Structural Effects of Political Skills on Employee Empowerment with the Mediating Role of Climate Silence and Silent Behavior of Employees (in Persian)

The purpose of this study is to investigate the structural effects of political skills on employees’ empowerment with the mediating role of employee silence and climate silence. The type of research was co-relational. All employees of Mashhad educational institutions during 1992-3 comprised the statistical population. A sample of 171 people was selected by using stratified random sampling. The participants completed the questionnaire of political skills, organizational silence and employee empowerment. Data were analyzed through the Structural Equation Model and LISREL software. Findings show that political skills can well be predicted by the components of their latent construct. In addition, the most powerful indicator of the latent construct of climate silence is communication opportunity construct. The findings of the structural model show that political skills have negative structural effect on silence climate (GA11=-0.43), political skills have negative structural effect on silence behaviors (GA21=0.33), and political skills have positive structural effect on employee’s empowerment (GA31=0.79). The indirect effect of political skills on silence behavior is not significant but it is significant on empowerment of employees (0.049). Also, organizational silence has direct structural effect on the silence behavior of employees (BE=0.15). As a result, in order to eliminate the behavior of organizational silence and to utilize employees’ experience, the climate of organizational silence has to be eliminated. One of the most influential factors in this context is the increase of the employee’s political skills. Utilization of political skills calls for decrease in climate silence, and consequently, it is expected is that organizational silence behavior will be reduced and employees will be better empowered.