Effect of Internal Marketing on Organizational Silence Mediated by Organizational Culture: the Case of Ferdowsi University Employees

The present research explored the effect of internal marketing on organizational silence mediated by organizational culture among the employees of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. The present applied research used descriptive data to conduct a survey. The research population was the employees of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, 968 in total. The data were collected in 2018. Using Cochran’s formula, the required sample size was estimated at 275, and the sampling method was convenient. For data collection, three questionnaires were used: the internal marketing questionnaire (Pournabi, 2015), organizational silence (Mirkamali, Poorkarimi, & Karami, 2017) and organizational culture (Denison, 2000). For descriptive statistics, frequencies, percentages and standard deviations were used. For inferential statistics, first the normality of data was checked through Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The skewness and kurtosis were also checked. To test the conceptual model, to analyze observations and to explore the concurrent effects of variables within the model, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used. The required analyses were run via SPSS22 and SmartPLS at the significance level of .05. To test convergent and discriminant validity, average variance extracted (AVE) was used and to test the reliability of questionnaires, Cronbach’s alpha test of internal consistency was run (internal marketing=97%, organizational silence=94% and organizational culture=95%) along with the PLS approach. The research findings revealed a statistically significant negative correlation between internal marketing and organizational silence. A statistically significant positive correlation was estimated between internal marketing and organizational culture. A statistically significant negative correlation was found between organizational culture and organizational silence. Organizational culture mediated the correlation between internal marketing and organizational silence.