Futility of Speaking Up as a Mediator between Psychological Safety and Nurses’ Silence Behavior
Introduction
•Previous research has shown that psychological safety reduces nurses’ silence behavior
•Organizational researchers have emphasized the futility of speaking up as one of the major enablers of silence behavior
•Futility of speaking up pertains to an individual’s feeling that speaking up is useless because the point they assert is often ignored and/or nothing changes
•It is worthwhile to examine whether the futility of speaking up mediates the relationship between psychological safety and silence behavior of nurses
Aim
•To explore the mediating role of futility of speaking up in the relationship between psychological safety and nurses’ silence behavior
Method
•Research design: Cross-sectional, correlational study
•Data: Survey data of 730 direct care nurses working at medical/surgical wards in 33 Korean hospitals
•Dependent variable: psychological safety, measured using the Psychological Safety Scale [1]
•Outcome variable: silence behavior, measured using a 5-item tool [2]
•Mediator: futility of speaking up, measured using
a 3-item tool [3]
•Control variables: Nurses’ unit tenure and age
•Statistical analysis: Model 4 of Hayes’ PROCESS macro version 4.2 in IBM SPSS/WIN 26.0 program
Results
•Psychological safety negatively correlated with silence behavior (β = -0.295, p < 0.001) and futility of speaking up (β = -0.766, p < 0.001)
•Futility of speaking up positively correlated with silence behavior (β = 0.217, p < 0.001)
•Psychological safety had a negative indirect effect on silence behavior through futility of speaking up (β = -0.166, 95% confidence interval = -0.228 to -0.111), indicating that futility of speaking up had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between psychological safety and silence behavior
Conclusions
•When nurses feel psychologically unsafe in their working unit, they perceive speaking up as futile, and therefore, choose to remain silent even if they have concerns
•Hospital administrators and unit managers should put effort into creating a psychologically safe environment for nurses not to perceive their speaking up behavior as useless, which in turn can reduce nurses’ silence behavior
Acknowledgement
•This study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea Government (MSIT) (No.RS-2023-00208138)
•Sang Hwa Lee and Won Jin Seo received a scholarship from Brain Korea 21 FOUR Project funded by NRF, Yonsei University College of Nursing
References
1. Edmondson, A. (1999) Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
2. Tangirala, S., & Ramanujam, R. (2008). Employee silence on critical work issues: The cross-level effects of procedural justice climate. Personnel Psychology, 61(1), 37-68. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2008.00105.x
3. Burris, E. R., Detert, J. R., & Chiaburu, D. S. (2008). Quitting before leaving: The mediating effects of psychological attachment and detachment on voice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(4), 912-922. http://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.4.912
Contact Information
•Seung Eun Lee
College of Nursing, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea,
leese@yuhs.ac
