Social mobility as a driver of employee silence in India: toward a contextualized understanding of silence in emerging markets

Purpose This paper aims to explore how the context in a dynamically developing country affects employee silence in India. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative design involving semi-structured interviews with employees and managers from different sectors in the Mumbai and Delhi areas. An abductive approach was used to analyze the data. Findings Two types of social mobility concerns – advancement aspiration and fear of social decline – emerged as salient drivers of silence and can be attributed to a volatile job market, social status markers, transferability of qualification, someone’s socio-economic situation and the overall economic situation. Pathways were specified from social mobility concerns to silence tendencies that are motivated by both low approach and high avoidance. Research limitations/implications Social mobility as a specific factor in the Indian distal context and as a characteristic of emerging markets can motivate silence while organization-related concepts like job satisfaction or commitment may have less predictive value. Propositions that were derived from the interview study need to be validated by deductive research. Generalizability of Indian findings across other emergent markets needs to be shown. Originality/value To the organizational behavior (OB) scholarship on silence, this research contributes by identifying antecedents of silence that are situated beyond the organizational boundaries challenging the dominant role of established factors at the team- and organizational level. To the human resource management/employment relations (HRM/ER) scholarship, this research contributes by theorizing psychological processes that link environmental factors to silence behaviors.