Does corporate language influence career mobility? Evidence from MNCs in Russia

Abstract

The paper investigates how corporate language influences the career mobility of MNC employees in Russia. We apply human capital theory to show how language may be valued in an organizational context. In our work we use a framework that demonstrates that corporate language may act as a glass ceiling. The results show that employees in Russian MNCs with a lower level of corporate language skills will be less likely to consider vertical and horizontal career mobility than employees with a higher level of these language skills. Equally, employees in Russian MNCs with a lower level of corporate language skills will be less likely to consider internal and external career mobility than those employees with a higher level of these language skills. We prove that corporate language may act both as a barrier and as a facilitator for the career mobility of employees in Russian MNCs who have different levels of corporate language skills.