The Relationship between Organizational Climate and the Organizational Silence of Administrative Staff in Education Department

The aim of the present study was to determine the relationship between organizational climate and the organizational silence of administrative staff in Education Department in Isfahan. The research method was descriptive and correlational-type method. The study population was administrative staff of Education Department in Isfahan during the school year 2014-2015 with a number of 517 staff, of whom a number of 220 staff were selected as the sample using stratified random sampling fit for the size and by means of Krejcie and Morgan’s (1970) sampling formula. Measurement instruments were Sussman and Deep’s (1989) Organizational Climate Questionnaire and Van Dyne et al. (2003) Organizational Silence Questionnaire. For data analysis, Pearson correlation coefficient, stepwise regression and multiple variance tests were utilized. The results indicated that there was an inverse and significant relationship between organizational climate, bonuses in organization (r=-0.163 and P≤0.05) and procedures in organization (r= -0.196 and P≤0.01), and organizational silence. The results of multiple regression indicated that the best predictors of organizational silence were procedures in organization and objectives of organization, respectively (P≤0.01) among other dimensions of organizational climate. The results of multivariate analysis of variance test showed that there was a significant difference in respondents’ opinions about organizational climate, considering their age.


Introduction
The vast global and regional changes in recent years have directed the considerable attention of many organizations toward the characteristics of human capital as the most important factor in change in order to improve the level of organization members' performance.In the contemporary societies, development serves as the main goal of every society and the pivot of policy makings and planning; thus, a country which is able to put to use all of its resources for growth and prosperity is regarded a developed country.The proper application of these resources can be fulfilled by means of employing skilled and trained human resource, such that the growth and education of the invaluable resource are taken over by education department of every society.The main duty of managers is to provide an organized work environment.Organized work environment is an environment where the needs of the entire people are recognized, in that their foundations are laid by making adequate provisions.Human resource is the most expensive resource of organization in order to cultivate talents and achieve an excellent performance continually (Yavitz, 1998).
The modern world moves with amazing speed and the prospect of specialization is unpredictable in the new millennium.In the modern world, the one and only thing which is certain and definite is "change".The important thing is to be prepared for changes, embracing them, and making plan for them.Perceptions and valuation of the environment by people can influence attitudinal and behavioral responses more than the environment itself.In other words, organizational climate plays a crucial role in building up motivation, improving spirit, involving people, fostering creativity, effectiveness, performance, and generally knowledge-oriented attitude for human resource (Mahmoudi, 2013).organizational health (Feldman et al., 2005).It is a set of features and characteristics within an organization, the elements and components of which are integrity (transparency), standards, responsibilities, flexibilities, bonuses, group commitment.Once each of these dimensions grows in quantity in each of employees, individuals are aroused by their work environment; that is, the work environment is viewed as a pleasant and beneficial place (Sussman & Deep, 1998).Dimensions of organizational climate according to Sussman and Deep (1998): 1) Clarity and agreement of organizational goals: they suggest transparency of organizational goals for employees, level of employee influence on organizational goals, goals similar to employee's work and tantamount to individual aspirations and goals of organization.
2) Clarity and agreement of roles: individual role is clear for him and others, and vice versa, in that individual can be satisfied by fulfilling his role in organization.
3) Satisfaction with rewards: individual's received rewards represent his contribution to organization; employees receive reward in relation to the contribution they make to organization and membership in organization make individual satisfied.
4) Satisfaction and agreement on procedures: individual's chance to offer his view is equal; decisions adopted in organization are made in an effective state and employees are agreed on the current process of doing works.5) Effectiveness of communications: employees become aware of issues and discussions pertaining to their job and able to transfer sufficient information to others, receiving sufficient feedback from others.
In the new approach to management, organizations are looking for managers who enjoy social and communicative skills and are able to create an environment where individuals grow, and an effective manager benefits from high level capabilities; that is, he is able to create an space where loyal employees strive to achieve organizational goals with a positive sense of environment where they work.40-year research show that organizational climate makes a great difference to employees' behavior and organization's results, but most organizations are devoid of an appropriate situation in terms of organizational climate.Effective managers creates good and decent climate where members of organization remain loyal to it and remove every obstacle along the way (Dehdashti-Shahrok et al., 2012, p. 42).
Emergence of behaviors that makes social life face challenges due to a variety of factors including economic, social, political and cultural is increasingly visible.Organizations have been investigated as the origin of the emergence and spread of such behaviors by many researchers.Upon their arrival to organizations, individuals carry culture, attitude, and behaviors arising from economic, social, political and cultural circumstances of their living environment, which in turn exerts influence on within-organization circumstances and eventually its performance and function; however, as time goes by and the influence of organizational factors, some behaviors would be revealed, the source of which can be factors requiring a search within organization, as well as personal characteristics.The behaviors may be positive or negative behaviors.The effect and consequence of the behaviors will effectively influence organizations.Managers who add these behaviors spread among members and employees of their organization on the agenda can reinforce the positive effects of these behaviors in the workplace and avoid the adverse effects of negative behaviors on organization's performance and effectiveness, as well as fulfilling their social responsibility (Emami & Abbasi, 2011).
In a study conducted on 100 premier companies by an interview with thousands of employees, Amy Lymen (2003) concluded that an excellent environment for work is a place where employees have trust in organization's management, and are proud of what they are doing, enjoying the communication with their colleagues.Indeed, employee's feeling toward the work environment can be considered in three following situations: 1) Employees' feeling toward organization's management.
The three characteristics would differentiate between normal work environment, good work environment, and excellent or ideal work environment.
The result of the interview showed that employees have trust in their managers, employees are proud of their jobs, and they enjoy being with their colleague, finding it pleasant.
Despite the fact that the widespread literature in the field of organization and management places emphasis on empowerment and open communication channels, the results showed that many of employees complain that their organizations fail to support their communication, and sharing information and overt and covert knowledge; which can escalate into the failure of managers' goals and programs in organization.One of the important obstacles to the success of organizational goals and programs is lack of information and lack of trust.The shortcoming is what researchers call organizational silence; that is, it includes the refusal to express ideas, opinions, and information on organizational problems.Organizational silence is a common and widespread phenomenon in organization, which is conceivable for managers and employees.The studies on morality and communications concerning silence indicates that it is valuable and appropriate as they largely direct their focus on when it is plausible, when it is inappropriate and reprehensible, when it represents compliance with standards and moral rituals, and when it is a violation of morality and urbanity.Researchers of communication science hold on to the positive aspects of silence as the main factor in social interaction, claiming that silence is an important factor in effective communication (Zare'I-Matin et al., 2011, p. 77).
Silence does not simply suggest not saying, but it can refer to not writing, not attending, not hearing, and not seeing as well.Silence also denotes speaking or writing without authenticity.In addition to this, silence can refer to stop talking, censoring, suppressing and crushing, marginalizing, depreciating, depriving, and other forms of declining and reducing (Hazen, 2006).However, the discussion of organizational silence phenomenon as within-organization phenomenon requires its twin "organizational voice, i.e. ideas on organizational issues.Many researchers believe that silence and voice implies two things; the confirmation of the status quo, and resistance against it.In this regard, scientists came up with different and sometimes contrary ideas.However, since organizational silence as phenomenon is an obstacle to the sharing ideas of employees, the lack of sharing ideas rob organization of the power of innovation and creativity and continuous improvement in a long term.The study of the phenomenon and its origins would help employees go ahead in their road to growth, eminence and success faster (Hassanpour & Asgari, 2011).Pinder and Harlos (2011) defined organizational silence as employees' refusal to express effective behavioral, cognitive refusal evaluation with respect to organizational situations.Therefore, silence does not necessarily refer to passive behavior and in conflict with voice.Silence can be active, conscious, intentional and purposeful; this is an important point, because it clarifies intricate nature and multidimensional nature of silence.In effect, silence includes some kind of strategic and non-passive forms (conscious, purposeful, and intentional) as in situations when employees refrain from providing others with confidential information.When silence is intentional and passive, based on acquiescence to any condition, it is different from intentional, though non-passive, silence (Van Dyne et al., 2003).Thus, even though organizational silence is generally seen as reluctance to express ideas, information and opinions of employees on purpose, its nature would be different, considering employee's motivation for remaining silent.Sometimes, silence can ensue from individual's acquiescence to any condition, as it is sometimes due to fear and emergence of conservative behaviors, as it is most of the time due to providing opportunities for others and allowing them to express their ideas (Zare' I-Matin et al., 2011, p. 82).Various forms of organizational silence include: 1) Prosocial silence: it consists in the literature of organizational citizenship behavior (Korsgaad et al., 1997), and includes the refusal to express ideas, information and work-related opinions with the aim of taking advantage by other individuals in organization on the basis of altruistic motivation, contribution, and collaboration.Prosocial silence is deliberate and non-passive, and basically lays emphasis on others.As with organizational citizenship behavior, prosocial silence is a rational and percipient behavior which cannot be implemented by the order and directions of organization (Podsakoff et al., 2000).Just like defensive silence, such a silence consists in consideration and knowledge of alternatives to decision-making, while it is the refusal to providing ideas, information, and opinions.On the contrary, defensive silence ensues from considering others and paying attention to them rather than simply a fear of personal negative results due to offering ideas (Zare'I- Matin et al., 2011, p. 83).In other words, as for this silence, employees decline to express their ideas, information and opinions in an attempt to allow their colleagues or friends to take advantage instead.
2) Acquiescent silence: it happens when most individuals call a person silent.By doing so, they mostly mean that he refuses to build any relationship actively (Crant, 2000); silence which occurs as a result of this is called acquiescent silence, referring to the refusal to providing relevant ideas, information or opinions on the basis of acquiescence to any condition.Therefore, acquiescent silence implies disengaged behavior which suggests substantially a passive state rather than active (Pinder & Harlos, 2001).
3) Defensive silence: the motivation behind this kind of silence is individual's sense of fear of providing information.Indeed, sometimes it is possible for individuals to refuse to offer ideas, information or related opinions due to protection from their situation and circumstances (self-protective motivation).Defensive silence is an intentional and non-passive behavior which is applied for self-protection from external threats; however, the silence involves a non-passive state more than acquiescent silence, which incorporates greater knowledge of available alternatives and options for decision-making, while it involves prevention from offering ideas, information and opinions as the best strategy in due course.Defensive silence is like a condition that people cease to offer bad news because it would unsettle individuals or exert adverse effect on individual who delivered report (Avery & Quinones, 2002).

Literature Review
The results of the study by Silavi (2015) titled "the relationship between organizational climate and organizational silence" indicate that there is a positive relationship between organizational climate and organizational silence and all of its dimensions.In a study titled "the impact of insurance employees' attitudes on formation of organizational silence climate and organizational silence behavior", Kardeli (2015) concludes that among dimensions of silence climate, top management's attitude toward silence, supervisors' attitude toward silence, communication opportunities, and employees' job views have significant relationships with employees' silence behavior; in that sense, top management and supervisors' attitudes have strong positive correlations with employees' silence behavior, while communication opportunities and employees' job views have strong negative correlations with silence behavior.
In a study titled "Analysis of the Relationship between Ethical Climate of the Organization, Organizational Identity and Organizational Silence", Ghalavandi and Moradi (2014) conclude that egoistic climate silence has a significant relationship with organizational silence.Bozorgnia and Enaiati (2014) conducted a research entitled "relationship between organizational silence and performance of employees at Mazandaran University of Medical Science.They found that there is an inverse and significant relationship between organizational silence and performance of university employees.Moreover, organizational silence is negatively and significantly related to dimensions of organizational performance, i.e. clarity of role, organizational support, employee motivation, participation in decision-making, employee evaluation, and organizational environment.However, the relationship is not significant with respect to employees' ability.The result of multivariate regression showed that the three dimensions organizational environment, participation in decision-making, and clarity of role had the power to predict organizational silence among the dimensions of performance.
The results of Salavati et al. ( 2014) indicated that there is a significant relationship between one of the components of organizational climate, effective organizational communication, and organizational silence.Dargahi et al. (2012) conducted a research on the organizational climate of hospitals at Tehran University of Medical Sciences.The result showed that less than half of employees believed that the organizational climate of the hospitals under consideration is desirable; furthermore, the organizational climate of the hospitals was significantly associated with the age of employees.
In their study titled "explaining the impact of organizational culture on organizational silence in governmental sector", Danaeefard et al. (2011) suggest that organizational culture has a considerable impact on formation of organizational atmosphere and subsequently on organizational silence behavior.Danaeefard and Panahi (2010) demonstrated that there is a significant relationship between dimensions of silence climate (top management's attitude to silence, supervisors' attitude to silence, and communication opportunities), employees' job attitudes, and employees' silence behavior.
The realization of educational goals has been always one of the issues addressed by Education Management theorists and experts.In this regard, one of the important and influential variables in the effectiveness of organizational institutions is organizational climate.Climate is perceived and experienced by members and influences their behavior.Healthy educational institutions incline more to the openness of organizational climate.The research indicated that leadership style of managers and desirable human communication between staff are considered the most determining factors in a positive and effective organizational climate.Development of mission statement, goal setting, employee participation in decision making, open mindedness, tendency toward change, and the use of qualitative instruments, tendency toward taking a new role, employee support, fair treatment, and the use of direction change strategy, and positive response to employees' acceptable behaviors can improve departments' organizational climate.Personnel's behavior in the workplace is influenced by a variety of environmental, economic, social, and sometimes political factors; Education Department is no exception.Upon their employment in an organization, employees expect a desirable and supportive organizational climate so that they can fulfil their needs.Forcing them to be committed to organization would reduce employee silence; this is an action-reaction relationship, in the sense that when organization becomes committed to its employees, they can be committed to it; thus, there is no reason for employee silence.Likewise, building a fair-focused space, taking moral decisions, benefitting from employees' ideas and strategies without prejudice or bias on the basis of discussion and exchange of ideas can multiply participation and collaboration by two on a course to break organizational silence.

The Research Hypotheses
The aim of the research is to explore the relationship between organizational climate and organizational silence among administrative employees of Education Department in Isfahan.Thus, given the aim of the research, the following hypotheses are put forward: 1) There is a relationship between organizational climate, its dimensions (organizational goals, role in organization, rewards in organization, procedures in organization, and communication in organization) and employees' organizational silence.
2) Dimensions of organizational climate have the predictability of employees' organizational silence.
3) There is a significant difference between respondents' opinions about organizational climate and organizational silence considering demographic variables (gender, age, education degree, education discipline, job tenure, organizational position, and organizational unit).Given the research hypotheses, the conceptual research model is shown in Figure 1.

Participants
The study population consisted of administrative staff of Education Department in Isfahan, a number of 517 employees during the school year 2014-2015, for which a number of 220 employees were selected using Krejcie and Morgan's (1970) sampling table in a stratified random sampling fashion fit for the sample size.

Measures
Data collection instruments are Sussman and Deep's (1980) Organizational Climate Questionnaire, comprising of 20 items and a seven-point Likert scale (from strongly agree to strongly disagree): the questionnaire measures the components, organizational goals, organization's role, rewards in the organization, organizational procedures, communications in the organization.The reliability of the questionnaire was estimated to be 0.91 using Cronbach's alpha coefficient.To measure organizational silence, Van Dyne et al. (2003) Organizational Silence, containing 15 items and a seven-point Likert scale (from strongly agree to strongly disagree), was used.The questionnaire measures the components acquiescent silence, defensive silence, and prosocial silence.The reliability of the questionnaire was estimated to be 0.84 using Cronbach's alpha coefficient.The face and content validity of both questionnaires were confirmed by experts.

Data Analysis
By considering the aim of the research, the study of the relationship between organizational climate and organizational silence among administrative employees of Education Department in Isfahan.The research method is descriptive and correlational-type method.For analysis of research data, Pearson correlation coefficient, stepwise regression, and multiple variance analysis test, as well as SPSS software program, were

Results
The demographic characteristics of the research sample demonstrate that 78.2 percent of the employees were male out of 220 members of the research sample, and 20.4 percent of the employees, as 1.4 percent of employees did not specify their gender.12.8 percent of employees were younger than 35 years of age, 57.7 percent of the employees are between the ages of 35 and 45, 29.5 percent were older than 45 years of age.31.4 percent of employees have job tenure up to 20 years, 59 percent of them have 21 to 30 years, and 3.2 percent have more than 30 years of job tenure, as 6.4 percent did not specify their job tenure.11.4 percent of employees have an education degree up to associate degree, 55.9 percent of them have bachelor degree, and 32.7 have postgraduate degree or higher education.10.9 percent of employees work as office worker, 81.9 percent of them are expert and expert-in-chief, 6.3 and percent work as deputy or head of department, as 0.9 percent of employees did not specify their organizational position.11.8 percent of employees are working in District 1, 15.9 percent in District 2, 19.5 in District 3, 20 percent in District 4, 20.5 in District 5, and 12.3 percent in District 6 in Isfahan.
Hypothesis 1: there is a relationship between organizational climate and its dimensions (organizational goals, role in organization, rewards in organization, procedures in organization, and communication in organization) and organizational silence.(r=-0.196 & p≤0.01) are inversely and significantly related to organizational silence.According to coefficient of determination (R 2 ), 2.6 and 3.8 percent of the variance of the components rewards in organization, procedures in organization respectively were shared with that of organizational silence.There was no significant relationship between organizational climate and its other components (organizational goals, role in organization, and communication in organization) and organizational silence.
Hypothesis 2: dimensions of organizational climate have predictability of organizational silence.The findings of Table 2 show that the best predictor of organizational silence in the first step is procedures in organization, and in the second step organizational goals among the variables of interest in the regression.Accordingly, in the first step, coefficient of determination (R 2 ) of procedures in organization could explain 4.1% of organizational silence variance and in the second step the coefficients of determination (R 2 ) of procedures in organization and organizational goals could explain 6.9% of organizational silence variance.Moreover, beta coefficient could reduce organizational silence by 0.331 units as procedure in organization increases by one unit, and beta coefficient reduced organizational silence by 0.208 units as organizational goals increase by one unit.Prediction equation can be presented as follows: Organizational silence = (4.339)+ procedure in organization (-0.249) + procedure in organization (-0.186)Hypothesis 3: there is a difference between respondents' opinions about organizational climate and organizational silence considering demographic variables (gender, age, education degree, education discipline, years of working, organizational position, organizational unit).The results representing in Table 3 show that there is a significant difference between respondents' opinions about organizational climate considering age.Subsequent tests presented in Table 4 show differences between the groups.The results indicated that employees aged over 45 years could evaluate organizational climate better.

Discussion and Conclusion
The result of data analysis showed that organizational climate and its dimensions (organizational goals, role in organization, rewards in organization, procedures in organization, and communication in organization) are significantly related to organizational silence of administrative staff in Education Department in Isfahan.
The findings are consistent with those of Silavi (2015), Kardeli (2015), Bozorgnia andEnaiati (2014), Salavati et al. (2014), Dargahi et al. (2012), Danaeefard et al. (2011), Danaeefard and Panahi (2010), as they are not consistent with the results of Salavati et al. (2014) concerning the direct relationship between organizational climate and organizational silence as well as its entire indicators.The reason for the incongruity between the results of the study and those of Salavati et al. ( 2014) maybe the difference of the study population and effect of underlying factors in this relationship.That is, organizational climate is viewed as employees' understanding of general environment of work in departments.Fairness and justness of rewards on the basis of quality of works and level of effort and employee encouragement for doing tougher jobs would provide motivation and reason for effort for individuals.Moreover, when employees are sensible of the fact that the rewards they receive are the upshot and reflection of their contribution to organization, membership in organization will be pleasant.These factors would help; stimuli available in organization can generate motivation in individuals and persuade them to help and assist organization; otherwise, important obstacles are posed in the success of programs, organization's goals, lack of information would escalate into lack of trust, which is called organizational silence.Organizational silence is a phenomenon in which organization employee refuse to express their opinions about the issues of organization and prefer to remain silent, which is considered a very important indication of a disorder, depression, aging, stress or fear in organization; in order to prevent or remove the challenge confronting managers and supervisors can be controlling and checking current and dominant procedures in organization, implementing necessary reforms as soon as possible, bearing in mind that rewards in organization can to some extent harness silence overtaking organization.Neglect of organizational silence can escalate into serious incidents or even destruction of organization.The term silence is applied to subjects, the articulation of which could not only fix problems from employees' vantage point, but other problems also will come up; normally employees find discussion about this issue useless and remains silent.
People who are older (older than 45 years of age) find organizational climate more desirable than other colleagues in younger age groups; in other words, establishment of human relationship is easier for these people.It can be concluded that the staff can adapt them to the environment of organization and treat their colleagues with intimacy, respect and fair compared to younger employees.Education departments require open and desirable organizational climate so as to ensure employees' health psychologically.In this case, procedures and roles of employees are determined in organization and individuals can easily form a relationship with one another, so employees share their ideas and opinions with one another and eagerly allot their time to other staff, all of which can help employees and organization as a whole to improve.Effective managers design a suitable and healthy climate where organizational goals are specified and clear to employees as they are as one on organizational goals, in that the role of employees are clearly defined.Thus, individuals are interested in and loyal to managers and collaborate with each other sincerely and satisfied with rewards and bonuses due to compliance of equity principle, building a relationship with managers more easily.
Given the above, organizational climate and organizational structure can contribute to silence dominating organization.One of the common challenges and problems confronting organizations is organizational silence, which can result in adverse and devastating effects on organization and employees.

Recommendations
In regard to the result of the study in this respect and determining factors in organizational silence, the following suggestions are offered in order to reduce the organizational behavior: 1) Creating an open organizational space in order to involve employees actively and take decision within a group and provide them with feedback on their performance in due time.
2) Hosting educational workshops for employees in order to improve their communication skill 3) Providing the necessary foundation for expressing ideas and opinions by employees and identifying talents and transferring individuals' abilities, converting them into a potential opportunity.
4) Laying the foundation for and creating a dialogue and exchange of ideas culture in conjunction with constructive criticism of ideas and information.
5) Welcoming constructive ideas and creative suggestions in conjunction with appropriate reward system.
6) Determining an expert group in order to identify talented and capable employees for entrusting organizational responsibilities.
7) Setting up bank of ideas and opinions and creating communicative opportunities in order to transfer and exchange information.
8) Designing suitable and decent systems in order to promote succession-focused, recruitment, etc., system can spread organizational justice across organization.

Limitations of the Study
The present study is performed on employees of Education Department in Isfahan and we should be careful to generalize the results to other organizations.

Table 1 .
The correlation coefficient between organizational climate and its components and organizational silence of staffs of education in Isfahan city The findings of table 1 indicate that rewards in organization (r=-0.163& p≤0.05), and procedures in organization

Table 2 .
Multiple correlation coefficients of organizational silence aspects to predict components of organizational climate

Table 3 .
Results of analysis of variance of social capital mean based on demographic factors

Table 4 .
Paired-samples T test compare means of organizational climate by age