The Impact Of Organizational Silence On Job Burnout: A Case Study Of Nigerian Public School Teachers

INTRODUCTION: Organizations are demanding more from their employees when it comes to speaking up, accepting responsibility, and taking initiative. This is as a result of increased competition, consumer expectations, and more focus on quality (Quinn & Speizter,1997). Organizations need people to survive. Not just people but those who are responsive, can stand up for themselves and their team beliefs, not scared to share ideas and information and are able to respond/tackle challenges of their environment. Despite these, the level of openness of employees in many organizations today, towards speaking up, is still a far cry from how it is supposed to be. For Beer and Noria (2000), the reasons for the failure of some change management programs is because many organizations do not encourage the sharing of information and communication. Senge (1999) also states that because some managers have been so long work environments where fear, silence and intimidation, are the norm, they hence, cannot think of another way of working and behaving.