Harassment Analysis Series — Organizational Theory and Voice Suppression v2.0Workplace Authoritarianism / Voice Suppression / Employee Silence / Institutional Hollowing-Out This working paper offers a conceptual analysis of how authoritarian patterns of organizational authority suppress employee voice through everyday justification language, and how this suppression undermines the practical effectiveness of harassment prevention systems. The paper introduces the concept of voice-suppressing justification language—everyday organizational expressions that frame existing practices as normal, collective, benevolent, factual, or realistic, thereby shifting the burden of justification from those who hold authority to those who raise objections. Five categories are identified: normalization, majoritarian justification, paternalistic justification, objectivizing justification, and reality-framing justification. Building on research on employee voice, organizational silence, authoritarian leadership, and psychological safety, the paper develops a conceptual model linking workplace authoritarianism to justification language, employee silence, and the symbolic functioning of harassment prevention systems. This version is a revised and expanded version of Working Paper v1.0 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20688839). It clarifies the paper's status as a conceptual analysis, refines the definition of voice-suppressing justification language, strengthens the distinction between ordinary managerial communication and voice-suppressing language, and further develops the theoretical positioning of workplace authoritarianism, employee silence, and the symbolic functioning of harassment prevention systems. Reference citations have also been corrected. This paper was prepared with the assistance of AI tools.
TekitouQ (Sat,) studied this question.