Employee voice and silence: a bibliometric analysis of the literature

Employee voice and silence as constructs have received substantial research efforts for over four decades primarily in the work-focused academic literatures. However, we are concerned that these terms are being used across many disciplines with little cohesion as to meaning. By examining the extant literature using bibliometric techniques, we hope to make a contribution in better defining their usages and describing the underlying structure of the employee voice and silence literature. We examine 376 articles, notes and book chapters derived from the Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science. Using advanced bibliometric mapping tools, we plot the intellectual base and research front of the voice and silence literature. Our findings indicate that employee silence and employee voice are terms that are largely claimed by the organisational behaviour (OB) and human resource management (HRM) literatures. Further, these terms are defined much more narrowly than in the literature from the industrial relations or employment relations (ER) disciplines.