Drawing on the principles of self-interest and self-protection, our study explores the intricate relationships among the instrumental ethical climate, defensive silence, psychological empowerment and job performance.
The hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) with multi-wave data collected from employees in North American service-sector organizations.
In an instrumental ethical climate, self-serving behavior fosters insecurity, prompting employees to adopt defensive silence as a protective response. However, withholding ideas weakens employees' psychological empowerment. As a result, they struggle to find meaning in their work, feel powerless in decision-making and fail to see their impact on the organization, ultimately compromising their job performance.
Our results highlight that defensive silence and psychological empowerment sequentially mediate between an instrumental ethical climate and job performance.
