organization or other individual authorities) with organizational silence. At the end, the following suggestions can be recommended: â¢ Organizations should provide a suitable system to reward innovative ideas, â¢ They should run workshops designed to teach relationship skills to managers and supervisors, â¢ They should define specific rules for the protection of employees' attitudes, â¢ They should decide on how to organize different working groups, â¢ They should change the organizational culture into an educational and didactic environment â¢ They should create programs to improve the management of human resources for training decision making skills. â¢ When possible, legislations and regulations should be delegated to working groups,