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One of the most critical phenomena in modern economics is the potential impact of startups on innovation, economic growth, and employment rates at the regional, national and industrial levels (Sedláček & Sterk, 2017). While startups’ collective contributions are critical, the high-risk strategies they pursue lead to startups’ high failure rates, up to 90% in some industries (Arora et al., 2018; Cantamessa et al., 2018; Marmer et al., 2011), so improving organizational performance is vital to these businesses.- This study examines one critical organizational phenomenon – organizational silence – in Iranian startups. Organizational silence, first introduced in 2000 by Morrison and Milliken, is one of the most significant barriers to performance, growth, and innovation in organizations, where employees become silent consciously, refusing to express ideas, critiques, suggestions, and opinions about organizational operations to influential persons in the organization (Morrison & Milliken, 2000).

The paper’s aim is, in a broader sense, human resource management in the context of change management. Different groups of individuals manage change differently. Therefore, it is essential, appropriate and expedient to examine the perception of change in the 21st century. Changes are happening more and more frequently due to scientific and technical progress. Changes are part of the life of every single member of society or every organisation. Therefore, a study of this issue must be considered justified. This paper presents the results of research focused on small and medium-sized enterprises. Employees of small and mediumsized enterprises in the study evaluated the effects of possible changes in enterprises from their work and organisation. The article examined in more depth personal perceptions, especially those who have not yet undergone a change. The second group surveyed are- employees who have already passed through the ground in their professional lives.

Since December 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread rapidly on a global scale (WHO, 2021), strongly affecting organizations from all sectors of activity. Employees, in particular (ILO, 2020), have been forced to quickly alter their work behaviors and manner of working, being obliged to abandon commuting to the workplace and resort to large-scale remote working (Nemțeanu et al., 2021a). The pandemic has made its strongest imprint on the sector of services (Fernandes, 2020), for whom teleworking has become ‘the new normal’ (Belzunegui-Eraso & Erro-Garcés, 2020; Nemțeanu & Dabija, 2021). This new context has dramatically altered task performance – employee productivity having been strongly affected due to the time needed to adapt to the new reality and working conditions (Belzunegui-Eraso & Erro-Garcés, 2020).

In the international marketing literature as well as practice, one of the most pressing issues for any multinational corporation’s marketing strategy is the choice between standardization (or globalization) and localization (or adaptation). The first approach, often applied for example by companies producing cosmetics, electronics, soft drinks and most industrial goods, is based on the assumption that customer needs are relatively homogenized.