A Qualitative Analysis of The Antecedents and Outcomes of Voice and Silence in Remote and Hybrid Work Arrangements

Abstract

As organizations are shifting to remote work arrangements, workers would resort to behaviors that enable proper communication of ideas, opinions, or information, and at the same time improve wellbeing and coping abilities (Buzas et al. 2025). These behaviors could be enacted in two ways, either through voice or silence. What was overlooked is that workers may enact different forms of voice and silence in the non-traditional work settings (remote or hybrid work) in comparison to what they used to perform in the traditional work arrangements. In this study, we employed a qualitative method to understand what types of voice and silence behaviors workers enact and what motives trigger these behaviors in remote and hybrid work arrangements. Additionally, we aim to explore the antecedents and outcomes of these behaviors. In this final project, we employed semi-structured interviews with eleven participants working in remote and hybrid arrangements in Lebanon to understand their experience with voice and silence. This study contributed three main findings to the literature. First, we found that workers perform voice and silence behaviors based on four motives, three predefined by Van Dyne et al. (2003), which are self-protective, other-oriented, and disengaged. The fourth motive, which we found to be performed by remote and hybrid workers, has been labelled in this project as the “engaged” motive. Second, remote and hybrid workers are mostly influenced by intrapersonal factors like their individual characteristics to enact voice and silence behaviors. Additionally, organizational factors like work arrangement and culture follow, while interpersonal factors were the least likely to impact the performance of these behaviors. Lastly, voice and silence behaviors in remote work positively impacted the belonging and the work environment of workers. These behaviors even have an impact on wellbeing, exclusion, and career development. These results are of critical importance to organizations and workers as they will help them promote the type of voice and silence that can encourage psychologically safe cultures at work, and in turn, social and psychological wellbeing.