Does being drawn to work make us quiet? The influence of working too hard and self-interest climate on silence

Research goals and why the work was worth doing: Despite technological advancements and innovations, work broadens its grip on people’s lives due to increased work demands for some and infinite opportunities for others. In their attempt to catch up with the growing demands and opportunities, some people already predisposed may develop an inner pressure to work, have incessant and incontrollable thoughts about work, feel negative emotions when not working (or when prevented from working), and work far beyond what is required and expected (Clark et al., 2020). This phenomenon, called workaholism (Oates, 1971), has well-established implications for employee health and performance (Clark et al., 2016). In the current study, we contribute to extend existing literature on workaholism by examining the hitherto omitted issue of the ethical implications of working too hard, and exploring the mechanisms that drive and strengthen these effects. Building on previous research which mainly focused on “acts of commission” (i.e., workplace deviance), we focus on “acts of omission”, i.e. employee silence, which are still harmful for employees and organisations. We hypothesise that working too hard due to external (workload) and internal pressures (workaholism) may lead to more employee silence and less voice. We expect these relationships to be mediated by moral disengagement, namely the set of social-cognitive strategies which alleviate employees’ moral pressure to address critical issues (Bandura, 2002). Additionally, because negative behaviours do not occur in a vacuum, we suggest that self-interest climate could act as an important moderator which can amplify the negative effect of workload and workaholism on moral disengagement. Theoretical background: We rely on Conservation of Resources Theory (COR; (Hobfoll, 1989) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT; Bandura, 1986) to investigate our research questions. In line with COR, we expect that working hard may exhaust workers’ energy so that they refrain from behaviour that goes beyond their immediate work task (Ng et al., 2016), such as voicing concerns or opinions for overall organisational improvements. Moreover, because engaging in employee silence when voice is needed makes employees feel uneasy and guilty (Kirrane et al., 2017), consistent with SCT we expect that the psychological process of moral disengagement may allow people to engage in acts of omission without experiencing these tensions. Methodology: We performed a three-wave study on a sample of UK employees. Time 1 (T1) comprised 1046 employees. At T2 participants were recontacted one month later (N = 594). After five months, the final sample at T3 included 292 employees. Workaholism (Clark et al., 2020), workload (Siegrist et al., 2014) and self-interest climate (Elçi & Alpkan, 2009) were measured at T1; moral disengagement (Fida et al., 2015) at T2; silence (Knoll & van Dick, 2013) and voice (Liang et al., 2012) at T3. We employed Structural Equation Modelling and Latent Moderated Structural Equation model (LMS; Klein & Moosbrugger, 2000) to investigate our hypotheses. Results: Our results showed that the cognitive and emotional facets of workaholism were significantly related to (more) silence and (less) voice through the mediating effect of moral disengagement. Workload was not associated with moral disengagement but had a positive impact on silence. Our moderated-mediation model showed that the conditional indirect effects of emotional workaholism on (more) silence and (less) voice via moral disengagement were intensified as levels of self-interest climate increased. Limitations: The constructs were measured with self-report scales. Moreover, the study was conducted in a specific country (UK), thus we cannot provide insights into how workaholism would affect silence and voice in other countries or cultures. Conclusions and research/practical implications: Our research contributes to the understanding of how workaholism affects not only employee well-being, but also voice and silence; behaviours that have far-reaching ethical consequences. To our knowledge, this is the first study which empirically tests these associations; moreover, the use of a three-wave study is an additional strength. Practically speaking, our results suggest that human resource practitioners and managers should be particularly attentive to employees displaying high levels of workaholism, i.e. by creating "healthier" work environments to avoid triggering workaholism tendencies. Relevance to the congress theme: Organisations are increasingly pushing their employees to work harder and longer to remain competitive in a rapidly changing labour market. Thus, we believe it is important to fully understand the implications of working hard in organisations not only to protect well-being, but also to prevent unethical behaviours in terms of acts of commission and omission.