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Paper short abstract

This study shows that employee voice can narrow, and silence can expand, in-house organisational strata in Japanese firms. Using qualitative cases analysing before and after post-bubble restructuring, it finds that proactive voice helps protect workers, while silence allows stratification to grow.

Paper long abstract

This study aims to develop a theory explaining how employees’ “voice” and “silence” shape the expansion or reduction of intra-organisational strata within Japanese organisations. Postwar Japanese firms were long characterized by integrated blue- and white-collar employment and relatively small internal status gaps. Since the collapse of the bubble economy, however, profitability declines, market competition, corporate restructuring, and diversified HR systems have led organisations toward divergent paths: in some cases status gaps have narrowed, while in others they have widened. This study hypothesizes that when employees can actively voice concerns in the face of managerial pressure, status differentials contract; when they must remain submissively silent, these gaps expand.

The research situates itself within Japan’s historical formation of enterprise unions encompassing both blue- and white-collar workers, as well as the post-1995 shift toward performance-based systems and segmented employment. Rather than viewing labour market positions as outcomes of free choice or engaging in normative critiques of inequality, the study focuses on the consequences of silence and the conditions enabling risky, Foucauldian parrhesia-like voice behaviour.

The study reviews research on organisational strata and on employee voice and silence, integrating Hirschman’s framework with recent distinctions between participatory and negotiating voice, while emphasising silence as a separate behavioural choice shaped by Japan’s limited labour mobility.

The central research question is: How do employees’ voice and silence alter in-house organisational strata? To answer this, the study conducts qualitative case research in industries central to Japan’s postwar employment model, interviewing management, enterprise union leaders, and labour union officials. Using modified grounded theory approach (M-GTA), it codes interview data to trace shifts in strata before and after organisational transformations.

The study originates from contrasting empirical cases: some unions successfully protected non-regular workers and mitigated disadvantages during restructuring, while others saw renewed status divisions as white-collar workers exited unions. By theorizing these divergent outcomes, the research offers academic originality in linking in-house organisational strata change to voice/silence behaviour—an area where silence research remains nascent in Japan. Practically, it provides guidance for workers constrained by rigid organisational hierarchies and contributes to revitalizing empirical research on labour-management relations.