Wynen,JanKleizen,BjornVerhoest,KoenLaegreid,PerRolland,Vidar2025-02-012025-02-012020-04Wynen, J, Kleizen, B, Verhoest, K, Laegreid, P & Rolland, V 2020, 'Just keep silent…Defensive silence as a reaction to successive structural reforms', Public Management Review, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 498-526. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2019.15883581471-903710.1080/14719037.2019.1588358https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14602/71036Publisher Copyright: © 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Employees frequently have ideas and opinions on the execution of tasks or on the organization itself. Yet, sometimes employees remain silent and withhold this valuable input from their organizations because they fear experiencing conflict or controversy, causing both performance and employee morale to suffer. This article tests to what extent such fear of speaking up, referred to as ‘defensive silence,’ is affected by the extent of successive structural reforms an organization endures. Analyses of Norwegian Staff Surveys and of a structural reform database show that repetitive structural reforms affect employee engagement in defensive silence.enginfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessBEHAVIORDefensive silenceEMPLOYEE SILENCEINNOVATIONLEADERSHIPORGANIZATIONAL-CHANGEPERCEPTIONSRESPONSESTHREAT-RIGIDITYVOICEWORKmulti-level analysisstructural reform historyArticleGeneral rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. - Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. - You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain - You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal" Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/850639166712948413629https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/3e9cd289-b218-42be-bfec-495e63c974d8(c) Universiteit van TilburgWynen, JanKleizen, BjornVerhoest, KoenLaegreid, PerRolland, Vidar