Skilled Foreign Employees’ Linguistic, Social, and Economic Capital in Organizations

Abstract

While language proficiency is shown to be a source of power and career capital in multinational corporations, less is known why and how contextual language capability is related to social and economic capital development of skilled foreign employees (SFEs) in organizations. This study applies the theory of practice (Bourdieu, 1973, 1991) and interviews with 142 SFEs in a range of domestic corporations that operate in domestic and international settings in Japan to examine the interrelated nature of linguistic, economic, and social capital. Our analysis shows that SFEs’ lack of context-specific linguistic capital (e.g., accent and intonation) lowered their power and career opportunities, and prevented them from accumulating social capital (e.g., networks with local stakeholders) and economic capital (e.g., job promotion). Due to the reproductive relationships between these capital types, low linguistic capital explains the sustained disadvantaged positions of SFEs in domestic organizations. This study by focusing on the contextual aspect of language contributes to international business research on language and suggests new avenues of language research.