The effect of workplace mobbing on organizational silence: empirical results from higher education institutions

Mobbing and organizational silence are among the topics that have attracted attention in the field of organizational behavior. This study aimed to investigate the effect of mobbing behaviors on organizational silence in the workplace. Data were obtained from academicians working at public universities in Turkey. As a data collection tool, the Mobbing Scale for Academicians (MS-A) scale developed by Yildiz (2020) to measure mobbing, and the organizational silence scale developed by Van Dyne et al. (2003) to measure organizational silence were used. Correlation and hierarchal regression analyzes were applied to the obtained data. Relationships between the sub-dimensions of mobbing and sub-dimensions of organizational silence were analyzed separately. According to the results of the analysis, mobbing behaviors had a significant and positive effect on acquiescent silence and defensive silences of the academicians. However, there was no significant effect of mobbing on the prosocial silence of academicians. These results showed that mobbing behaviors were effective in the emergence of organizational silence.