When Do Followers Compensate for Leader Silence? The Motivating Role of Leader Injustice

Abstract

Leaders are important for overcoming silence in organizations, because they can serve as role models and facilitate voice, for example, by being just. However, at times, leaders themselves remain silent. In such instances, trickle-down models of leadership and role-modeling theory suggest that leader silence results in follower silence. Drawing on research on laissez-faire leadership and coping, we challenge these approaches proposing that team members can compensate for their leader’s silence. This compensatory effect, in turn, is proposed to be contingent on followers’ justice perceptions, although in a counterintuitive way: Drawing on the fairness heuristic and collective action research, we propose that perceiving the leader as unjust makes it less likely that followers use their leader as a role model and can motivate followers to overcome fear and resignation, eventually resulting in followers’ speaking up in cases when leaders fail to do so. Results from two studies in organizations support our assumption that jointly considering leader and follower silence can reveal surprising effects and thus inspire new research complementing current approaches to overcome silence and its detrimental effects for organizations and their stakeholders. Additionally, we discuss theoretical and practical implications regarding the role of leaders, followers, and context as antecedents of silence.