Van dyne, ang and botero (2003) employees silence scale: Testing for factorial validity and invariance in Portugal

Abstract

Employee silence has been understood as the individual deliberate decision to retain information, opinions and suggestions about the organization. In recent years there has been an increase in studies on this construct, but there is a lack of theoretical and empirical consistency. The present study aims to study the factorial validity and the invariance of the measure proposed by Van Dyne, Ang and Botero (2003) for Portugal. Starting from a three-dimensional theoretical structure, the results suggest that, for the Portuguese population, the measure is invariant and composed of two dimensions that correlate negatively. One denominated adhesion silence that corresponds to the prosocial silence of van Dyne et al. (2003) and other called rejection silence composed by the junction of the defensive and submissive dimensions of van Dyne et al. (2003). The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.