Psychological and Structural Determinants of Silo Mentality: A Multi‑level Scoping Review

Silo mentality significantly impedes organizational effectiveness through psychological and behavioral mechanisms. This scoping review identifies key determinants at the individual and work unit levels by synthesizing 11 empirical studies. Findings show that defensive attitudes, limited emotional awareness, and role-based status perceptions contribute to silo formation at the individual level, while hierarchical structures, fragmented communication, and competitive incentive systems reinforce silos at the work unit level. Moving beyond categorisation, we integrate these determinants into a multi-level process model in which silo mentality emerges as a self-reinforcing property of the interaction between organisational structure, work-unit dynamics, and individual psychology, linked across levels by social-identity processes and sustained by a bottom-up feedback loop. The model reframes silo mentality as an emergent, cross-level phenomenon rather than a sum of isolated causes, and implies that effective interventions must target the reinforcing loop at multiple levels simultaneously. The review also identifies the absence of a validated individual-level measure and the under-representation of public-sector contexts as priorities for future research.