Speak! Paradoxical Effects of a Managerial Culture of ‘Speaking Up’
We are grateful to our participants at the research site for their valuable time. We are especially indebted to the CEO for their support and the critical reading of an earlier version of the manuscript. Miguel Cunha wishes to thank the Facultad de Administracion, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, where he started drafting this paper. We are grateful to our editor and anonymous reviewers, to Filipa Castanheira, Luca Giustiniano and to the participants in our sections at the 2016 PROS and EGOS meetings for their important feedback.
[Correction added on 25 April 2018, after first online publication: the second affiliation of the fourth author was initially removed and was added in this version.]
Abstract
We explore the intrinsic ambiguity of speaking up in a multinational healthcare subsidiary. A culture change initiative, emphasizing learning and agility through encouraging employees to speak up, gave rise to paradoxical effects. Some employees interpreted a managerial tool for improving effectiveness as an invitation to raise challenging points of difference rather than as something ‘beneficial for the organization’. We show that the process of introducing a culture that aims to encourage employees to speak up can produce tensions and contradictions that make various types of organizational paradoxes salient. Telling people to ‘speak up!’ may render paradoxical tensions salient and even foster a sense of low PsySafe.
Number of times cited according to CrossRef: 1
- Ace V. Simpson and Marco Berti, Transcending Organizational Compassion Paradoxes by Enacting Wise Compassion Courageously, Journal of Management Inquiry, 10.1177/1056492618821188, (105649261882118), (2019).
