Employer silencing in a context of voice regulations: Case studies of non‐compliance

• Author: Tony Dundon,Jimmy Donaghey,Tony Dobbins,Eugene Hickland,Niall Cullinane
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12285

SPECIAL ISSUE

Employer silencing in a context of voice

regulations: Case studies of non-compliance

Eugene Hickland

1

| Niall Cullinane

2

| Tony Dobbins

3

|

Tony Dundon

4

| Jimmy Donaghey

5

1

Dublin City University Business School,

Dublin City University

2

Queens University Management School,

Queens University Belfast

3

Birmingham Business School, University of

Birmingham

4

Kemmy Business School, University of

Limerick, Visiting Professor, Work & Equalities

Institute, University of Manchester, UK

Manchester

5

Centre for Workplace Excellence, University

of South Australia

Correspondence

Tony Dobbins, Birmingham Business School,

University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15

2TT, UK.

Email: t.dobbins@bham.ac.uk

Funding information

Economic and Social Research Council, Grant/

Award Number: RES-062-23-1139; Irish

Research Council

Abstract

This article, drawing on the latest insights into organisational

silence, considers how employers seek to withhold information

and circumvent meaningful workplace voice when confronted

with regulatory requirements. It offers novel theoretical

insights by redefining employer silencing as characterised by

the withholding of information and the restriction of work-

place dialogue. In outlining three principal routes of non-com-

pliance—avoidance, suppression, and neglect—we empirically

illustrate the path to silence in the regulatory context of the

European Union Directive establishing a general framework

for informing and consulting employees. Rather than consider-

ing how employers utilised the regulations, as existing research

considers, we look at how employers circumvented the regula-

tory space in three case studies in the United Kingdom and

Ireland and the significant role of employer silencing as a tool

for explaining this dynamic.

KEYWORDS

employers,information and consultation, regulation,silence, voice

1|INTRODUCTION

Many employers have th e incentive and capaci ty to withhold inform ation from and avoid dial ogue with their

workforce. In terms of scholarly concep tualisation, the is sue of non-disclosur e of information and c ircumvention

of dialogue by employers can be understood as a form of silence (Barry, Dundon, & Wilkinson, 2018; Morrison,

Received: 1 June 2018 Revised: 2 January 2020 Accepted: 23 January 2020

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12285

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2020 The Authors. Human Resource Management Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Hum Resour Manag J. 2020;30:537–552. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj 537

2014). Although the silence-voice literature traditionally focuses on how employees withhold information and

refrain from speaki ng up, we focus on how em ployers withhold in formation and restri ct workplace dialo gue.

Indeed, to conceptu alise silence in thi s way offers an import ant analytical tool in enhan cing understanding of

employee voice. Whereas the latter looks at the ways and means in which employees can express their views

within the workplac e, employer silenci ng, in contrast, con siders the agency of ho w employers silenc e employee

voice by failing to ei ther disclose informa tion or abstaining f rom genuine dialogue , which is a vital precur sor for

meaningful employee voice to occur in the first instance. Employer silencing is understood here as management

engaging in acts of sil encing workers through the withholdi ng of information and the restriction o f workplace dia-

logue. Employer sil encing is analytica lly distinct from extr apolating the prese nce or absence of emplo yee voice

policies and practic e, and it differs from workers remaining si lent in response to management. As such, th is article

breaks new ground by advancing the concept of employer silencing of employee voice to improve understanding

of the nuanced dualit y of voice-silence d ynamics in employmen t relations and human re source management

(HRM) scholarship.

Regulatory context is essential in enablin g or constraining employer silence. The broader regulatory context in

many jurisdictions can constrain employe r efforts to engage in silence on a variety of matters (Emmenegger, 2015;

Marchington, 2015). For example, ther e has been growth in many countries of “hard”and “soft”regulations provid -

ing for more social dialogue in the workplace . The most notable developments in recent decad es is the European

Union (EU) Directive Establishing a General Fram ework for Informing and Consulting Employees (200 2/14/EC,

hitherto the Information and Consul tation (I&C) Directive; Gold, 201 0). These regulations potentially constrain

employer attempts to withhold informati on and avoid consultation with the workforce.

The existence of regulatory constraint raises a question over how employers preserve silence in response to reg-

ulatory requirements intended to do the opposite, that is, legislation aimed at establishing information disclosure and

workforce dialogue. Current research on the I&C Directive, for example, examines how employers use the regula-

tions to provide information and create consultation mechanisms. In this article, however, we focus on how the

Directive's intended benchmarks are subject to a typology of non-compliance behaviours, effectively routes to

employer silence. Specifically, our typology of regulatory non-compliance identifies three ways by which employers

withhold information and restrict dialogue despite legal requirements to establish their precise opposite; these are

“avoidance,”“suppression,”or“neglect.”The article illustrates these three routes empirically by using qualitative case

studies derived from studying how regulations providing for greater information disclosure and dialogue via the I&C

WHAT IS CURRENTLY KNOWN ABOUT THE SUBJECT MATTER

•Existing research sees silence as employee-led/workers choose to withhold voice;

•Existing research examines how the European Union Directive for Informing and Consulting Employees, and

national laws, is utilised.

WHAT THE PAPER ADDS TO THIS

•Organisational silence can be employer-led (“employer silencing”);

•Novel insights in defining employer silencing as “management engaging in acts of silencing workers”;

•New typology of employer silencing of Information and Consultation regulations voice requirements: avoidance,

suppression, and neglect.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY FINDINGS FOR PRACTITIONERS AND POLICY-MAKERS

•Employer silencing causes a democratic voice deficit;

•Problem of non-compliance with regulatory requirements for voice;

•Information and Consultation regulations, too weak to institutionalise voice at work, need re-casting.

538 HICKLAND ET AL.