Employee silence, the withholding of work-related ideas, questions, or concerns from someone who could effect change, has been proposed to hamper individual and collective learning as well as the detection of errors and unethical behaviors in many areas of the world. To facilitate cross-cultural research, we validated an instrument measuring four employee silence motives (i.e., silence based on fear, resignation, prosocial, and selfish motives) in 21 languages. Across 33 countries (N = 8,222) representing diverse cultural clusters, the instrument shows good psychometric properties (i.e., internal reliabilities, factor structure, and measurement invariance). Results further revealed similarities and differences in the prevalence of silence motives between countries, but did not necessarily support cultural stereotypes. To explore the role of culture for silence, we examined relationships of silence motives with the societal practices cultural dimensions from the GLOBE Program. We found relationships between silence motives and power distance, institutional collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance. Overall, the findings suggest that relationships between silence and cultural dimensions are more complex than commonly assumed. We discuss the explanatory power of nations as (cultural) units of analysis, our social scientific approach, the predictive value of cultural dimensions, and opportunities to extend silence research geographically, methodologically, and conceptually.

中文翻译：

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员工沉默动机的国际差异：33 个国家/地区的规模验证、流行程度以及与文化特征的关系

员工保持沉默，即对可能影响变革的人隐瞒与工作相关的想法、问题或担忧，已被提议阻碍个人和集体学习以及在世界许多地区发现错误和不道德行为。为了促进跨文化研究，我们验证了用 21 种语言测量四种员工沉默动机（即基于恐惧、辞职、亲社会和自私动机的沉默）的工具。跨越 33 个国家 ( N = 8,222) 代表不同的文化集群，该工具显示出良好的心理测量特性（即内部可靠性、因素结构和测量不变性）。结果进一步揭示了国家间沉默动机盛行的异同，但不一定支持文化刻板印象。为了探索文化对沉默的作用，我们研究了沉默动机与 GLOBE 计划中的社会实践文化维度之间的关系。我们发现了沉默动机与权力距离、制度集体主义和不确定性规避之间的关系。总的来说，研究结果表明沉默和文化维度之间的关系比通常假设的要复杂。我们讨论民族作为（文化）分析单位的解释力，