Exit, Voice, and Silence: Consumers' and Managers' Responses to Organizational Decline

Abstract

Albert Hirschman's contribution in Exit, voice, and loyalty provided a framework within which investigators could simultaneously examine people's responses to deteriorating organizational performance and administrators' responses to members' or customers' responses. Traditional analyses focussed on exits — people ceasing to buy a firm's products or leaving the organization — and on competition between organizations as remedies for declining performance. Hirschman added the concept of voice — people expressing dissatisfaction through some form of overt protest. Underlying his model was an implicit assumption of administrators' responsiveness to exit and voice, whereas we posit that there are many conditions under which managers and leaders are highly unresponsive. These conditions are highlighted in nonmarket economies, and we draw illustrative material from Poland to support our arguments.