Abstract
Tourism is an industry in which the service providers and the service receivers are human, and it holds a labor-intensive feature. Culture of a business is very important in achieving the satisfaction of guests. Within the tourism industry, where competition is experienced harshly, businesses need to create an environment open to new ideas, criticism, and development in order to be fruitful. In the formation of such an environment, a great responsibility falls to business management. In businesses where employees can express their thoughts freely, democracy takes up a dominant place, and contemporary management philosophy is likely to survive. In the labor-intensive tourism industry, a high level of organizational silence of employees may lead to some negative states such as insecurity in terms of organization and individual, decrease in organizational commitment and loyalty, and lack of motivation and job dissatisfaction. This chapter explores organizational silence in the tourism industry.
TopIntroduction
One of the most foremost and essential components in the process of tourism development is the qualified labor supply (Szivas, Riley & Airey, 2003: 64). The labor intensive feature in the tourism industry (Haven-Tang & Jones, 2008: 353; Hayes & Ninemeier, 2009:5) brings the human factor forefront. The quality of services provided in tourism is specifically related with people and the focal point of this quality is the human (Ross & Pryce, 2010; Erbaş, Cankül & Temizkan, 2013). In this context, developments in tourism have brought about investments of physical and technological infrastructure. Yet, it is the human resources that add value to all these investments, and human resources are the indispensable factor for the realization of services in the tourism industry. Therefore, the leading indicator of this value takes place when the managers esteem the ideas and thoughts of the employees. This is because business initially need the knowledge and thoughts of their employees in order to make the continuous change required by the dynamic competition. Still, employees do not always voice their knowledge and opinions or find any opportunities to do so. Employees can deliberately and consciously refrain from unveiling knowledge and ideas that will advantage their businesses for different reasons. This situation is characterized as organizational silence in the literature.
Organizational silence arises when the employees consciously stint their ideas, knowledge and opinions concerning the improvement of their work and organization (Morrison & Millliken, 2000a). The states that trigger the process of silence in organizations are divided into groups as internally-externally or individually, organizationally and managerially (Pinder & Harlos; 2001). Not all forms of organizational silence represent passive behavior (Scott, 1993). For that reason, it is stated in the commonly made definitions that organizational silence is “conscious, purposeful, intentional and active (Bogosian, 2012).
Tourism is a industry in which the service providers and the service receivers are the human and it holds a labor intensive feature. Culture of a business is very compelling in achieving the satisfaction of guests. Within the tourism industry, where competition is experienced harshly, businesses need to create an environment open to new ideas, criticism and development in order to be fruitful. In the formation of such an environment, a great responsibility falls to the business management. On the condition that in businesses where the employees can express their thoughts freely, democracy takes up a dominant place, and contemporary management philosophy is current are likely to survive. In the labor intensive tourism industry, high level of organizational silence of employees may lead to some negative states such as insecurity in terms of organization and individual, decrease in organizational commitment and loyalty, lack of motivation, job dissatisfaction.
In this section, the likely effects of the organizational silence behavior of the employees, who are indispensable element of tourism industry, have been discussed in connection with the tourism industry. In this direction, first of all, the concept of organizational silence, the types of organizational silence, the reasons, the consequences of organizational silence and the things that can be done to prevent it have been clarified and it moves on to examine the tourism industry and organizational silence, solution suggestions for prevention and the previously carried.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Tourism Business: Business that operates in tourism industry.
Prosocial Silence: A kind of silence that is shaped based on the benefit of organization, the employees of the organization, or the society.
Organizational Silence: A way of behavior by employees who do not want to talk about organizational issues and concerns.
Employee Silence: The withholding of any form of genuine expression about the individual's behavioral, cognitive, and/or affective evaluations of his or her organizational circumstances to persons who are perceived to be capable of affecting change or redress.
Silence: The state of no noise in an environment and silence.
Defensive Silence: Deliberate and proactive behavior used by the employees to protect themselves from external threats including awareness of alternatives following an informed decision to block ideas, information, and opinions.
Acquiescent Silence: The conscious silence of employees or the state in which employees exclude themselves from issues.