Craft of Voicing to Power: How Employees with Upward Social Class Transitions Gain Voice Endorsement

Drawing on theories of social class transitions and communication, we argue that employees who have reached positions of higher Socio-Economic Status (SES) from lower SES backgrounds develop unique capabilities to tactfully express their viewpoints. Such employees, during their social class transition, often need to carefully navigate interactions with gatekeepers of relatively higher power in the social hierarchy; in that process, they get opportunities to hone voice crafting, which involves delivering the challenge-oriented content of their ideas and concerns in a palatable and non-threatening manner to others. Such ability to voice craft can especially help them deal better with managers who hold power in the organizational hierarchy and, thereby, gain greater voice endorsement than their peers from more privileged SES backgrounds. We establish support for our theory through a multisource field survey study in a multi-national firm in India and a set of two studies using a quasi-experimental causal-chain design using online samples of working adults based in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the process, we challenge the dominant view in the literature that the disadvantages that employees with lower SES backgrounds face in elite work settings can overshadow any advantages they develop as they come out of their hardscrabble upbringing, especially when it comes to getting heard.