Employee Silence: A Critical Review and Prognosis

A body of management literature has emerged examining why employees can fail to provide employers with productivity enhancing information and opt instead to remain ‘silent’. Most of the existing literature has tended to assume that the source of this problem lays with poorly designed workplace voice systems. In contrast, this seminar will propose that ‘knowledge hoarding’ by employees is often to their benefit and may be seen as a defensive mobilisation in response to conflictual strains in the employment relationship.

Biography
Niall Cullinane (B.Comm, MBS, PhD, PGCHET) is a lecturer at the Management School, Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests fall within the area of industrial relations and sociology of work, having published in journals such as Work, Employment Society, International Journal of Human Resource Management and Economic and Industrial Democracy. He sits on the Northern Ireland Labour Relations Agency Research Committee and acts as National Expert for the European Commission’s Fitness Check of Information and Consultation Directives. He undertook his PhD at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, NUI Galway.

This Seminar is part of the Visiting Fellowship Programme at the Whitaker Institute.

All Welcome!