Frances J. Milliken
Elizabeth W. Morrison
Patricia F. Hewlin

We interviewed a sample of employees and asked about situations where they had remained silent about an organizationally-relevant issue despite being concerned about this issue. Our objective was to understand this phenomenon and why it occurs. 85% of respondents indicated that they had been in situations where they failed to speak up. Many of their reasons related to fear but the most common fear was not of concrete punishments such as losing their job but of more subtle social consequences. From our data, we build a model of the psychological and social forces that drive the decision to remain silent about issues at work.