Expressing dissent at work can be risky. Employees who do so put their organizational status, professional careers, and workplace relationships at risk (Kassing, 1997, 1998). It is a serious undertaking that involves thoughtful consideration and strategic and careful execution (Kassing, 1997). Many factors come into play when employees determine that they must share dissent in and about their organizations (Kassing, 2008). Yet at a fundamental level they are concerned with whether or not they will experience retaliation (Kassing, 1997). Thus, the very process of deciding how to express dissent can be stressful.

Employees choose to share dissent for many reasons (Kassing & Armstrong, 2002).

They may grow tired of organizational change, question decision making practices, or become frustrated with unexpected shifts in their roles and responsibilities. Issues that trigger dissent can range from those that are simply annoying and irritating to those that are much more serious; issues that force employees to confront illegal, immoral, and unethical workplace practices or employee actions. While some of these issues may produce little stress, others can induce considerable stress.

Thus, stress accompanies dissent in at least two ways, when the event that triggers dissent creates stress and when the process of determining how to express dissent causes stress. The purpose of this study is to examine how stress coping mechanisms relate to dissent expression.

Employees express organizational dissent when they share their contradictory opinions and disagreement about workplace policies and practices (Kassing, 1997, 1998). One particular stream of dissent research concerns the audiences to whom employees express dissent and the factors that determine why they choose particular audiences (Kassing, 1997, 1998). Dissent ends up directed toward management (i.e., expressed as upward dissent) when employees report comparatively higher levels of satisfaction, commitment, identification, and workplace freedom of speech (Kassing, 1998, 2000a). Additionally, employees who report having higher quality relationships with their supervisors and those who report greater engagement with decision-making processes in their organizations more readily express upward dissent (Kassing, 2000b; Kassing & McDowell, 2008). In contrast, dissent is channeled to coworkers via lateral dissent when employees believe that they possess comparatively poorer quality relationships with their supervisors, when their organizations are comparatively intolerant of employee feedback, and when they register comparatively low levels of satisfaction and commitment (Kassing, 1998, 2000a, 2000b). Employees appear to rely less on lateral dissent when they perceive that their organizations are fair and open in their decision making efforts (Kassing & McDowell, 2008), but paradoxically engage in more lateral dissent when organizations provide better information about how decisions are made (Goodboy, Chory, & Dunleavy, 2008). Additionally, lateral dissent seems to diminish as burnout symptoms magnify (Avtgis, Thomas-Maddox, Taylor, & Richardson, 2007) and as employees become more engaged with their work (Kassing, Piemonte, Goman, & Mitchell, 2012).

Choosing to share displaced dissent with family members and nonwork friends exports one's concerns to a safer location. Early findings linked displaced dissent to a general lack of commitment (Kassing, 1998). Subsequent work suggested that displaced dissent functioned as a viable outlet for younger nonmanagement employees with less work experience (Kassing & DiCioccio, 2004). Also, a recent study indicated that displaced dissent signaled employee turnover (Kassing et al., 2012).

Previous research has linked dissent expression with significant emotion-laden organizational outcomes such as procedural justice (Goodboy et al., 2008; Kassing & McDowell, 2008), employee burnout (Avtgis et al., 2007), and work engagement (Kassing et al., 2012).

While none of these studies directly considers the connection between stress and dissent expression, together they shed light on how stressful dissent expression and affiliated outcomes can be for employees.

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