The dynamics of silencing conflict

Abstract

In many organizations, when people perceive a difference with one another they 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 how some organizations develop norms of silence. To explore the evolution of a norm of silence, 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 map the processes through which acts of silence became self-reinforcing. Drawing on that analysis, we build a formal model of silencing that helps identify the conditions under which silence moves from an isolated incident into a self-reinforcing norm. Our analysis has implications for understanding both the development of a repeated pattern of silence and the broader process of norm formation.