Sammandrag Internationell forskning har visat på en stor geografisk och kulturell spridning av tystnadskulturer och ett genomslag inom hart när alla samhällssektorer. En tystnadskultur innebär att en enskild har kännedom om information som behöver uppmärksammas och ageras på, men denne avstår från att föra kunskapen vidare till de som kan agera på den av rädsla för att ett sådant handlande kan få negativa återverkningar på den enskilde själv. Detta kan medföra att nödvändiga åtgärder inte sätts in i tid vilket i sin tur kan leda till förluster av allt ifrån ekonomiska värden till människoliv. För den enskilde blir följden stress då denne pressas mellan att göra vad som uppfattas som rätt och rädslan för de konsekvenser som antas bli följden. Inom svensk forskning är tystnadskulturer ett närmast oskrivet blad. Två avhandlingar har gjorts men ingen av dessa berör tystnadskulturer i samband med projektarbete. Uppsatser inom ämnet saknas helt. Detta arbete har gjorts för att studera vissa grundläggande förutsättningar. Finns det tystnadskulturer inom svenskt projektarbete och vilka följder kan dessa då få? För att nå svar har vi låtit en rad erfarna projektledare besvara en enkät och denna har sedan följts upp med djupintervjuer av utvalda respondenter. Resultatet pekar tydligt på att det även inom svenskt projektarbete förekommer tystnadskulturer och att dessa, om än mindre tydligt, kan få följder i form av kostnader och skador i linje med vad som visats i internationell forskning. / Abstract International research has shown that employee/organizational silence is culturally and geographically widely spread and has an impact on virtually every part of our society. Employee/organizational silence is when an individual has knowledge of information that needs to be acted upon but he/she refrains from passing it on to those in a position to act due to fear of adverse repercussions should he/she choose to do so. This entails that necessary measures will not be administered in time which may lead to anything between financial losses to the loss of human lives. This will result in stress for the individual pressed between a wish to do what is considered right and the fear of the consequences that is assumed to follow. In Swedish research hardly anything has been done on employee/organizational silence. Two theses have been written on the subject. No essays are registered. This work has been done to study some basic conditions. Is there employee/organizational silence in Swedish project work and if so what are the consequences? To be able to answer these questions we have made an inquiry among a group of experienced Swedish project managers and the inquiry has then been followed by in depth interviews with a select group of respondents. The result shows clearly that employee/organizational silence exists in Swedish project work and that it, although less clearly, comes with the same range of losses as shown by international research.

An individual’s bad news reporting behavior has been studied from a number of perspectives and has resulted in a variety of research streams including the MUM effect (or reluctance to transmit bad news), whistle-blowing, and organizational silence. While many scholars in different areas have studied reporting behavior, it has not been widely discussed in the information systems literature. This dissertation research addresses an individual’s bad news reporting behavior (and its antecedents) in the troubled IT project context. Many social phenomena are multi-causal (Hollander 1971). The silence phenomenon involved in an individual’s bad news reporting behavior is multi-causal too. While prior research has identified many antecedents to the bad news reporting behavior, it has not provided any systematic approach for categorizing them. In this dissertation, the antecedents are categorized into three different levels: personal factors (i.e., individual-level factors), situational factors (i.e., project-level factors), and organizational factors. This research empirically investigates how the antecedents at different levels affect (i.e., encourage or discourage) an individual’s decision to report or not report bad news in the IT project context. The dissertation follows a multi-paper model, and includes three independent, empirical studies, each with its own research model focusing on personal, situational, and organizational factors.

Cette thèse s’inscrit dans le champ de la sécurité des organisations. Son objet concerne le développement d’une culture de sécurité, avec comme postulat le fait que la sécurité se fait avec la participation des travailleurs de tous niveaux hiérarchiques de l’organisation. Une recherche fondée sur ce principe a été conduite au sein de deux entreprises de distribution d’énergie en France. Comme beaucoup d’autres, ces entreprises sont axées sur une culture managériale de la sécurité où la sur-procéduralisation, le contrôle des « mauvais comportements » et les sanctions prennent le pas sur le travail réel. Comme conséquence, on constate le développement du « silence organisationnel », les travailleurs étant conduits à ne plus remonter les difficultés ou contradictions vécues sur le terrain, ou à remonter des situations à faible impact. Le retour d’expérience se trouve donc affaibli, voire inefficace. Pour gérer le silence organisationnel et ses conséquences, cette recherche a expérimenté des espaces de débat sur le travail réel entre salariés relevant de différents échelons de l’entreprise. Dès que certaines conditions sont respectées, ces espaces peuvent apporter de nombreuses contributions pour les personnes concernées et pour l’organisation locale. Pour qu’ils soient durables, il faut que ses membres disposent d’un certain pouvoir d’agir pour régler certaines des situations débattues localement, et qu’ils puissent communiquer avec d’autres espaces lorsque les ressources locales s’avèrent insuffisantes. Ainsi, les espaces de débat ne doivent pas être isolés au sein des échelons hiérarchiques, mais doivent être interconnectés en vue de définir le pouvoir d’agir et l’autonomie de chacun d’entre eux. Cette réflexion met en lumière le principe de subsidiarité, qui nous enseigne que chaque situation doit être traitée au niveau pertinent le plus bas de l’organisation. Cette thèse défend donc l’idée que pour traiter le silence organisationnel et développer une culture de sécurité, il est nécessaire de développer le « débat structuré sur le travail » – ou des espaces de débat organisés par le principe de subsidiarité – dans différents échelons de l’entreprise. Quelles sont les contributions réelles du débat structuré sur le travail ? Et ses conditions de mise en place ? Autant de questions auxquelles cette thèse tente de répondre par la construction de dispositifs de débat au sein de l’organisation et par une analyse fine du contenu des ces débats. Les résultats remettent en cause la vision classique de la sécurité basée sur des analyses centrées uniquement sur les situations conflictuelles passées, pour mettre en lumière l’articulation entre l’expérience passée, le débat actuel et les situations futures probables. L’approche mise en oeuvre au cours de ces 3 années a permis de développer une organisation plus résiliente, c’est-à-dire une organisation capable de maintenir un état stable en dépit des perturbations inhérentes à tout système de travail. Cette recherche nous invite à repenser la manière de manager les organisations actuelles. Même si le point de départ de la recherche concernait des questions de sécurité, le développement du débat structuré sur le travail a permis dans le même temps de traiter des questions de santé des travailleurs, de qualité du travail et de performance du système. / This thesis concerns the safety of work organizations. Its purpose is the development of a safety culture, with the postulate that safety must be done with the participation of workers of all levels of the organization. A research based on this principle was conducted in two companies of energy distribution in France. Like many others, these companies are focused on a managerial safety culture where over-proceduralization, control of "bad behavior" and sanctions prevail over the real work. As a consequence, we notice the development of the "organizational silence", workers being led not to report difficulties or contradictions experienced on the field, or to report low-impact situations. Experience feedback is thus weakened or ineffective.To manage this organizational silence and its consequences, this research experimented work debate spaces between workers belonging to different levels of the company. When certain conditions are met, these spaces may have many benefits for the concerned persons and for the local organization. In order to be sustainable, it is necessary that its members have some power to act to manage some of the situations discussed locally, and that they can communicate with other spaces when local resources are insufficient. Thus, work debate spaces should not be isolated in hierarchical levels, but must be interconnected to define the power to act and autonomy of each. This highlights the principle of subsidiarity, which teaches us that each situation should be managed at the lowest appropriate level of the organization. This thesis argues that to manage organizational silence and develop a safety culture, it is necessary to develop a "structured work debate" - or debate spaces organized according to the principle of subsidiarity - in different levels of the company. What are the effective contributions of structured work debate? And its conditions of implementation? These are questions that this thesis attempts to answer by the construction of debate devices within the organization and the detailed analysis of the content of the discussions. The results question the classic view of safety based on analyzes focused only on past situations of conflict, to highlight the link between past experience, the current debate and the likely future situations. The approach implemented during these three years led to develop a more resilient organization, i.e. an organization able of maintaining a stable functioning despite the disturbances inherent to any system of work. This research invites us to rethink the way of managing current organizations. Although the starting point of the research concerned safety issues, the development of a structured work debate allowed at the same time to deal with issues of workers' health, quality of work and performance of the system.

Sammanfattning Bakgrund: Tidigare forskning har visat att organisatorisk tystnad renderar i många konsekvenser som har påverkan på organisationers välmående, effektivitet och möjligheter till utveckling. Genom att förstå hur tystnadskultur uppstår och vilka de bakomliggande faktorerna som skapar den ges en organisation möjlighet att agera istället för att reagera när faktum är fullbordat och tystnadskulturen konstaterad. Syfte: Syftet med denna systematiska litteraturstudie var att undersöka det aktuella forskningsläget avseende vilka faktorer som skapar organisatorisk tystnadskultur. Metod: Denna uppsats har haft en kvalitativ ansats och forskningsdesignen var en systematisk litteraturstudie, som analyserade nio vetenskapliga artiklar varav sju hade en kvantitativ ansats.  Resultat: Det viktigaste resultatet var att faktorerna rädsla och ett destruktivt ledarskapsbeteende var de mest framträdande faktorerna som skapade en organisatorisk tystnad. Rädslan uppstod hos de anställda och spreds uppåt i organisationen och destruktiva ledarskapsbeteendet kom från toppen av en organisation och spreds nedåt till medarbetarna.  Diskussion/slutsatser: Studiens första slutsats var att destruktiva ledarskapsbeteenden var den faktor som var starkast framträdande vid skapandet av organisatorisk tystnadskultur och rädsla var den faktor som drev och förstärkte tystnadskulturer i organisationer. En andra slutsats var att samtliga faktorer var sammankopplade i ett kretslopp som interagerade, påverkade och förstärkte varandra, och att det inte räckte att bara förebygga eller agera mot en faktor i taget. Författarnas tredje slutsats var att transformella ledarbeteenden och utvecklande ledarskap hade störst sannolikhet att skapa en psykologisk trygg arbetsplats. / Abstract Background: Previous research has shown that organizational silence results in many consequences that affect the well-being, efficiency and development opportunities of organizations. By understanding how silence culture arises and what the underlying factors that create it are, an organization is given the opportunity to act instead of reacting when the fact is accomplished and the silence culture is confirmed. Purpose: The purpose of this systematic literature review was to examine the current state of research regarding what factors create organizational silence culture.  Method: This paper has had a qualitative approach and the research design was a systematic literature review, which analyzed nine scientific articles of which seven had a quantitative approach. Results: The most important result was that the factors of fear and destructive leadership behavior were the most prominent factors that created organizational silence. The fear arose among the employees and spread upward in the organization and the destructive leadership behavior came from the top of an organization and spread downward to the employees. Discussion/conclusions: The first conclusion of the study was that destructive leadership behaviors were the factor that was most prominent in creating organizational silence culture and fear was the factor that drove and reinforced silence cultures in organizations. A second conclusion was that all factors were interconnected in a cycle that interacted, influenced and reinforced each other, and that it was not enough to just prevent or act against one factor at a time. The authors’ third conclusion was that transformational leadership behaviors and developmental leadership had the greatest likelihood of creating a psychologically safe workplace

This study has developed a tool for explaining why employees fail to speak up with regard to work related criticism; there is a hidden policy of silence that teaches employees to remain silent. This hidden policy is here designated as the "Curriculum Silentium" and is described in detail on the basis of empirical and theoretical data. After identifying a gap between the intentionally and experienced policy for employees freedom of speech in organizations I suggest that there are on-going unofficial, partially hidden learning processes in the organizations. The overall research question is; How does the Curriculum Silentium; the hidden policy of silence among employees, look like?  I make an analytic construction of the hidden policy as if it were planned policy, using the didactic categories applicable to organizations. These didactic categories are: goals, content, teaching strategies and the motivation of employees. The empirical data was collected in three different organizations: an elementary school, a home for the elderly and a factory in the process industry, using qualitative methods such as interviews and observation. The theoretical foundation of the study is taken from existing theory within the field of work life research and educational science. The study is not a comparative study of the three organizations, but does involve a comparison of whether and how the Curriculum Silentium is expressed in three such different organizations. The challenge of examining hidden relationships in organizations was met through the development of guidelines for an analytical approach called a critical didactic relations analysis. The study concludes that a hidden policy of silence resembling that presented here exists in organizations where employees fail to voice working life related criticism.

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