Exit, Voice and Loyalty: a Reading of an Ongoing Debate
Exit, Voice and Loyalty: a Reading of an Ongoing Debate

Summary/Abstract: Hirschman’s (1970) model of voice, exit and loyalty is of great interest to communication and organization studies, since Hirschman was the first social scientist who introduced voice as a response to discontent in organizations. The model has been utilized, developed and complemented, but rarely criticized. The goal of this article is to endeavor in a two-fold critique based on a literature review of current organization studies. First the model is shown to eliminate from its structure a fundamental cognate concept: silence. I will demonstrate that the two decisions that actors have to make on the verge of organizational deterioration, voice or exit, revolve, in fact, around the concepts of voice and silence, and that these two are so interrelated and intertwined that they presuppose each other. Second, this functionalistic model silences identity issues that employees have to deal with when faced with fundamental organizational decisions: to voice discontent or to exit the organization. Moreover, a post-structuralist perspective on employee identity construction process is presented.

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