Why employees with working-class roots are better at getting their ideas heard

An ASU management expert's research found that upwardly mobile employees tend to demonstrate an open communication style that positively affects supervisor responses.

In this article published Aug. 31, 2026, in the MIT Sloan Management Review:

We studied how employees present ideas to their managers by conducting a field survey of employees and their managers in a shared-services division of a multinational engineering company in India (218 employees, 32 managers); running three follow-up behavioral experiments involving more than 1,000 working adults and university students; and interviewing dozens of professionals. In each study, we found that employees from working-class backgrounds who had moved into white-collar work, whom we call upward transitioners, were more likely to acknowledge that they might be missing something, invite the manager's perspective, and appear open to revising their position.

— Yasha Spriha, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship