Research pick: The employee voice - "Employee voice and silence: a bibliometric analysis of the literature"

What does it mean for a worker to have a “voice”? The moral and sociological implications are more far complicated than a cursory listen to employee voice…or silence…might at first suggest. The employee voice might influence suggestion-box systems, grievance systems, dispute reporting and resolution, whistle-blowing, issue selling, upward influence with management, voice through collective representation, also known as unionisation, employee participation, and employee involvement in the management or company development.

Now, a US team has used advanced bibliometric mapping tools to plot the sciencebase of the voice and silence literature. “Our findings indicate that employee silence and employee voice are terms that are largely claimed by the organisational behaviour (OB) and human resource management (HRM) literature,” the team reports in the International Journal of Bibliometrics in Business and Management.

Debra Casey of Temple University, Philadelphia and Steven McMillan of Penn State University, Abington, both in Pennsylvania, USA, explain how they examined 376 articles, notes, and book chapters from the Web of Science (WoS) system. Importantly, from the perspective of reviewing the literature in this area and understanding the sociological and political implications, they found that the terms are defined much more narrowly in this part of the literature than they are in the industrial relations or employment relations disciplines, where one might imagine a clearer definition of the terms might be even more important.

“One of the benefits of using bibliometric techniques is that they provide a quantitative analysis that many times confirms what the astute researcher already knows,” the team reports. “We hope that by further exploring and clarifying this important area of scholarship, both seasoned scholars and those new to this area will have a better appreciation of their own ‘invisible college’ and how to make good use of it,” they add.

Casey, D.L. and McMillan, G.S. (2019) ‘Employee voice and silence: a bibliometric analysis of the literature‘, Int. J. Bibliometrics in Business and Management, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp.251-266.