Publications
Publications
- 2009
- Research in Organizational Behavior
The Dynamics of Silencing Conflict
By: Leslie Perlow and Nelson Repenning
Abstract
In many organizations, when people perceive a difference with another they often do not fully express themselves. Despite creating innumerable problems, silencing conflict is a persistent phenomenon. While the antecedents of acts of silence are well documented, little is known about why norms of silencing conflict evolve. To explore this evolution, we draw on an ethnographic study that spanned the entire life of a dot.com, starting with its founding and ending with its sale to a larger company. Distilling our data using causal loop diagrams, we document the processes through which acts of silence became self-reinforcing. The dynamic model of silencing conflict induced from our data has implications not only for norm development, but also for a variety of other domains including network analysis, autonomous actor models, diversity and demography, and change management.
Keywords
Citation
Perlow, Leslie, and Nelson Repenning. "The Dynamics of Silencing Conflict." Research in Organizational Behavior 29 (2009): 195–223.