Language Management: From Bricolage to Strategy in British Companies 9781800415935

Citation preview

Language Management

LANGUAGE AT WORK Series Editors: Jo Angouri, University of Warwick, UK and Rebecca Piekkari, Aalto University Business School, Finland Language at Work is a new series designed to bring together scholars interested in workplace research. The modern workplace has changed significantly in recent years. The international nature of business activities and the increasing rate of mobility around the world create a new, challenging environment for individuals and organisations alike. The advancements in technology have reshaped the ways employees collaborate at the interface of linguistic, national and professional borders. The complex linguistic landscape also results in new challenges for health care systems and legal settings. This and other phenomena around the world of work have attracted significant interest; it is still common, however, for relevant research to remain within clear disciplinary and methodological boundaries. The series aims to create space for exchange of ideas and dialogue and seeks to explore issues related to power, leadership, politics, teamwork, culture, ideology, identity, decision making and motivation across a diverse range of contexts, including corporate, health care and institutional settings. Language at Work welcomes mixed-methods research and will be of interest to researchers in linguistics, international management, organisation studies, sociology, medical sociology and decision sciences. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.

LANGUAGE AT WORK: 6

Language Management From Bricolage to Strategy in British Companies

Natalie Victoria Wilmot

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Jackson

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/WILMOT5928 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Wilmot, Natalie Victoria, author. Title: Language Management: From Bricolage to Strategy in British Companies /Natalie Victoria Wilmot. Description: Bristol; Jackson: Multilingual Matters, [2022] | Series: Language at Work: 6 | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “This book draws on case studies of language management within Britishorganisations to examine the decisions they make about language diversity in their professional communications in order to be successful in a multilingual world”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022019707 (print) | LCCN 2022019708 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800415928 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800415942 (epub) | ISBN 9781800415935 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Language in the workplace—Great Britain. | Communication in organizations—Great Britain. | English language—Business English. | Multilingual communication—Great Britain. | Organizational behavior—Great Britain. Classification: LCC HF5549.5.L3 W56 2022 (print) | LCC HF5549.5.L3 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/50941—dc23/eng/20220622 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022019707 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022019708 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-592-8 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: Ingram, Jackson, TN, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2022 Natalie Victoria Wilmot. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

For my nana, Doris Hunt, who helped me to take the first steps on the journey to this book many years ago when she taught me how to read.

Contents

Figures and Tables

ix

1

Introduction Introduction The Nature of Language Language and Interorganisational Relationships The Contribution of Translation Studies Structure of the Book

1 1 4 6 7 10

2

Organisational Language Management Practices Introduction Language Management Practices Translation Language Skills in the UK The Linguistic Environment for SMEs in the UK Conclusion

13 13 14 25 29 31 32

3

Managing Language Diversity as an SME Introduction AirCo MagneticCo AgriCo ToolCo Conclusion

34 34 36 43 50 55 59

4

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners Introduction Recruiting for Language Skills Individuals Acting as Boundary Spanners in SMEs How Boundary Spanners Feel about Language Work How Boundary Spanners Perform Language Work Boundary Spanners and Social Relationships External Boundary Spanners Conclusion

61 61 62 63 67 74 76 78 80

vii

viii

Language Management

5

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning Introduction Boundary Spanners and Translation Activities Google Translate External Non-Professional Translators Professional Language Services Intersemiotic Translation Translation Quality Conclusion

83 83 84 86 89 92 96 97 100

6

BELF and its Malcontents Introduction Hierarchies of English Subjectification and Resistance Perceptions on BELF by English Native Speakers Linguistic Perspective Taking The Bright Side of English Conclusion

103 103 104 108 112 115 118 122

7

Conclusion Introduction Strategy or Bricolage? Translation and Translators Opportunity Recognition and Relationship Maintenance Power Managerial Implications Conclusion

125 125 127 129 132 134 136 140

Appendix Sampling Semi-Structured Interviews Observation Document Analysis Analytical Procedure Individual and Cross-Case Analysis Research Ethics

141 141 142 143 143 145 145 146

References Index

147 164

Figures and Tables

Figures1

Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3 Figure 3.4 Figure 3.5 Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2

Supply chain relationships among the case organisations Language management practices at AirCo Language management practices at MagneticCo Language management practices at AgriCo Language management practices at ToolCo BELF and the circles of English Pyramid of Englishes

35 38 45 51 56 105 123

Summary of language management practices Summary of data collection

15 144

Tables

Table 2.1 Table A.1 Note

(1) Figures reproduced from Wilmot, N.V. (2017) Management of language diversity in international supply chain relationship of UK SMEs. Unpublished PhD thesis, Sheffield Hallam University.

ix

1 Introduction

Introduction Companies deal with language differences every day. They cope, the world continues to turn. How they do so, however, remains largely absent from the literature. (Maclean, 2006: 1377)

In the decade and a half since Maclean wrote these words, the landscape of scholarly work dealing with language management in international business (IB) has changed dramatically. It can no longer be considered as ‘the forgotten factor’ (Marschan et al., 1997) or the ‘orphan of the management literature’ (Feely & Harzing, 2002). It has emerged from the shadows of culture, and become established as a legitimate, distinct field of study in its own right (Brannen et al., 2014). There is now a rapidly growing field that is broadly defi ned as ‘language-sensitive international business research’, which has mainly been concerned with ‘how linguistic diversity permeates internal communication and management processes and affects the ability of multinational corporations (MNCs) to operate as single entities in pursuit of their overall strategy’ (Karhunen et al., 2018: 980). Accordingly, there is a now a significant corpus of empirical studies which variously consider issues such as language effects in: HQ-subsidiary relationships (BarnerRasmussen & Bjorkman, 2007; Feely & Harzing, 2003); mergers and acquisitions (Cuypers et al., 2015; Kroon et al., 2015; Vaara et al., 2005); multinational and multilingual teams (Kassis-Henderson, 2005; Hinds et al., 2014; Steyaert et al., 2011; Tenzer & Pudelko, 2017); leadership (Tenzer & Pudelko, 2015); and the impact of language skills on career progression (Itani et al., 2015; Yamao & Sekiguchi, 2015). However, there is a gap in the literature with regard to the question of foreign language diversity when it occurs in inter- rather than intraorganisational relationships (Cuypers et al., 2015). This is largely due to the emphasis of the field on MNCs, and thus the linguistic diversity that exists in various forms of intra-organisational relationships within them. The lack of empirical work on interorganisational relationships has correspondingly meant that there has been relatively little attention paid to the language management practices of smaller organisations, the majority 1

2

Language Management

of whose international relationships tend to be interorganisational, and involve working with customers or suppliers in international locations. Although there have been a small number of studies concerned with the management of linguistic diversity in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and thus in the practices that can be used to manage linguistic diversity in interorganisational relationships (e.g. Asasongtham & Wichadee, 2014; Chiocchetti, 2018; Crick, 1999; Incelli, 2008; Knowles et al., 2006), the operations of any type of organisation other than MNCs have largely been overlooked in terms of the academic literature (Angouri & Piekkari, 2018). This is despite the fact that organisations that face language diversity and employ practices to overcome this come in all shapes and sizes, and are not just the very large organisations (Koskinen, 2014). Furthermore, the type of empirical research conducted in SMEs has been substantially different from the methods that are usually deployed in the language-sensitive field, which has largely been qualitative work (Tenzer et al., 2017) which is exploratory in nature, in order to ‘open the black box’ (Doz, 2011) of organisational processes relating to language use and its effects. In contrast, the work that is located in SMEs tends to be largely survey based, and is primarily concerned with the frequency with which different foreign languages are used and the type of tasks that are undertaken in foreign languages (e.g. Chiochetti, 2018; Clarke, 2000; Crick, 1999; Incelli, 2008), or relates to policy reports (e.g. CILT, 2006; Hagen et al., 2013; PIMLICO Project, 2011). While such work is useful, it ultimately tells us little about the micro-level practices individuals employ in order to cope with language diversity in their working lives, and how they understand the choices they make regarding foreign language use. While it is not the aim of this book to draw a false dichotomy between large and small organisations (Angouri & Piekkari, 2018), it is certainly the case that many of the language practices that have received attention in the literature on MNCs with regard to the management of multilingual teams, or headquarters–subsidiary relationships, are inappropriate for scenarios in which language diversity occurs across organisational boundaries. For example, a frequently researched strategy in MNCs is that of the common corporate language. While many studies (e.g. Fredriksson et al., 2006; Vaara et al., 2005; Wang et al., 2020) have pointed to the benefits, as well as the challenges, presented by the use of common corporate languages, such a solution is wholly inappropriate in circumstances where linguistic diversity exists between organisations, and thus focal actors have no power to mandate that particular languages be used by international partners. Given that such organisations typically have far fewer resources in order to manage language diversity than large organisations, it is appropriate to explore how it is managed in this particular setting. A particularly interesting site of study for the examination of interorganisational relationships is the UK. Despite claims (e.g. Hurmerinta et al., 2015) that it is less interesting to study English-speaking contexts

Introduction 3

due to the prevalence of English at a global level, the UK provides a fruitful location of study to empirically examine whether this is the case in interorganisational relationships, where the use of English may be expected, but cannot be mandated. Although Tenzer et al. (2017) note that the UK is a frequent location of study for research focused on language, this mainly relates to relatively early works in the field, which tend to take a somewhat functional view of language (Karhunen et al., 2018) and are therefore quite different from the situated approach to decisions about language use which is taken in this study. Additionally, there has been a considerable amount of research conducted in Nordic countries (Tenzer et al., 2017), which are all nations with comparatively high levels of second language use (Eurobarometer, 2012). It is therefore likely that the way in which organisations use language in these contexts will be very different from that in the UK, which has much lower levels of multilingualism (Eurobarometer, 2012) than its European neighbours, and additionally benefits from using English as its main language. Therefore, there is relatively little known about the practices that individual employees use to manage language diversity in this context, and this is particularly the case for employees within smaller organisations who are managing interorganisational relationships. The study presented in this book therefore presents in a novel light the question of how organisations can manage linguistic diversity. By basing the study on four case organisations that are located in the UK, which is a relatively unexplored context, the book aims to highlight the importance of Anglophone locations as a site for empirical research on language management, despite the fact that English is widely accepted as the language of IB (e.g. Neeley, 2017). The study will therefore demonstrate the complexity of the ways in which organisations in the UK manage foreign language diversity beyond a simple reliance on being able to use English. Simultaneously, by focusing on smaller organisations, which have been overlooked in the extant language management literature, extensive consideration is given to how language diversity is managed in interorganisational relationships, which represents an important contribution to a field that has been dominated by an emphasis on intra-organisational language practices. Additionally, as this book takes a critical orientation towards the global status of English, it explores how this can simultaneously privilege and disadvantage organisations based in Anglophone countries – in this instance, the UK – in terms of how this shapes their values related to foreign language use, and the practices they use in order to manage linguistic diversity. All four case organisations are located in the north of England. While they differ in terms of organisational size, structure, extent of overseas operations, and the industries in which they operate, they share a commonality, and were indeed selected, because they do not purely rely on the use of English in order to operate internationally. By selecting four

4

Language Management

relatively homogeneous cases, the study aims to present a fi ne-grained account of the ways in which these organisations manage language diversity, thus contributing to the lacuna in the literature on interorganisational relationships by generating a rich picture of exactly how this is dealt with by the case organisations, and the challenges and opportunities they face as a result of their linguistic choices. As will become clear throughout this book, the practices they use in order to operate as British organisations in a multilingual world vary significantly, depending on a variety of different factors, including the types of relationships they have with customers and partners, the availability of boundary spanners, the relative importance of particular overseas markets, and the fi nancial resources they have available to commit to relationship-specific investments. In order to support this granular analysis, the study draws on a number of perspectives from translation studies and sociolinguistics, thus aligning with recent calls within in the language-sensitive IB literature to embrace multidisciplinarity in order to better understand the practical choices made about language in organisations (Angouri & Piekkari, 2018). The Nature of Language

Much of the extant literature on language-related matters in IB has taken the perspective of language diversity as a technical issue which organisations can resolve via the deployment of the correct strategy (Karhunen et al., 2018). However, as the discipline of language-sensitive IB has matured, much greater emphasis has been placed on the use of language as a social practice and language-in-use (Angouri & Piekkari, 2018), which is the approach drawn upon in this book. This means that emphasis is given to what employees in the case organisations actually do to manage scenarios of linguistic diversity in various types of interorganisational relationships, rather than on any top-down strategies (e.g. Luo & Shenkar, 2006) that organisations put in place. Indeed, as the study will discuss, among the case organisations there are relatively few examples of strategic approaches to language management, and instead the situation is more one of bricolage, in which employees have agency to take advantage of opportunities and resources that are available at particular moments in time. A relatively early example of consideration given to the conceptualisation of ‘language’ in business settings is Tietze (2008), who discussed language as possessing four dimensions: descriptive/categorising, phatic, performative and hegemonial. Of particular relevance to this study are the phatic and hegemonial dimensions of language. The phatic dimension of language recognises that speech and communication is fundamentally a social act, and therefore language also has a social function that enables us to develop our relationships, regardless of the content. For example, when someone asks ‘how are you?’ they are not necessarily wanting to know the full answer, but instead are following

Introduction 5

a social convention around greeting protocols, which is thus more important in these circumstances than the actual content of what is being said. Such an approach therefore demonstrates that language goes significantly beyond the descriptive dimension, which understands language as a system of signs, and highlights that in order to interact effectively, language users also need to have a cultural understanding of communicative practices. This can potentially be challenging in IB scenarios, as there can be a tendency to assume that a shared language alone is sufficient to ensure understanding, which both this study and others (e.g. Tréguer-Felten, 2018) demonstrate not to be the case. Given the emphasis of this study on interorganisational relationships, this dimension is crucial to understanding the role of language in the social component of such business relationships, and to recognising that they are not merely transactional between businesses, but interpersonal between social actors (Dirks et al., 2009). The hegemonial dimension deals with power. This aspect of language recognises that language use is not neutral, and that not everyone is able to claim the right to speak in particular scenarios. For example, English is frequently referred to as ‘the language of global business’ (e.g. Neeley, 2017). Such assumptions exclude those who are unable to communicate in English, and therefore often reflect the interests of dominant groups (such as managers who have been socialised in Anglophone business schools, e.g. Tietze, 2004), even though these vested interests are often hidden and not made explicit. Given that the focal firms of this study are located in an Anglophone environment, and are able to use English relatively unproblematically for their internal communications, the global status that English enjoys creates expectations about how and when it can be used in external communications as well. Such a perspective thus links to the critical orientation (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000) taken to English in this study, and thus helps to better understand discourses of global Englishes and business English as a lingua franca (BELF) which are present in the findings. For conceptual clarity, when this book refers to the concept of ‘linguistic diversity’, languages are understood to be discrete semiotic systems, such as English, Spanish, Mandarin or Arabic. This view is not one that is widely used in language-focused disciplines such as sociolinguistics, and has also received critique in the domain of IB itself (e.g. Janssens & Steyaert, 2014), as there is considerable evidence that when languages are in situations of prolonged contact, new and hybrid forms can emerge (e.g. Blommaert, 2013; Holden et al., 2008). However, this understanding is used here as the focus of this study is on how employees and businesses use and relate to languages; therefore, in order to remain consistent to the understanding of language which is present in the empirical data, languages are assumed to be discrete systems. As Angouri and Piekkari (2018) remind us, ‘visible stabilities remain and many of our categories such as national languages are still very real in their daily lives at work. In mundane discourses there is often little fluidity in whether one uses French

6

Language Management

or Spanish’ (Angouri & Piekkari, 2018: 13). While there are occasions in the data presented in this study where this is not the case, this is made explicit in the presentation and discussion. Additionally, this book uses the term ‘natural language’, rather than ‘national language’ which is often referred to in the language-sensitive IB literature (e.g. Angouri & Piekkari, 2018). Here, natural language is used to mean ‘a language used in ordinary human communication, as opposed to a theoretical or artificial system’ (Crystal, 1999: 228). Although national language is commonly used within the field of IB, given the core concern of the discipline with the business and management of operations across nation-states, the focus of this book means that the term is avoided as it represents a banal and straightforward mapping of language to nation and culture, which is overly simplistic (Piller, 2011) and not representative of the complex, multilingual societies that characterise the current global context. This is in keeping with other power-sensitive studies that focus on language, such as Vaara et al. (2005). Language and Interorganisational Relationships

As stated, the role of language in interorganisational relationships has been relatively overlooked within the language-sensitive IB literature (Cuypers et al., 2015). This is a somewhat curious omission, as some of the very earliest studies in the domain of business which highlighted language as a managerial issue were from the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group, which gave emphasis to individual skills and the importance of sales and purchasing managers (Cunningham & Turnbull, 1982), and specifically addressed the role of language in such interorganisational relationships (Turnbull & Cunningham, 1981) and how this can affect contact patterns which exist between such individuals (Ford, 1984). Despite this early emphasis, the IMP literature evolved away from a focus on language (Welch et al., 2006), and correspondingly has had little impact on IB studies investigating language dynamics over the past two decades. Despite the fact that there is a small body of work that specifically explores the role of language in SME internationalisation (e.g. ForemanPeck & Zhou, 2015; Sui et al., 2015; Williams, 2011), there is a tendency for this to be considered from the perspective of the impact of language skills (frequently of the founding entrepreneur) on the initial export decision, and correspondingly less focus has been given to language effects on the ongoing relationships that are initiated as a result of such internationalisation. For example, there are discussions in the literature about the role of language in facilitating trust in intra-organisational relationships (e.g. Tenzer et al., 2014), and there is a significant body of literature which discusses trust in interorganisational relationships (e.g. Das & Bing-Sheng, 1998; Ireland & Webb, 2007), but these approaches have not fi ltered through to informing the maintenance of interorganisational

Introduction 7

relationships from a language-sensitive perspective. Such studies evidence that trust in interorganisational relationships can lead to greater investment into relation-specific assets (Delbufalo, 2012), and the acquisition of language skills by organisations in order to facilitate interactions with supply chain partners could certainly be viewed as such an investment. However, the limited body of literature on language and SMEs does not particularly explore the role of language in facilitating trusting international supply chain relationships, as the micro-dynamics of such relationships and how they are managed have received scant empirical attention. Naturally the supply chain literature attempts to shed light on interorganisational relationships; however, this has tended to discuss such relationships in the context of communication more broadly, rather than giving specific attention to language. Oosterhuis et al. (2013) point out that good communication is a fundamental component of successful supply chain relationships, and Gligor and Autry (2012) emphasise the role of interpersonal relationships in buyer–seller relationships and stress that social relationships that occur between individuals in a business context enhance communication processes and lead to increased business performance. From a language-sensitive perspective, this demonstrates the importance of the phatic dimension of language in establishing such social relationships across organisational boundaries. As an example, Bouchien de Groot (2012) warns of the danger of ‘thin’ communication in relationships in which language acts as a barrier so that communication is purely task focused and does not foster the development of social relationships. This is likely to be particularly problematic in interorganisational relationships as opposed to intra-organisational ones due to a lack of shared social context between actors in different organisations. A key concept within social network research that examines interorganisational relationships is that of boundary spanning (Cuypers et al., 2020), which examines the ways in which organisational boundaries are crossed. This is an area that has received empirical attention within the language-sensitive IB field, in terms of understanding the different types of boundary spanning that can occur and how it is linked to language and cultural skills (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014) and why certain individuals are able to act as boundary spanners and not others (Mäkelä et al., 2019). The notion of boundary spanners is a particularly important one with which to explore interorganisational relationships from a linguistic perspective, as it is a solution to managing language diversity that is available to a wide range of different resources and levels of international activity and thus is a concept that is explored extensively in this study. The Contribution of Translation Studies

As most scenarios involving the use of multiple languages tend to require some degree of translation, there are also perspectives from

8

Language Management

translation studies which can be used to deepen and enrich the conceptualisation of language as it is presented in this book. In a very early example of the consideration of translation within IB, Janssens et al. (2004) identify three perspectives on translation as it occurs in a business domain, which can be further used in order to consider the nature of language. The fi rst perspective that they identify is the mechanistic perspective. This approach positions translation as a search for equivalence between different languages, and therefore considers translation to be a largely administrative task. This straightforward mapping of one language on another is the approach that has dominated in IB (Peltokorpi & Vaara, 2014). However, it is widely criticised by disciplines including translation studies (Venuti, 1993; Vermeer, 2012) for being overly simplistic, and it is therefore slowly beginning to be challenged within IB (e.g. Chidlow et al., 2014; Ciuk et al., 2019; Piekkari et al., 2014). The second approach is known as the cultural approach to translation. This suggests that language and culture are two halves of an indivisible whole (e.g. Agar, 1994), and therefore movement between different languages cannot be considered as a simple question of fi nding the right word, as languages are culturally bound and reflect the societies in which they are used and developed. As Brannen (2004: 599) points out, ‘comprehension entails much more than the decoding of a linguistic signal’ , and therefore when working across language boundaries, cultures are also being translated simultaneously. Although this approach has not received extensive attention within the field of IB, there are a growing number of studies that highlight this perspective (e.g. Blenkinsopp & Shademan Pajouh, 2010; Ciuk & James, 2015; Ciuk et al., 2019; Tietze et al., 2017). Additionally, there is work that considers the cultural aspect of translation from a methodological perspective when researching internationally (e.g. Xian, 2008), and work that considers difficulties with the travel of management knowledge which has been fi rst conceptualised in English, when it moves to other languages and contexts (e.g. Holden & Michailova, 2014). Work in this tradition also highlights the impact of individuals in boundary-spanning roles when they have relevant linguistic and cultural knowledge (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014; Ribeiro, 2007). Within this approach, there is a distinction to be made in terms of whether the understanding of culture is etic (in which particular cultures are linked to particular forms of expression), or emic (which emphasises the importance of context in cultural understanding), which is the perspective taken in the aforementioned literature on this approach. Within the etic tradition, in this field, the notion of linguistic relativity (Whorf, 1956) can be observed, in which language is thought to influence thought processes and therefore potentially influence practices. This is a more widely accepted understanding of the relationship between language and thought than that presented by linguistic determinism (Whorf, 1956), in which linguistic structures are thought to determine particular thought processes and

Introduction 9

approaches. Examples of linguistic relativity in the business literature can be found in Santacreu et al. (2014), who demonstrate that countries that predominantly use gender marking (such as Romance languages) tend to have lower rates of female participation at more senior organisational levels, and Chen (2013), who found that languages that do not strongly mark the future tense tend to engage in socially desirable behaviours such as pension and retirement planning. He suggests that this may be due to the fact that the future and present are seen as more closely entwined, due to the linguistic structure, as opposed to languages which strongly mark the future tense, such as English, which therefore creates a cognitive distance between what is happening in the present and what will happen in the future. In this book, an emic cultural understanding is taken (Zhu & BargielaChiappini, 2013), which means that language is not understood as deterministic, but as an integral part of culture, which is unable to exist without language. Although cultural approaches have been significant in the development of the language-sensitive IB field (Brannen & Mughan, 2017), work in this tradition has been significantly outstripped by that following a mechanistic approach, although this situation is beginning to change as the field is developing in maturity and using concepts from other related disciplines such as translation studies and sociolinguistics (Karhunen et al., 2018; Tenzer et al., 2017). The fi nal perspective to be considered is political, and this is the perspective adopted throughout this study when considering the use of English, which is particularly pertinent given the location of the study. While this has much in common with the cultural approach in its understanding of language as culturally embedded, it then builds on this in order to bring in an understanding of the power dynamics at play in acts of communication, and considers that language is never a purely neutral vehicle for communication (Tietze, 2008). This approach is concerned with ‘the weight of voices involved in translation activities’ (Janssens et al., 2004: 423), and emphasises that not all organisational actors are able to claim an equal right to speak and participate in communicative events. It thus encourages us to give specific consideration to who is able to speak and to determine the language of communication and, crucially, why they are able to do so (Wodak, 2012). Venuti (1993) describes any act of translation as movement. He suggests that in order to gain understanding, either the original text, or the reader, has to be moved from their original (cultural, not purely linguistic) location so that the two can be closer together. Political approaches therefore encourage us to view this movement as a political act – it is not just the movement itself that is important, but the question of who is moved, and why, which requires us to consider, for example, the existence of linguistic hierarchies, and the prestige that is afforded to some languages rather than others, including in workplace settings (Hua, 2014).

10

Language Management

Despite the potential relevance of such an approach in understanding the choices individuals make about language use, it is the perspective that has received the least attention within the field of language-sensitive IB (Peltokorpi & Vaara, 2014). While there have been numerous studies that consider the interplay of language and power (e.g. Hinds et  al., 2014; Tenzer & Pudelko, 2017), with a few notable exceptions (e.g. Boussebaa et  al., 2014; Śliwa & Johansson, 2014; Vaara et  al., 2005) these have tended to be at the level of individual power (French & Raven, 1959), rather than exploring it at a structural level. This lack of focus given to structural power in language-sensitive IB research may be due in part to the lack of dialogue between IB and organisation studies (Piekkari et al., 2014) which, as a field, is typically more interrogative of structural methods of power and domination. However, there are clear benefits in understanding the use of English in IB and related concepts such as BELF from a structural perspective, as such systems provide the framework in which individual decisions by employees are made. Therefore, throughout this book, perspectives will be drawn upon from a range of disciplines in order to explore the question of language management in interorganisational relationships in a more holistic way than that which is typically found in disciplinary specific journals, which is where the majority of work on organisational language management has been published. Therefore, theories and concepts from IB (which is the foremost consideration of this book) will be used in addition to those from organisation studies, translation studies and sociolinguistics. Structure of the Book

Following this Introduction, Chapter 2 presents an overview of the existing literature in the field of language-sensitive IB, and explores the practices that have been identified in the extant literature to manage language diversity in the SME context. Accordingly, although the majority of the literature has focused on organisational-level strategies which organisations can enact – such as the notion of a common corporate language – given the research setting of this study, the chapter places particular focus on practices that can be enacted by individual employees, rather than purely at an organisational level. This includes the use of lingua francae, free translation software and the changing of the communication media. It also reviews the range of global mobility in which individuals can engage – which may develop their linguistic skills – and discusses how this may be used by organisations to meet language needs. Furthermore, in order to establish the context of the case organisations in more detail, this chapter addresses the landscape in the UK with regard to the availability of language skills and organisational attitudes towards the use of languages other than English in business.

Introduction 11

The four case organisations that form the empirical material for this study are presented in Chapter 3. While the identities of the organisations remain confidential in order to protect their anonymity, an overview is provided of the size and structure of the organisations involved, and relevant details are provided about the broad industry sector and markets in which they operate. The ways in which these smaller organisations conceptualise and relate to foreign language use in their daily activities are explored, and consideration is given to how language diversity can be both an asset and a barrier which must be overcome in order to carry out business internationally. The environment in which such organisations operate is discussed, and linkages are made between the types of relationships they have with international partners and the influences these have on the choices that are made about language management practices. This also demonstrates the important role of history in influencing contemporary attitudes towards languages and language management practices in organisational life. Following this broad overview of the key practices that the case organisations use, the subsequent chapters of the book explore particularly important approaches in greater detail. Chapter 4 examines how the organisations use selection and recruitment of specific individuals in order to overcome language barriers at work. While there is a tradition in language-sensitive IB to consider this from a strategic perspective (Dhir & Gòke-Paríolá, 2002; Luo & Shenkar, 2006), this chapter primarily takes a bottom-up perspective (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018) in order to explore how the individual employees concerned understand and relate to language work and position themselves as language agents. In doing so, it demonstrates how language competencies play a role in individual career trajectories (Itani et al., 2015), and draws on sociolinguistic theories in order to explore foreign language acquisition and the role of nativespeaker ideals and accents in evaluating foreign language competence within the workplace (Jaber & Hussain, 2011; Śliwa & Johansson, 2014; Tsialikis et al., 1992). In addition to the use of multilingual, boundary-spanning individuals, the organisations also made extensive use of translation, which was achieved in a variety of ways. Chapter 5 discusses how the organisations manage language diversity in their written communication. It has been argued (Zhong & Chin, 2015) that it is translation that has now become the ‘forgotten factor’ (Marschan et al., 1997) in IB, and this chapter contributes to ending the silence on translation-related issues (Chidlow et al., 2014) in the discipline of IB. It explores the translation practices that organisations use, and places particular importance on the use of free translation software such as Google Translate, which is often used in IB but seldom investigated in a systematic way (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018). It expands on the previous chapter by considering the role of boundary spanners in order to perform translation tasks, and draws upon skopos

12 Language Management

theory (Reiss & Vermeer, 2013) as a theoretical lens that can be used in order to analyse different types of translation tasks and the methods that are used in order to perform them. Additionally, the chapter explores how the use of particular individuals for translation work can contribute to the commoditisation of language skills in the workplace (Heller, 2010). Despite the fact that all the case organisations were selected because of their use of diverse language practices, Chapter 6 highlights the fact that all of the organisations still made extensive use of the English language in their international operations. The role of English as a global language, and the hegemonic position that it occupies in IB, is explored, and it is demonstrated how it can be both a source of privilege and disadvantage to Anglophone organisations. Data are presented that explore how English native speakers relate to, and understand, their use of the language, and how particular ‘Englishes’ are constructed in a hierarchy. This inclusion of the perspective of English native speakers is one that is not always included in BELF research (Komori-Glatz, 2018), and thus this chapter presents a rich account of how native speakers claim epistemic authority over English language use. As such, it draws on the four faces of the power framework (Fleming & Spicer, 2007) in order to demonstrate how language ideologies (Lønsmann, 2015) become reified in organisational life in order to create and perpetuate language hierarchies (Graddol, 1997). Finally, Chapter 7 provides an overview of the benefits and challenges that language diversity presents in organisational life, and highlights the practices that small organisations can use in order to manage such diversity. Central to this chapter is the question of the extent to which SMEs are able to plan and implement language strategies (Luo & Shenkar, 2006), or whether the solutions they use are largely emergent (BarnerRasmussen & Aarnio, 2011). It then summarises the key contributions of this book, which are: an exploration of the work of boundary spanners in SMEs; the synthesis of relevant theories from the discipline of translation studies, particularly skopos theory, in order to demonstrate how it can be used as a tool to evaluate language practices in organisations and to make decisions about the appropriateness of certain approaches; and a nuanced perspective on BELF from the perspective of English native speakers. Following these conceptual contributions, the book concludes with a set of practical guidelines and recommendations which organisations can implement in order to manage linguistic diversity. The primary aim of this book is to shed light on the ways in which small British organisations manage linguistic diversity in their interorganisational relationships. As such, the focus is on the fi ndings and their implications. However, an overview of the methodological approach used in the empirical work can be found in the Appendix.

2 Organisational Language Management Practices

Introduction

This chapter will introduce the various ways in which organisations can manage linguistic diversity in their international relationships, as identified in the extant literature. Given the nature of the case organisations that form the basis of this book, it places particular emphasis on practices that are relevant to smaller organisations and interorganisational relationships. Much attention has been given in the international management literature to the concept of a common corporate language (Karhunen et al., 2018; Tenzer et al., 2017), which is a strategy that can be deployed in multinational corporations (MNCs) but is not applicable in this case. Therefore, particular focus is given to the role of individual employees, and micro-level practices that they can enact (e.g. Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018), rather than focusing on language strategy (e.g. Dhir & Goké-Parìolà, 2002; Luo & Shenkar, 2006), per se. This said, of course language has an effect on a fi rm’s strategy, even if this is not always recognised or fully understood by management (Piekkari et al., 2014), and thus it is in terms of the contribution of such micro-level practices to the firm’s overall strategy of language management – even if it is not formalised – that this area will be explored. The chapter also explores how the use of such practices relates to translation, which is addressed as a key theme affecting the case organisations in Chapter 5. A number of approaches from translation studies are introduced in order to make sense of how international, interorganisational relationships are translation spaces in which employees make choices about what information requires translation, and how. Finally, this chapter will present the context of the UK in terms of the specific circumstances in which language learning and language use in international business (IB) occur. While Chapter 6 reflects in detail on the phenomenon of global English and business English as a lingua franca (BELF) as used in smaller organisations, this chapter also establishes the linguistic climate in the UK, and the stock of language capital 13

14

Language Management

(Piekkari et al., 2014) that is domestically available to smaller organisations who are unable to rely on the use of organisational expatriates in order to meet their linguistic needs. Language Management Practices

The literature on language management in IB has identified a wide range of practices which can be used to enable organisations to cope with linguistic diversity, as summarised in Table 2.1. The key challenge for organisations is therefore to select those practices that are most appropriate to their individual circumstances – not necessarily in the sense of having a prescribed policy, which is unlikely for smaller organisations – but in terms of establishing an informal repertoire of practices that may be used across a constellation of different relationships (e.g. Steyaert et al., 2011). These practices will now be discussed in more detail with this objective in mind. Lingua francae

One solution to language diversity which has been given a significant amount of attention in the international management literature is the idea of a common corporate language (Tenzer et al., 2017). A corporate language is typically defi ned as one that has been officially mandated for use at an organisation (e.g. Fredriksson et al., 2006). This is in contrast to a lingua franca, which can be any language shared by speakers of different mother tongues and is mutually decided upon as an appropriate language for communication (Poncini, 2003). However, these defi nitions obscure some complexities of the issue. For example, Sanden and Kankaanranta (2018) demonstrate how English can become a de facto common corporate language without having to be formally mandated. Despite this, for the sake of conceptual clarity and the fact that this study is primarily concerned with external, rather than internal, organisational communication, here the concept of a common corporate language is used in a mandated sense, whereas lingua franca is used to denote language-in-use, as jointly negotiated by organisational actors. Such an informal solution is one that is clearly suited to the needs of small organisations – providing, of course, that they have access to employees who share a language with their international partners, or that these partners are able to communicate with British small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) in English. While the availability of foreign language skills in the UK is discussed in more detail later in this chapter, in terms of British companies fi nding a common lingua franca with their international partners, they have the considerable advantage that English is widely considered to be the common language of IB (e.g. Neeley, 2017).

Organisational Language Management Practices

15

Table 2.1 Summary of language management practices Language practices

Description

Selected associated authors

Lingua franca

Use of a shared language that is jointly negotiated by participants

Charles, 2007; Ehrenreich, 2010; Feely & Harzing, 2003; Kankaaranta & Planken, 2010; Nickerson, 2005

Functional multilingualism

Using a mix of languages, whatever resources are available, to communicate and get a message across

Feely & Harzing, 2003; Gaibrois, 2014; Steyaert et al., 2011

External language resources

Use of third parties such as professional translators and interpreters

Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011; Ribeiro, 2007

Training

Provision of language teaching by the organisation for its employees

Charles & Marschan-Piekkari, 2002; Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011; Neeley, 2017; Swift & Wallace, 2011

Corporate languages

Use of a language that is mandated by the organisation

Feely & Harzing, 2003; Fredriksson et al., 2006; Harzing et al., 2011; Tange & Lauring, 2009; Vaara et al., 2005; Vigier & Spencer-Oatey, 2017; Wang et al., 2020

Language nodes/ boundary spanners

Bilingual ‘bridge’ individuals who engage in linguistic boundary spanning in addition to their usual organisational duties

Barner Rasmussen et al., 2014; Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011; Mäkelä et al., 2019

Selective recruitment

Having language skills as a specific requirement when hiring new employees

Feely & Harzing, 2003; Peltokorpi & Vaara, 2014; Swift & Wallace, 2011; van den Born & Peltokorpi, 2010

Expatriate management

Bringing in linguistically skilled managers from overseas subsidiaries to act as bridge individuals

Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing & Pudelko, 2014; Harzing et al., 2011; Lauring, 2007; Vulchanov, 2020; Zhang & Peltokorpi, 2016

Inpatriation

Sending managers from HQ to overseas subsidiaries to act as linguistic bridges

Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011

Machine translation

Use of computer software to translate, such as Google Translate

Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011; Ostler, 2011; Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018

Build in redundancy in the communicative exchange

Checking understanding, asking the partner to summarise, repeating information

Gaibrois, 2014; Harzing et al., 2011; Rogerson-Revell, 2010; Tenzer & Pudelko, 2016

Adjust the mode of communication

Using alternative methods of communication, such as email instead of telephone

Gaibrois, 2014; Harzing et al., 2011; Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013; Shachaf, 2008

Parallel information networks

Shadow structures, where people with language skills are communicated with, not the people in charge

Harzing et al., 2011; Marschan-Piekkari et al., 1999; Peltokorpi, 2007; San Antonio, 1987

Locally hired non-native managers, self-initiated expatriates

Hiring managers from overseas with language skills who already live in the target country

Andresen, 2021; Harzing et al., 2011; Vulchanov, 2020

Code-switching

Mixing different languages

Ahmad & Barner-Rasmussen, 2019; Brannen & Salk, 2000; Cohen & Kassis-Henderson, 2017; Harzing et al., 2011; Hinds et al., 2014; Vigier & Spencer-Oatey, 2017

16

Language Management

As a result, the topic of English language use in business has been a topic of interest for language-sensitive international management researchers and sociolinguists alike (e.g. Angouri, 2013; Kankaanranta et al., 2018; Komori-Glatz, 2018; Lønsmann, 2015; Śliwa & Johansson, 2014; Swift & Wallace, 2011). Correspondingly, there have been a variety of different conceptualisations of BELF, empirical work which may (e.g. Rogerson-Revell, 2010) or, more commonly, may not (e.g. Pullin, 2010) include native speakers of English as BELF users. Given that the location of the present study is the UK, and thus interviews with native English speakers comprise a significant proportion of the empirical material presented in this book, here native speakers are considered to be BELF users, and their perspectives will be explored, despite this being a lessinvestigated aspect of BELF usage (Komori-Glatz, 2018). Therefore, while any language can be used as a lingua franca between interlocutors of different mother tongues, Chapter 6 is specifically focused on BELF and how it was used by the case organisations in their international relationships. As has been pointed out by many academic researchers, the ubiquity of English in IB is not a neutral choice (e.g. Tietze, 2008) but one that is imbued with power, as it privileges some participants while simultaneously disadvantaging others. It has been argued (Pachler, 2007) that the omnipresence of English has contributed to the generally low rates of foreign language acquisition in the UK, as school students do not see the value of learning foreign languages when ‘everyone speaks English’. While this is far from the case – current estimates are that approximately 1.35 billion people, or approximately 17% of the global population, is able to speak English (Ethnologue, 2021) – it is certainly true that English is the most common lingua franca in IB, at the expense of other global languages such as Spanish, French, Arabic or Russian. The key advantage of any lingua franca from an organisational perspective is that it is a flexible solution, which does not require formally mandated policies, just the willingness of individuals to seek out a common language that enables communication. Another such solution is that of media choice. Media choice

A number of studies have now identified that employees are more likely to avoid communication in their second language versus their first (e.g. Lauring & Klitmøller, 2015; Piekkari et al., 2013; Vaara et al., 2005). This effect is particularly marked when employees feel that they lack linguistic competence in their second language, and is hardly surprising, given that a lack of linguistic competence can be misinterpreted as a lack of professional competence more broadly (Tenzer et al., 2014; Vaara et al., 2005). Accordingly, it has been suggested (e.g. Harzing et  al., 2011; Klitmøller et al., 2015) that changing the media of communication can

Organisational Language Management Practices

17

have a significant effect on employees’ willingness to communicate in foreign languages. Media richness theory categorises media based ‘on the ability of information to change understanding within a time interval’ (Daft & Lengel, 1986: 560). Under this categorisation, face-to-face communication is conceived as the richest type of media, based on its ability to convey multiple cues as to meaning (e.g. message content, tone of voice, body language). Media which does not permit this, and which provides slower feedback, such as text-based media like email, is categorised as ‘leaner’. This theory ‘argues that task performance will be improved when task information needs are matched to a medium’s information richness’ (Dennis et al., 2008: 575). Therefore, traditional media richness theory suggests that complex tasks are best suited to ‘rich media’ such as face-to-face communication, as this enables clarifications where there are multiple potential interpretations of the information transmitted, whereas lean media are better suited to simple tasks which do not require large amounts of information to be exchanged. Crucially, however, this theory aims to provide guidance as to which media would prove most effective in a given situation, and does not theorise how managers actually choose media in practice. Given that it was developed at a time when electronic communications consisted of pagers, facsimiles and basic email, Dennis et al. (2008) argue that it is unsuited to modern communication media such as instant messages, which can incorporate videos and audio in addition to text. Correspondingly, these authors developed the concept of media synchronicity theory, which argues that rather than solely focusing on transmission, effective communication requires processes of both conveyance and convergence, and that in order to facilitate this, communication in teams is likely to be most successful when multiple media are used in order to accomplish a task. The majority of the empirical work on both media richness theory and media synchronicity theory has rarely given specific consideration to their application in cross-cultural environments (Stone, 2011). However, within the IB literature, a number of recent studies have investigated the link between media choice and language use (e.g. Harzing & Pudelko, 2014; Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013; Tenzer & Pudelko, 2016), and have found that although rich media is preferable for sharing information among monolingual teams, in multilingual environments lean media can be a more effective tool for sharing information, as it reduces the cognitive load on employees (Volk et al., 2014) when operating in a foreign language. In addition to the explanation that operating in foreign languages places a greater cognitive load on interlocutors (Volk et al., 2014), the effective use of lean media can also be explained by the concept of Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) (Dewaele, 2007). This is typically understood as a performance anxiety, which is similar in its manifestation to stage fright (Horwitz, 2010). To date, there has been little explicit consideration

18

Language Management

in the international management literature of the effects of FLA, as it has frequently been conceived of as a phenomenon affecting language learners, and thus empirical research on this has typically been classroom based, using the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale developed by Horwitz et al. (1986). A rare study in the management literature using FLA is that of Aichhorn and Puck (2017), who discuss the acute anxiety felt by employees who thought that their level of English competence was low and, accordingly, engaged in avoidance behaviours. A previous study by Tenzer and Pudelko (2015), which took an anxiety-based perspective without specifically considering FLA, also demonstrated how employees who feel that they have low competence in the language they are required to work in may exhibit signs of resentment and frustration both with themselves and with others, while a more recent contribution from Wang et al. (2020) highlighted a range of language-induced negative emotional states, including anxiety, anger, resentment, shame and frustration, which were encountered by both native and non-native speakers in organisation communication. This relative silence on FLA in a business context indicates the positioning of foreign language users in corporate environments as sufficiently proficient to be able to use the target language without encountering challenges. However, numerous studies (e.g. Lauring & Klitmøller, 2015; Neeley et al., 2012; Park et al., 1996; San Antonio, 1987; Vaara et al., 2005) have demonstrated that this is not necessarily the case and that the requirement to communicate in a foreign language can have a silencing effect on those who do not feel sufficiently competent. Switching to lean media may help to improve communication across language boundaries, as a meta-analysis of studies on FLA demonstrates that anxieties around speaking and listening are considerably higher than anxieties around reading and writing (Teimouri et al., 2019), which is likely to be due to the time pressures involved in oral versus written activities. Given that the same study demonstrates a link between anxiety and performance, it is therefore suggested that in situations where employees lack confidence in their linguistic abilities, using text-based lean media can encourage foreign language users to participate in business communication which they may otherwise seek to avoid. This solution is one that is likely to be especially beneficial for SMEs, as it requires little additional resources to implement, and also has the possibility of being able to be combined with other practices such as using free translation software, which will now be discussed. Machine translation

Given the potential utility of lean media in enabling SMEs to manage linguistic diversity in international relationships, this naturally leads on to a consideration of machine translation. While it has been identified as

Organisational Language Management Practices

19

a potential solution, it is often characterised as not being fit for purpose (Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011). However, this situation is changing with advances in technology, and free software such as Google Translate is becoming an important tool in the management of linguistic diversity, particularly in smaller organisations. However, given the historical focus in the literature on corporate language policies as a strategic issue, rather than on the actual practices of employees, there has been little exploration into how employees may choose to use such tools in an informal way as part of simply getting the job done (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018). With this in mind, Chapter 5 presents evidence from the case organisations as to how employees use Google Translate as a practical yet imperfect tool to cross linguistic boundaries between organisations. It particularly emphasises how employees view such tools, and the circumstances in which they are used, and contrasts this with the use of professional translation and interpreting work. Given this lack of empirical work, the use of Google Translate within a work context is generally quite poorly understood in the management literature. However, within other disciplines there has been some exploration of how Google Translate can be used, although not necessarily in a work environment. For example, there is evidence of how language learners use Google Translate in a creative way in learning environments as part of their repertoire of skills to communicate multilingually (Bin  Dahmash, 2020; Ducar & Schocket, 2018). Additionally, studies from healthcare (Patil & Davies, 2014; Taira et  al., 2021) show how Google Translate is used in clinical settings to communicate with patients, despite concerns about the level of accuracy. From a sociolinguistic perspective, Woydack (2019) explores how multilingual call centre agents use Google Translate in the creation of call scripts. Despite drawing on different disciplinary backgrounds, all these studies share a commonality in their exploration of Google Translate in that it is positioned as an emergent practice, one that is spontaneously used by participants, and not something that is mandated as part of any formal communications policy, either in work contexts or in the language learning classroom. Curiously, translation studies is relatively silent on the use of Google Translate or any other open access machine translation software. It is often presumed that translation professionals feel threatened by translation software, although Nunes Viera (2020) argues that this is not necessarily the case, and that scepticism of machine translation among professionals does not stem from a fear of being outperformed, but rather legitimate concerns about its limitations and how it is used. Thus a more typical approach within translation studies is to consider how professional human translators use software in order to support their activities (e.g. Cronin, 2013; Mellinger, 2018), rather than exploring how it is used by non-professional translators in a workplace setting. This corresponds with the historically low level of attention that has been given to the work

20 Language Management

of paraprofessionals within the discipline. It is only relatively recently that non-professional translation has gained greater attention, as the focus has expanded to consider not just the produced text, but the exploration of translation as a situated practice, which requires a greater understanding of translators as active agents (Muñoz Gómez, 2020). Professional translators and interpreters

Another option for organisations looking to manage language diversity in international relationships is to use professional translators and interpreters. This is a solution that is particularly suited to managing infrequent communications with international partners although, once again, SMEs confront the challenge of cost. This is particularly likely to be seen as an issue where language is not really viewed as an integral part of a company’s overall strategy (Piekkari et al., 2014). Furthermore, there may sometimes be a reluctance among organisations to divulge what may be perceived to be sensitive information to a third party (Feely & Harzing, 2003), despite the fact that professional translators should follow codes of conduct with regard to confidentiality (e.g. Chartered Institute of Linguists, 2017). An additional challenge can also be identifying translators with appropriate knowledge when dealing with highly specific technical translation, although with the advent of terminology management systems, which can build company and industry-specific terminology databases, this is becoming less of an issue than it was in the past. Despite these potential drawbacks, there are numerous benefits to the use of professional language services. Studies have demonstrated how translators can also act as cultural mediators (Blenkinsopp & Shademan Pajouh, 2010; Ribeiro, 2007) and go beyond merely translating meaning to acting as higher order boundary spanners (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014). Therefore, they are a valuable tool for managing linguistic diversity, but for fi nancial reasons are unlikely to be used extensively by small companies beyond the translation of specific documents, often to meet legal requirements (Albuquerque & Costa, 2018), rather than as an ongoing solution to managing linguistically diverse relationships. Boundary spanners

Feely and Harzing (2003) provide an early defi nition within the management literature of language nodes as individuals who have skills in two or more languages. More recently, the IB literature has referred to boundary spanners (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014; Mäkelä et al., 2019), who are able to take a bridging role between different linguistic communities. Critically, such individuals are often not hired by the organisation in order to act as language professionals, but do language work in addition to, or as part of, their usual roles. Interestingly, the concept of boundary

Organisational Language Management Practices

21

spanners has received more attention in the international management literature, which often considers boundary spanners from both a language and cultural skills perspective, than these individuals have received from a translation studies perspective, where the concept of non-professional translators – or ‘paraprofessional translators’ (Tyulenev, 2014) – in organisations has only recently begun to be explored (Pérez-González & Susam-Saraeva, 2012). For conceptual clarity, the term boundary spanners is used throughout this study, except where the translation studies literature is specifically drawn on, in which case the term paraprofessional translator is used. Within the organisation, these individuals may have considerable power, as they are able to exercise a gate-keeping role, controlling information flow between different groups (Marschan et al., 1997; Piekkari et al., 2005). However, such a position also risks the language nodes being seen as a threat by their superiors if they are reliant on the nodes in order to access key information (Fast & Chen, 2009). Furthermore, the additional work done by language nodes often elevates their risk of stress and burnout (Feely & Harzing, 2003), particularly when they are required to undertake linguistic work on top of their usual responsibilities at the organisation. A key question in any exploration of boundary spanners is who these individuals are. Although they may be recruited by the organisation specifically for their language skills, depending on the industry, identifying individuals with appropriate linguistic skills and the requisite task-related knowledge can be extremely challenging (van den Born & Peltokorpi, 2010). More commonly, the boundary-spanning role ‘is performed by numerous organizational actors in a variety of positions and status levels, and […] their performance may involve activities not normally associated with their formal position’ (Yagi & Kleinberg, 2011: 648–649). One way in which global organisations can deploy individuals in boundary-spanning roles is through the use of expatriates (Park & MensePetermann, 2014). Given that the language-sensitive international management literature has largely focused on MNCs, expatriates have been considered from a linguistic perspective, both in terms of the relationship between language use and various organisational activities (e.g. Lauring, 2007; Peltokorpi et al., 2021), but also in terms of language skills on expatriate adjustment (Selmer & Lauring, 2015; Zhang & Peltokorpi, 2016). However, due to the structure of such organisations, organisational expatriates (OEs) are unlikely to be an appropriate solution for SMEs, as they seldom have overseas subsidiaries from which they can establish expatriation or inpatriation programmes. However, it is possible that boundary spanners could be self-initiated expatriates – SIEs (Suutari & Brewster, 2000). These are individuals who have chosen to leave their country of origin and to move overseas without being requested to do so by an organisation, and are a growing group of

22

Language Management

workers, as traditional, linear career paths are giving way to boundaryless careers, which are ‘more flexible and multidirectional than traditional careers. They may consist of several career moves and span organization, geographical, and cultural boundaries. Compared with traditional careers, individuals – rather than organizations – are the primary career owners and are responsible for taking the lead in defi ning career destinies’ (Itani et al., 2015: 638). While comparatively little is known about SIEs versus OEs (López Duarte et al., 2015), we know that there are distinct types of SIE (Suutari & Brewster, 2000), and that they are more likely to have a personal interest in developing organisational experience than the typical OE. Additionally, they are more likely to be younger, female, and to work at a lower organisational level than OEs (Andresen et al., 2014). SIEs have a range of different motivations for their moves, including travel opportunities, professional development, improving future career opportunities and adventure (Thorn, 2009). This means that one of the challenges that organisations face when recruiting SIEs is that these individuals may not be as organisationally embedded as traditional expatriates (Biemann & Andresen, 2010), because they are highly willing to move countries and thus may only remain with organisations for a relatively short period of time. Therefore, although a number of studies have pointed out that SIEs often have language skills in both home and host country languages (e.g. Furusawa & Brewster, 2017; Peltokorpi & Froese, 2009), relying on them as the sole manner of bridging linguistic divides in organisational relationships may be a risky strategy if they decide to move. It is of course important to acknowledge that not all boundary spanners in organisations will be SIEs. They may also be home country nationals who have learned foreign languages through formal education. Alternatively, they may be biculturals who have access to two or more languages as a result of their family heritage. The way in which these categories of boundary spanners approach issues of language may therefore be different from that of SIEs. Hong et al. (2000: 710) define biculturals as ‘people who have internalized two cultures to the extent that both cultures are alive inside of them’. A critical distinction is between that of cultural identification and cultural knowledge – although it is certainly possible for other groups to have knowledge of another culture – for example, foreign language students who have spent time on international exchange programmes would be expected to have cultural knowledge, but this is quite separate from cultural identification which distinguishes biculturals (Brannen & Thomas, 2010). Additionally, Lee (2010) reminds us that biculturals are not a homogeneous group, and the way in which they relate to their cultural identities may vary. In addition to feeling strong identification with both cultures, some biculturals may relate more strongly to one culture than the other

Organisational Language Management Practices

23

or, alternatively, lack identification with either culture, which leads to varying degrees of cultural appropriateness in communication. Biculturals are not necessary bilingual, and it is possible to be bicultural without having knowledge of the language(s) associated with both cultures – although LaFromboise et al. (1993) argue that language is a building block to biculturalism. It is the group of bicultural bilinguals that are of particular relevance to this study, as it has been suggested (Bell & Harrison, 1996) that this group are likely to be particularly effective in global management roles. Accordingly, Ringberg et al. (2010) note that bicultural bilinguals are often used in order to perform translations within organisations, although it may not always be a task that they wish to perform (Yagi & Kleinberg, 2011). However, Ringberg et al. (2010) point out the challenges that bilingual biculturals may encounter in translating, as a result of frameswitching. Bicultural individuals are able to draw upon different mental schemas or frames, which are cognitive systems about norms, values and beliefs shared between members of a particular cultural group (Brannen & Thomas, 2010). Therefore, in order to act in culturally appropriate ways, bicultural individuals will switch between different mental frames depending on which one is salient for the situation they are in. However, Ringberg et al. (2010) show that the use of specific languages activates particular mental frames, which can make acts of translation particularly challenging, as cultural and linguistic frames may not map to each other exactly, and thus unintended meaning transfer may occur. The study provides the example of playa/beach, between English and Spanish, which can evoke very different mental frames of what this looks like depending on the language used. As such, they recommend that if bilingual biculturals are used to translate in organisational contexts, they need to be reflexive about the frame-switching that may occur during the process and the potential impact on the accuracy of the translation. On the other hand, home country nationals who have learned a foreign language through formal education may be bilingual, but not bicultural (Agar, 1991), and thus may equally struggle with the challenge of translation as they are unable to access the appropriate cultural, rather than linguistic, frame because they have not had sufficient exposure to the target culture, and thus experience the fl ipside of the frame-switching challenge that bilingual biculturals face. This indicates that if SMEs are to engage in specific recruitment in order to acquire internal language competences, an awareness is needed of the challenges and limitations that different types of individuals face in terms of their communicative competence, an issue that has not been highlighted in the existing literature on boundary spanners and language ability. A fi nal category of boundary spanners who may bring language skills to the organisation is self-initiated repatriates (SIRs). These are SIEs or

24 Language Management

OEs who have voluntarily decided to return to the home country and seek alternative employment. While there has to date been relatively little empirical research on SIRs, in a study of French and German repatriates, Andresen (2021) found that the general competences that they had developed overseas, including linguistic and cultural skills, were valued by domestic employers, and that such skills were a primary reason why they were hired by SMEs who were operating internationally, or seeking to internationalise. Thus, although the use of OEs in order to acquire language skills is not one that is necessarily open to SMEs in the same way as it is to MNCs, evidence suggests that SMEs are able to draw on other forms of global mobility in order to acquire linguistic resources. Training

Another option that organisations may wish to explore is the possibility of language training (e.g. Charles & Marschan-Piekkari, 2002; Feely & Harzing, 2003; van den Born & Peltokorpi, 2010). There are, however, numerous barriers to the implementation of this approach, not least that it is a long-term strategy given the amount of time that is required in order to become proficient in a foreign language. Additionally, the cost of language lessons may present a financial obstacle to SMEs who typically have limited training budgets. Despite the introduction of the apprenticeship levy in the UK, which provides up to 95% of course funding for higher and degree apprenticeships for SMEs, the nature of advanced language study, which typically requires time spent living overseas, means that it is not ideally suited for employees who are combining study with full-time employment. As a result, there are no language courses available for levy funding in the UK at the time of writing, despite calls to include foreign language skills in vocational courses (British Academy et al., 2020), and thus SMEs are currently unable to use this funding in order to develop language skills among their staff. There are additional challenges to language training for SMEs. There is evidence to suggest (e.g. Liu et al., 2011; Swift, 1993) that language learning is more likely to be successful if learners are doing it for intrinsic motivational reasons, rather than as a result of an organisational request, although the recent case of Rakuten’s English language mandate, in which senior managers were required to reach a certain level of English proficiency or face demotion, does challenge this (Neeley, 2017). However, the research on language acquisition indicates that adult learners may plateau as language learners, and not reach the level of competence they may have done had they studied the language as children (Ellis & Sagarra, 2010). This can be a destabilising experience for senior executives who are accustomed to experiencing success in their endeavours (Mikitani, 2013; Neeley, 2017). Accordingly, language training is more likely to be of use

Organisational Language Management Practices 25

to organisations when they are engaging in refresher courses for staff who already have some linguistic ability, or who have studied foreign languages in the past (Charles & Marschan-Piekkari, 2002). There is a further complication for organisations based in the Anglosphere, as is the case for the organisations presented in this book which are located in the UK. This is the question as to which language should be offered for training. Given the ubiquity of English in IB (Lønsmann, 2015; Phillipson, 2009), the choice is perhaps more obvious for organisations who are located in non-English speaking countries. The British Council (2017a) compiled a list of the ten most useful languages for British organisations, in which Spanish tops the list, followed by Mandarin, French, Arabic and German, which was the same top five that appeared in their 2013 report. However, the most useful language will depend on the organisational context and the strategically important markets for each individual organisation. Additionally, the report notes that other languages such as Hindi and Malay are also of high importance, and with the departure of the UK from the European Union, demand for non-European languages may well increase. This could mean that languages which are not traditionally offered as adult part-time classes are required, and therefore access to appropriate language training may also be a challenge that organisations encounter. Furthermore, it has been noted that a lack of time can be a barrier for executives who are attempting to learn a foreign language, even when they are highly motivated to improve their language skills (Swift & Wallace, 2011). Therefore, although the prospect of language training in SMEs is not an impossibility, the time and fi nancial requirements of the process, coupled with the potential difficulties of fi nding appropriate language courses for employees, means that it is likely to be less frequently used as a way to increase the language capital of smaller organisations than some of the other solutions presented in this chapter (Tibrewal, 2021). Translation

It is important to recognise that many of these language practices involve translation to some extent. Fredriksson et  al. (2006) caution against a common corporate language hiding the multilingual realities that often occur within organisations, meaning that regardless of the practices that are chosen, a world of translation is occurring in organisations, which is just as true in interorganisational relationships as it is in intra-organisational ones which occur in MNCs. However, although language is no longer ‘the forgotten factor’ (Marschan et al., 1997), there is a ‘silence’ on matters of translation in organisations (Chidlow et al., 2014; Evans & Kamla, 2018; Zhong & Chin, 2015). Organisationally focused disciplines such as IB therefore have much to learn from translation

26

Language Management

studies in order to explore the agency of individual employees in multilingual workplaces, as this discipline has been grappling with the ‘invisibility’ of the translator for some time (Venuti, 2008). While translation studies has typically been concerned with the translation of literature (Munday, 2016), there is a growing interest in translation in organisational contexts (e.g. Muñoz Gómez, 2020) and the work of paraprofessional translators (Tyulenev, 2014) – non-professional translators who have other roles in the organisation beyond that of translator and who in IB are more commonly referred to as language nodes (Feely & Harzing, 2003) or boundary spanners (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014). Furthermore, translation studies has typically been more concerned with issues of power and language use than IB, which traditionally has paid less attention to the political dimensions of language, as identified by Janssens et al. (2004). Postcolonial approaches to translation such as those of Spivak (2012) encourage translators to consider power differentials between the translator and the author, leading to discussion about the appropriateness of domesticating or foreignising a text (Venuti, 1993), and whether it is the reader or the text itself that should ‘move’ in order to take into consideration cultural, and not just linguistic, differences. Functional approaches to translation: Skopos theory

Functional approaches to translation are discussed in this literature as they are appropriate for analysing the translation of business documents, given that their primary focus is the outcome of the translation process, rather than aesthetic merit (Munday, 2016). One of these approaches which will be drawn upon extensively in Chapter 5 is skopos theory (Reiss & Vermeer, 2013). Skopos comes from the Greek for ‘purpose’ (Vermeer, 2012), and thus skopos theory suggests that a translation should be evaluated on the basis of whether or not it has met its purpose, as determined by the commissioner of the translation. This therefore moves away from a search for equivalence in translation, and instead towards a pragmatic, functional perspective. Under skopos, a translation is judged to have been appropriate if it meets the same purpose as did the original source text, which was itself created with a specific purpose in mind, and in order to interact with a particular person or group of people (Reiss & Vermeer, 2013). Philosophically, therefore, skopos has a similar underlying goal as BELF – it is a highly pragmatic approach to enable communication to occur between members of different speech communities, and if this primary goal is met, then the translation, like the use of BELF, can be judged to have been successful, regardless of the aesthetic merits, or even in some circumstances the grammatical and lexical correctness, of the language used. Accordingly, skopos theory can be used in order to evaluate the effectiveness of machine translation. As previously discussed, Google Translate is a commonly used tool among employees engaging in language work

Organisational Language Management Practices 27

(e.g. Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018), despite the fact that it is not widely discussed in the IB literature. While the limitations of machine translation tools such as Google Translate are well documented, skopos theory can enable organisations to evaluate the circumstances in which their use is appropriate and a pragmatic choice for managing linguistic diversity. It can also be used in order to consider the translation activities of boundary spanners – who, as they are unfettered by the code of ethics that professional translators are, may choose to translate organisational messages selectively, or in order to promote a particular agenda (Logemann & Piekkari, 2015). Skopos theory acknowledges that the entirety of the message may not need full translation in certain circumstances, as long as its essence is clearly communicated to the target audience. In such ways, it can sensitise managers to the work that boundary spanners engage in, as many of their tasks are often invisible, as translation work frequently is (Venuti, 2008). One of the key challenges with the application of skopos theory in an organisational setting is determining who is the commissioner of the translation, particularly when paraprofessional translators (Tyulenev, 2014) are used, as this informality can blur the roles between translator and commissioner. The translation commissioner is the individual who determines what the purpose, or skopos, of the translation actually is. In an organisational setting this may therefore be a marketing manager who is looking to translate promotional materials or the company website into other languages for sales purposes. Equally however, it may be an engineering manager who has asked a multilingual sales manager to translate client feedback regarding a technical product, or a credit manager who has asked a multilingual customer service agent to chase an unpaid invoice and wants to know the client’s response. In the first scenario, the roles of translation commissioner and translator are clearly defi ned, and the purpose of the text can be agreed upon. However, in the latter scenarios which involve paraprofessional translators, the purpose of the translation may not be quite so clear and thus the translator is free to use their own agency to a much greater extent in determining what exactly the other party needs to know. This can cause confl icts and misinformation to spread throughout different functions of an organisation (Logemann & Piekkari, 2015). Given that the only judge of whether a translation has met its purpose is the target audience (Nord, 1997), Reiss and Vermeer (2013) draw specific attention to the function of the text, and caution that the agreed skopos needs to be appropriate for different types of text. Translation and equivalence

One of the key tenets of skopos theory which distinguishes it from the mechanistic approaches to translation that have previously dominated in

28

Language Management

IB (Peltokorpi & Vaara, 2014), is that it does not seek equivalence between languages. Indeed, translation studies in general, in contrast to IB, is sharply critical of the notion of equivalence, and suggests that equivalence is often based on ‘an illusion of symmetry between languages’ (SnellHornby, 1988: 22). More nuanced approaches are taken by Pym (2014) who distinguishes between natural equivalence and directional equivalence. Natural equivalence is the idea that equivalences do exist but they occur at levels below those of language systems, and thus equivalences can be found in the terms that speakers of different languages would fi nd the most usual to express a particular function. However, this approach would seem to require some degree of cultural proximity in order to work and, as Pym (2014) notes, there is little evidence for natural equivalence between unrelated languages. Directional equivalence ‘assumes that the relationship between source and target language is not symmetrical’ (Evans, 2018: 1847). Translators therefore have many options and exercise considerable agency when determining how to render a source text into another language, and thus the directional equivalence approach recognises this, but stresses that it can never occur in a symmetrical manner – i.e. despite the fact that it is widely used in research methodologies in IB (Chidlow et al., 2014), performing a back translation once a translation has been done is likely to produce a result that is different from the original source text. This opens up questions of agency and translator power which are rarely explicitly considered in discussions of translation within an IB context (Wilmot & Tietze, 2020). However, given the political understanding of language drawn upon in this study (Janssens et al., 2004), this is an aspect of translation that should not be neglected. Chidlow et al. (2014) suggest that another approach from translation studies which could be relevant to IB is that of cultural politics. Like skopos theory, it requires that the role of the translator is no longer one of invisibility (Venuti, 2008), but that instead the decisions of the translator are scrutinised in analysing the quality of the translation. Unlike skopos, which is concerned with whether the translation meets its purpose, cultural politics emphasises the power differentials at play during acts of translation. Venuti (2008) argues that Western translation traditions are primarily concerned with domesticating the source text and reducing foreignness, so that the (ethnocentric) readers are not confronted with cultural Others at the same time as they are confronted with linguistic Others through the act of translation itself. It is therefore an approach that resonates with previous criticisms of the relationship between English and management knowledge, as perpetuating the diff usion of management practices from ‘the West to the rest’ (Jack & Westwood, 2006). In such cases, referring to the use of the English language, Pennycook (1994: 5) describes cultural politics as emphasising ‘the underlying political, cultural and ethical questions around English’. It is therefore fundamental

Organisational Language Management Practices

29

in such a tradition to recognise that ‘the translator has an ethical and political responsibility to respect and voice the Other’ (Chidlow et al., 2014: 574). The tradition in IB is largely for this responsibility to be ignored. When research that has originally been conducted in other languages is presented in English, the process of translation is largely removed from the research accounts, and the inherent messiness of the process is sanitised (Xian, 2008). It is rare to fi nd ‘foreignising’ features present in published journal articles – an example of such an approach would be that used by Ciuk and James (2015) and Ciuk et al. (2019), who use Polish pseudonyms in their research accounts in order to remind the reader that the data were collected in a Polish context. It is, however, notable that both of these examples deal specifically with questions of translation in IB, and particularly address the cultural aspect of language which is present when translating ideas across different contexts and languages. Although in a practical sense, it is not expected that managers within organisations should be experts in translation theory, it is important that they are able to assess the appropriateness of the translation practices that occur in communication with their external partners, as the choices made by boundary spanners, other employees and professional translators have the power to significantly affect the relationship. Language Skills in the UK

Many of these practices require access to linguistically skilled individuals, whether in the form of professional translators and interpreters, or organisational employees who are acting as boundary spanners. It is therefore pertinent to consider how easily accessible such linguistically skilled individuals are in the UK, given that the pernicious myth that English is the only language required for IB has contributed to a situation in which learning and using foreign languages in the UK is not only a rarity, but can be actively demonised (Coleman, 2009). A key point here is to establish the context of this book. While the UK does not have an official language that is constitutionally enshrined, English is the de facto national language (Mac Sithigh, 2018). Although other languages such as Welsh, Gaelic and Irish are recognised regional/ minority languages in the UK, the context for this study is that all case organisations are located in England and thus these minority languages are not relevant here. Census data indicate that the UK is generally quite a monolingual society – the 2011 census shows that 92% of households in England and Wales speak either English or Welsh as their main language (Office for National Statistics, 2013). Of course, such data mask the complexity of language use, as demonstrated by recent attempts to change the census question on language to reflect that fact that many people live multilingual lives, on which

30 Language Management

adequate national statistics have not been collected (Matras, 2019). Indeed, approximately 39% of adults in the UK claim to be able to speak a language other than their mother tongue well enough to hold a conversation (Eurobarometer, 2012). The data indicate that the UK has a generally lower level of foreign language ability than its European neighbours, as the EU27 average figure is 54% (Eurobarometer, 2012). Correspondingly, a recent study by the British Council (2017b) noted that 29% of British adults did not feel confident in attempting to speak any words in foreign languages when travelling overseas, with 21% saying that they would select holiday destinations where they knew that they would not be required to speak any languages other than English. The other pertinent point here is whether the languages that are widely spoken in the UK are widely sought after in a business context. While the British Council (2017a) suggests that languages such as Spanish, French, German, Arabic and Mandarin are likely to be important for British businesses looking to work internationally, another 2019 study indicates that over the previous five years, rates of students taking GCSEs in the three main foreign languages typically taught in British schools saw significant decreases: German and French dropped by 30%, while Spanish also saw a 2% drop, presenting a troubling picture in terms of the future availability of these language skills in the UK. While there has been a modest increase in the growth of GCSEs in other foreign languages including Mandarin and Arabic, which grew at over 10% over the preceding five years, GCSEs in all languages outside of French, German and Spanish only represent 10% of the total entrants in all modern foreign languages, indicating that the total growth seen is very small, and starting from a low base. Furthermore, census data (Office for National Statistics, 2013) suggest that the most widely spoken other language in the UK is Polish, with just over 1% of the population using Polish at home, followed by Panjabi and Urdu at 0.5% of the population each. Although the census question on language has been criticised (e.g. Sebba, 2018), as it simply asks respondents what language is their main language and therefore does not necessarily represent a full representation of multilingualism in the UK, it is an indicator that there is a potential mismatch between the demand for language skills and their availability, particularly in certain regions, as the same data indicate that they are spread unevenly throughout the country. The outlook for language skills in the UK continues to look gloomy. With the number of students studying modern foreign languages at both GCSE and A level on a downward trajectory and a corresponding decrease in the number of universities offering languages as degree courses (Polisca et al., 2019), it is difficult to see where the required skills development will take place without major policy changes. Coupled with this is the impact of Brexit on foreign language availability. Although the data for this book were collected before the UK left

Organisational Language Management Practices

31

the European Union, the full effects of this on the availability of language skills in the UK are yet to be fully understood, particularly in terms of the effect that it will have on types of global mobility in the acquisition and provision of language skills. The Linguistic Environment for SMEs in the UK

Particularly pertinent to this issue is an overview of the situation for SMEs in the UK. Although SMEs constitute 99% of businesses in the UK (Federation for Small Businesses, 2020), international trade still largely remains the domain of larger organisations, with only around one in five trading internationally, and over half of those surveyed saying that they did not feel that exporting was feasible for their business (Federation for Small Businesses, 2016). Evidence demonstrates that the barriers to export are varied and complex (e.g. Leonidou, 2004), although in this metaanalysis, language differences are categorised as having relatively little impact. However, issues such as the inability to contact overseas customers, a limited ability to locate and analyse markets and difficulties in identifying business opportunities are categorised as barriers which have a very high impact on the ability to export. This division is curious, as clearly language differences have a major influence on these areas which are identified as high impact, but it seems that in the studies on which this meta-analysis drew, they were not recognised as such. A recent study by Tibrewal (2021) demonstrates that SMEs in the UK who embrace language capabilities are 30% more successful at exporting than those who do not, indicating that language is indeed an important barrier to the successful internationalisation of SMEs. This therefore indicates that there is a lack of understanding in the business community about the importance of language diversity. While this has been gaining recognition in the scholarly community of international management since the publication of Marschan et al.’s foundational 1997 article, and has grown exponentially over the past decade (Tenzer et al., 2017), it seems that this recognition has not yet spread to the broader community of IB practitioners in the UK. Holmes (2017) notes that of the 20% of British SMEs who are involved in exporting, only 17% can be considered as ‘language active’, in that they rely on the use of languages other than English in order to facilitate their international trade. Despite this, however, other studies in particular regions of the UK have shown a less gloomy picture. Hagen et al. (2013) found that 60% of the SMEs that they questioned planned to start trading in a new overseas market in the next three years, with 40% of them indicating that they considered language skills as being fundamental in order to reach these goals. However, without a follow-up study, it is impossible to say whether these ambitions materialised. It is also unclear as to whether such

32 Language Management

organisations were already active exporters, and potentially already part of the 17% of SMEs who are language active. There are also indications that this lack of foreign language ability in the UK makes monolingual English speakers less proficient at communicating using BELF, due to the fact that they are not particularly sensitive to the challenges of communicating in another language, having never experienced it themselves (Babcock & du-Babcock, 2001; Cogo & Jenkins, 2010; Holden, 2002). Of course, taking a political understanding of language (Janssens et al., 2004) means that it is impossible to divorce the current status of English from its history. A large part of the reason behind the hegemonic status of English in IB is due to the expansion of the British empire, and thus it is difficult to separate this from its colonial past (Pennycook, 1994). Indeed, there are some writers (e.g. Boussebaa et al., 2014) who consider that the status of English is a reproduction of colonial power dynamics between core and periphery which reifies historical divisions between ‘the West and the rest’. Certainly, the effects of such history are still seen in the contemporary UK as the hegemonic status of English is a major contributing factor to the low level of language learning that takes place in the country. These factors combine to create an environment in the UK in which domestic managers often have little awareness of the importance of language skills in working with international markets; for example, Knowles et al. (2006) demonstrate that SMEs are much more likely to work internationally and value languages if a member of senior management has previous international or linguistic experience. Coupled with the generally low availability of language skills in the UK in comparison with other European countries, this presents a scenario in which many SMEs do not work internationally and, of those that do, the vast majority rely on the global availability of English. Conclusion

This chapter has reviewed the literature on a range of practices that can be used to manage linguistic diversity in SME relationships. In contrast to the majority of the extant literature on language management in IB, which focuses on intra-organisational relationships and thus emphasises the strategy of a common corporate language (Cuypers et al., 2015), this study explicitly highlights bottom-up practices (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018) which employees can use to manage linguistic diversity when formal organisational policies are lacking. Additionally, the role that boundary spanners can play is highlighted, and given that SMEs do not have access to traditional OEs, a range of different types of global mobility has been presented, and the ways in which such individuals can contribute to the management of language diversity in interorganisational relationships has been explored.

Organisational Language Management Practices

33

Furthermore, the importance of translation to language management practices has been discussed. Almost all the identified practices require some form of translation, yet this is a topic that has received relatively little attention within the IB literature. Accordingly, key concepts from the discipline of translation studies have been presented, in particular, skopos theory, which can be used in a highly pragmatic way to assess the appropriateness of different ways in which translation can occur in this context. Finally, the chapter has provided an overview on the context of language skills and availability for SMEs within the UK. Having provided a theoretical overview of the key areas that help to explain how SMEs can manage language diversity in their international relationship, subsequent chapters examine these issues in more detail in the context of the empirical study.

3 Managing Language Diversity as an SME

Introduction

This chapter presents the context of the four case organisations that form the empirical material for this book, and provides an overview of the language management practices used at each organisation, before discussing the key themes of boundary spanners, translation and business English as a lingua franca (BELF) in greater detail in the subsequent three chapters. A case study methodology was used for the collection of the data, which comprised semi-structured interviews, observation and document analysis. For further details on the research methods used, please refer to the Appendix. The four organisations were specifically selected for the study as they did not solely rely on using English in the foreign markets in which they worked, but were part of the 17% of internationally active small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that could be considered as language active (Holmes, 2017). They were identified by the author through their professional networks, as through these the author was able to target organisations that met the language-active criteria of the study. By selecting relatively homogeneous organisations, the aim was to develop a detailed understanding of the way in which these types of smaller organisations manage linguistic diversity in their international relationships, and thus to generate contextualised explanations (Welch et al., 2011). As an in-depth, qualitative study, this approach enables a granular level of analysis which sheds light on micro-level interactions in such relationships, which is a hitherto relatively unexplored area. Crucially, the case organisations were selected due to the constellation of international relationships they had. Although the international business (IB) literature tends not to distinguish between different types of import or export relationship, this did not permit a sufficiently fi negrained analysis for this study’s requirements. Therefore, concepts from the marketing channels literature were drawn upon in order to further establish selection criteria for the case organisations. Webster (1992) 34

Managing Language Diversity as an SME 35

3. Long term relaonships

ToolCo

MagnecCo

2. Repeated transacons

AgriCo

1. Transacons

4. Buyer/seller partnerships (total mutual dependence)

6. Network organisaons

AirCo

5. Strategic alliances (including joint ventures)

7. Vercal integraon

Figure 3.1 Supply chain relationships among the case organisations

developed a typology of different marketing relationships which enables further distinction of the type of relationships each organisation has, in terms of whether they are simple one-off transactions or a close and sustained relationship. The four case organisations have relationships that cover the full range of relationships on this typology, as illustrated in Figure 3.1. It was important to cover the full constellation of relationships across the case organisations in order to permit analysis of how the relationship dynamics influenced choices about language practices, as will be discussed in subsequent chapters. All of the organisations are located in the north of England, and represent a range of different industries and organisational structures in addition to the different types of international relationships they have. All accounts in this book are anonymised in order to protect the confidentiality of the organisations and the interviewees. In this chapter, the practices used by each organisation will be presented in sequence, and then the practices as a whole will be discussed. While some of these practices (for example, the use of boundary spanners) are already identified in the extant literature on language management in organisations, the research also identified novel approaches which have previously not received empirical attention. It is not the aim of this chapter to make broad generalisations from the cases. Instead, it will identify different practices that may be used, but the specificity of the research setting and, more particularly, the fact that all the case organisations are located in an Anglophone country, means that the practices they employ may not all be applicable to other SMEs in other contexts and in interorganisational relationships in different environments. However, by beginning the presentation of the empirical data with an overview of all the practices the organisations used, these may resonate across other contexts with which readers are familiar (Tracy, 2010).

36

Language Management

AirCo

This organisation is the largest of the four case organisations. It was founded over 80 years ago, and is a manufacturer operating in the engineering sector. The organisational structure of this company is very different from the other organisations as it is not technically an SME, according to the definition of an SME as being an organisation with less than 250 employees, an annual turnover of no more than €50 million and/or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding €43 million (European Commission, 2016). Over the course of its history, AirCo has had multiple owners, most recently being owned by a venture capital organisation and then being sold to a German multinational operating in an adjacent industry. Although there are strong ties between the company and the group headquarters in Germany, in terms of its supply chain relationships the organisation is still autonomous, with the independence to decide on its own customers (except in Germany where all sales go through the headquarters) and its own suppliers. As these crucial aspects fall within the remit of the UK-based organisation which, excluding the ownership structure, does meet the criteria for being an SME, the organisation was chosen for inclusion in the study. In addition to the relationship with headquarters, the company already has an international joint venture (IJV) with an organisation in India (which is predominantly used in order to sell into the Indian market) and a wholly owned subsidiary (WOS) in China, which is both a manufacturing plant and a sales organisation for the Chinese market. Both of these relationships were established before the takeover by the German multinational, and have been permitted to continue to function in the same way as they did prior to the purchase. The inclusion of these types of relationships provides insights into the higher order relationships identified by Webster (1992), which were not present in any of the other organisations in the study. The company exports to over 85 markets, and has suppliers located in 20 different countries. In the UK, it employs approximately 80 people, the majority of whom work in manufacturing, with around 20 employees working in the offices. At the time when the fieldwork was conducted, the organisation had a turnover in the region of £10 million annually, of which 40% was export sales and the rest in the UK and Ireland (which was managed as a domestic, rather than an export market). When the fieldwork was conducted, the organisation had recently undergone a significant shift in its export strategy. Whereas previously it had focused on working with a few key customers who acted as distributors in each export market, it then changed its approach in order to more closely follow the approach taken in its domestic market. Here, instead of having a few key relationships, the strategy was to have a large number of customer relationships in order to get closer to the end-users of the products. This meant that the organisation was working with a large number of small customers, who were all regularly purchasing smaller amounts from the organisation, instead of having a few customers who would

Managing Language Diversity as an SME 37

make periodic large orders so that they could keep material in stock to distribute in-country. This was a significant shift in approach, and meant that the export sales managers were required to significantly change the way in which they did business in export markets. Instead of being primarily office based, making regular overseas visits, under the new strategy they were expected to travel more frequently and to spend longer in the export markets, perhaps by hiring a car and driving around to visit smaller customers, instead of visiting key accounts in major cities which had been the typical way of operating in the past. The organisation had a number of language skills within the export sales team, namely Spanish, French, German and some basic Italian. The shift in organisational strategy that had recently taken place meant that the organisation was now working with a much broader range of customers than had previously been the case, which had an immediate and significant impact on the organisation’s language requirements: I think certainly in some markets […] we need to get to a lower level, of account, and down the tier chains and basically we felt that languages, native language is […] more important […] So therefore we’ve increasingly started to invest in more language speakers. (General manager)

Despite this recognition, language skills in the organisation were concentrated in the export sales team, and not in supporting roles such as the customer services department or the accounts team. This was largely due to the perception of the sales director that linguistically skilled individuals would demand higher salaries and would not want to take office-based roles. As a result, attempts had not been made to recruit linguistically skilled employees to fulfi l these functions. The organisation therefore had three sales managers who were linguistically skilled, one in Spanish/Italian, one in German and one in French. While they also had a Spanish speaker in the accounts department, these language skills were rarely used. Additionally, there were areas of language ability that were located in the IJV in India and in the WOS in China. While all the Indian employees were able to communicate in English as well as local Indian languages due to the status of English in India, all formal business documentation was written in English, even if it was going to other Indian companies. In China, the situation was somewhat different. This was primarily a manufacturing site, and although there was a sales team for the company’s sales into China as well, there was generally a low level of English skills at the subsidiary. Accordingly, the subsidiary manager in China often acted in a boundary-spanning role at the organisation. Despite the fact that other members of the local management team were also able to speak some English, it was acknowledged that communication with the subsidiary was generally quite challenging: I was in China with our China office, two weeks ago and a very simple question […] which if I’d have asked anybody else, they would have …

38

Language Management

it would have been a one sentence question with a one sentence answer, it would have been that quick […] But, explaining what I meant, and then, understanding the answer that came back in English […] Probably took the best part of two hours. (Finance director)

Given the scope of this company’s operations, it was clear that these limited pockets of linguistic ability were insufficient to manage all the international relationships that the organisation had with supply chain partners in non-Anglophone countries. This was accepted as inevitable by the organisation given the volume of markets in which they worked, as noted by the general manager: we sell to eighty-five countries a year, obviously, clearly, we’re not going to speak all those languages […] English has certainly been the footprint of mostly what we use …

Therefore, the role that English played at the organisation was significant, despite the fact that the company belonged to the small minority of smaller organisations in the UK that can be considered as language active. However, this is not to suggest that the practices of this organisation stopped with the use of linguistically skilled boundary spanners and English alone. These are just the most immediately visible and tangible aspects of their approach to managing language diversity in their international relationships. The full scope of their actions in order to cope with the challenge is demonstrated in Figure 3.2. It is immediately obvious from the diagram that the company engages in a wide range of practices. However, it is notable that the majority of the practices that do not involve the use of BELF are concentrated in those relationships that are customer focused, and do not extend equally to

Lean media BELF

SENIOR MANAGEMENT No language capital

BELF

INTERNATIONAL JOINT VENTURE Language capital in number of Indian languages

EXPORT SALES TEAM La ngua ge ca pi ta l i n French, Spa ni s h, Germa n a nd

PURCHASING OPERATIONS No language capital

Lean media

Ita l i a n

Reques t a s s i s ta nce from l a ngua ge nodes

Google Translate

ACCOUNTS DEPARTMENT Infrequently used language capital in Spanish

CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT No language capital

Figure 3.2 Language management practices at AirCo

Google Translate BELF Lean media Standardised scripts

CUSTOMERS

SUPPLIERS

WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY Language capital in Mandarin

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

39

communications with suppliers or even with different parts of the organisation, such as the WOS. While the different treatment that suppliers tend to receive compared with customers has been previously documented in the supply chain management literature (e.g. Trent & Monckza, 2003; Wathne & Heide, 2004), it is particularly striking that internal communication within the organisation itself was not deemed worthy of particular attention other than relying on a boundary spanner within the Chinese subsidiary who is able to communicate in English. Boundary spanners

To the best knowledge of the interviewees, one of whom had been with the organisation for over 30 years, this situation represented the most language skills the organisation had ever had. The first employee who was recruited in part because of their linguistic skills was the current Germanspeaking export sales manager, who joined the organisation approximately 15 years before this fieldwork took place. This was then followed by a Spanish and French speaker some seven years later, who remained with the organisation for around three years, before leaving and being replaced by a Portuguese and Spanish speaker. Their tenure lasted about seven years, and when they left the company they were replaced by another Spanish speaker and a French speaker. It is therefore with this history in mind that, when asked about any future plans for increasing the linguistic capabilities of the organisation, the sales director replied that ‘we’ve got all the language skills that we need’. It is notable, when considering these individuals and their language skills, that there does not appear to be a great deal of strategy at play in candidate selection (Luo & Shenkar, 2006). It seems that these employees were primarily recruited because of their sales skills, with linguistic competence being secondary, which would explain why there is not a consistent pattern in the language skills that the company acquired when they recruited export sales managers. As a result, these individuals were afforded considerable agency in terms of the markets they were able to work in and target, and this issue, and the role these boundary spanners played in shaping organisational outcomes more generally, is discussed in more detail in the following chapter. Media use

It can be observed from Figure 3.2 how extensive the use of lean media was in order to communicate with other linguistic communities. Outside the use of English, it was one of the primary practices that the organisation used in order to communicate across linguistic boundaries; it was seen as being significantly easier for all interlocutors when a language barrier was present, because it meant that there was time to reflect on the

40 Language Management

message, and other tools such as Google Translate were able to be deployed during the same communication: They much prefer email so they have a bit of time to think about what they’re writing and reading, and can use … we all know obviously Google Translate’s not perfect, but it does give you generally a good gist of what’s being said […] I know at least, about fifteen customers who, they’ve told me they use Google Translate pretty much every time. (German-speaking export sales manager)

Equally, the value of lean media was also recognised by interviewees who were obliged to communicate in English when it was not their fi rst language, as is explained by the Chinese subsidiary manager: Even for some urgent things, since we can put to identify, I have more time, then we email to each other […] So, for the receiver, can have time to see about it […] More carefully, and if put down the actions … detailed actions […] So … even we have to, next time, to Skype to each other, we have already more learned about our topics.

Despite this, practices varied across the organisation, with sales managers who were able to speak the language of their target market indicating that they preferred to communicate in richer media – either face to face or via the telephone. This corresponds with existing theory, which suggests that for communications for the kind of tasks in which the export sales managers are involved, which require negotiation, confl ict resolution and relationship building within an established sales relationship, contact using richer communication media such as telephone calls is preferred (Anders et al., 2020). Equally, the tendency to use leaner media such as emails when a language barrier is present also corresponds with the extant literature (Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013; Klitmøller et al., 2015). However, it was noted these practices varied significantly between typical approaches to customer and supplier relationships across the organisation. As the fi nance director explained, ‘All email with suppliers – with customers we would always encourage a more personal relationship’. Despite this espoused value, they acknowledged that in practice, email was sometimes the only way to communicate: ‘in reality, we make one call to an overseas customer, and struggle to perhaps get past the receptionist …’. It is perhaps for this reason that when it came to purchasing relationships with international suppliers, email was the most widely used form of communication: I don’t speak to them at all […] To be honest, no, it’s more communicated by emails … (Purchasing manager)

Therefore, in this organisation for the most part, outside of the export sales department, email use was the primary form of communication with external partners.

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

41

Translation

It is clear from Figure 3.2 that the company engages in a variety of translation practices, extending from the use of free online software such as Google Translate, to translation that is done by non-professional translators – in this case the linguistically skilled boundary spanners at the organisation – to translation work that is undertaken by professionals. While the issue of translation is explored in more detail in Chapter 5, it is relevant to note here that the organisation engages in different forms of translation depending on the task required. As the marketing manager explained, the high costs of professional translation were a barrier to producing marketing materials in languages other than English, and therefore they only really used professional translators when it was a question of legal compliance, such as product manuals and handbooks which were required to be translated in order to be sold in particular markets. As part of this situation, the organisation made available a small number of datasheets in different languages on their website, which had been produced at various points in the past. They did not match the current branding of the organisation, and had been produced on an ad hoc basis depending on what the organisation thought customers required at particular points in time. While some of these had been professionally translated, others had been produced by previous export sales managers, and there was variation in the quality and consistency of the materials produced. While there were discussions ongoing at the time of the fieldwork to translate the full product catalogue into languages other than English, the translation costs for this were around £3000 per language, which represented a considerable fi nancial outlay for uncertain rewards in the eyes of the company, which is partly why they sought to engage in other practices to translate documents for customers. The organisation’s website was purely in English, with the addition of some of these product datasheets which were available in a mixture of Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Russian. Some products had datasheets in all five languages, whereas others only had one or two in addition to English, further demonstrating the ad hoc nature of the approach.

BELF

Despite the wide variety of practices used, English was still the main tool the organisation used in order to communicate with the majority of its international partners. This was due in part to the broad geographic scope of the markets the company served, and highlights the extent to which resource availability is a key challenge for smaller organisations. Although there may be a desire to acquire greater language capital, this was not always feasible, both in terms of the challenges of hiring individuals with language skills, and also because sometimes it would have meant

42

Language Management

training existing members of staff in foreign languages, which would not have been practical given the time that this takes. For example, the general manager commented that ‘it would be nice if I spoke fluent Chinese … and it would save a lot of time’, but this was not a realistic solution. The use of English was critical at the organisation for communicating with customers, suppliers, and the offices in China and India. This was not unproblematic, and the solution for the organisation was certainly not as simple as Figure 3.2 may imply. Given the fundamental importance of English as a solution for all the case organisations, not just AirCo, this area will be explored in detail in Chapter 6. Company-specific practices

In addition to these widely used practices across various departments, the organisation used other methods in an idiosyncratic manner in order to ensure communication. For example, as well as the use of Google Translate, the organisation used standardised scripts in order to communicate frequent messages to their partners, and this was particularly the case in the accounts department, where personal relationships were not always present. The fi nance director explained that ‘the standard blurbs are – cough up or else [laughs]. And in varying degrees of severity’. These scripts had been created by a previous member of the sales team who spoke French and Spanish, and despite their having left the organisation some five years prior to the fieldwork taking place, they were still in use for the accounts team to chase payment from customers without having to involve the current sales team. The organisation also relied on the relationships of its customers to help them to communicate. One sales manager explained that he worked with a Polish customer whose girlfriend would translate emails from AirCo into English. In this case, this solution introduced a considerable delay into the process, as it was explained that the sales manager would write an email in English to his customer, who would typically reply in the evening after his girlfriend returned home from her work, in order to compose the reply. While the use of such personal networks has previously been noted in the extant literature (e.g. Logemann & Piekkari, 2015), this example demonstrates just how important informal language management practices may be among smaller organisations. As a counterpoint to the importance of lean media such as emails, the importance of body language was also highlighted by some participants, with interviewees explaining how face-to-face meetings within the organisation were often easier when language barriers were present, as body language enabled the communication of emotions that were not possible via email alone. In these quotes, both the Chinese subsidiary manager and the fi nance director, who worked quite closely together, explain how

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

43

important body language has been in meetings between the UK head office and the subsidiary: but … some language is the same, body language […] So you can show you’re friendly … how friendly […] Is a thing … just smiling … or yes … show some friendly ways. (Chinese subsidiary manager) Yeah, but then I find as well, that I overcompensate in areas as well, to kind of … help the expression come through (laughs) […] So I might go really high pitched! Or I might pull a really silly face […] to demonstrate *stupid* or something like that. [laughs] But yeah … so it all gets very, very embarrassing. (Finance director)

A pertinent point here, however, is the difference that is demonstrated with regard to how these two interviewees feel about body language. The Chinese manager, who is used to communicating in different languages and thus is aware of how challenging this can be, appears to see body language as a pragmatic tool; in contrast, the fi nance director, who is British and only speaks English, feels very self-conscious when using body language, perhaps because as a native speaker of English it is unusual to have to rely on mechanisms other than spoken or written language to communicate. It has been previously acknowledged in the literature (Bloch & Starks, 1999; Sweeney & Hua, 2010) that native speakers of English are often unaware of the challenges that others face in communicating in other languages. Here, the two perspectives on the use of body language reinforce this fi nding, as the fi nance director clearly feels uncomfortable when communication is a challenge and when they have to work harder in order to participate in the communicative event than they usually would. MagneticCo

This organisation has been operating for over 30 years and, like AirCo, is also a manufacturing fi rm that operates in industrial markets. It employs 45 people, with the majority of these engaged in manufacturing operations and 14 employees who are office based. It began to export very early in its life, and followed an incremental model of international expansion (Johanson & Vahlne, 1977), by first exporting to geographically and culturally proximate markets, particularly France and Scandinavia. France is still the largest export market for the organisation, contributing about half of all export turnover, followed by Poland. Outside Europe the company exports a small amount to the Middle East. Total annual turnover for the organisation is £6 million, of which export contributes approximately £2 million. The organisation mainly sells its products to industrial end-users, who use the products in their own manufacturing operations and thus tend to be quite large, stable customers who place regular orders. In addition to this, the company works with a small

44

Language Management

number of distributors, particularly in markets where it does not have the required language skills. Furthermore, it also sells to smaller end-users for single transactions, as long as the order quantity is large enough. The organisation has competences in three languages among their export sales team – French, Polish and German – and it was acknowledged by the organisation that in order to grow their overseas sales further, they would need to acquire additional language skills. In addition to these export markets, the organisation has a number of international suppliers who are mainly based in East Asia, particularly China. Accordingly, the company felt that it was important that they should continue to develop the language capital they had available, and were interested in recruiting a Mandarin speaker to join the team in order to facilitate their international purchasing. As a small firm, however, they were acutely aware of fi nancial constraints, as they had recently received an application from a Mandarin speaker, but found that the salary expectations did not meet what they were able to offer at that time. It was acknowledged by the new product development (NPD) manager, who had been with the organisation almost since its founding, that one of the factors that was considered in the early days of international expansion was language, although this was not necessarily the only factor taken into consideration when deciding which markets to initially internationalise into: We were cherry picking people who … were … had a certain profile, from a certain country with a certain payment culture, and the language … may have been a big factor […] Or may not. (NPD manager)

These initial expansions into Nordic countries and also France were driven by the current NPD manager, who was responsible for sales at that time. This manager had learnt French at night school and was keen to put this language skill to use for the organisation. It is particularly interesting to note here the influence that this one individual had on the international trajectory of the organisation; had their individual circumstances been different, it seems likely that the organisation would have followed a different path in terms of their export markets. Perhaps as a result of this early expansion, France has remained the organisation’s largest export market. This importance is reflected in the approach to the French language that the organisation has, as since market entry it has always had at least one French speaker and, at the time of the fieldwork, had three. One of these also spoke Polish, and there was also a German-speaking export sales executive at the organisation. The managing director fi rmly believed that having language capabilities was a major contributory factor to their export success: 40% of the turnover is on export, and that’s predominantly France and Poland … And we believe that’s because we have French and Polish speakers. We’re now looking at the German market … we have a fluent

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

45

German speaker, and in France and Germany, that’s quite important, probably less so in Germany … But particularly in France we find if you don’t speak their language … They’re less likely to deal with you. So we’re looking at developing a multilingual sales team. (Managing director)

In addition to the capabilities that the organisation already had, they were interested in continuing to grow and develop their language capital. This was particularly problematic for the upstream relationships of MagneticCo, where their only option at the time of fieldwork was to use English in order to communicate with their Chinese suppliers, which caused some frustrations and miscommunications. The company saw themselves as a language-active SME, and during interviews the full range of language capital that the organisation had was discussed, even in cases where it went unused. For example, there was a Bulgarian speaker in the accounting department and Lithuanian and Polish speakers on the shop floor who were not asked to deploy their language skills for organisational purposes. However, the managing director identified that such skills were available at the company should they be required. See Figure 3.3 for an overview of language management practices at MagneticCo. Boundary spanners

As with AirCo, linguistically skilled boundary spanners were an important part of the organisational approach to managing languages. The company had ensured that they had linguistic capabilities for their key market of France, and had specifically hired individuals for their

PURCHASING OPERATIONS No language capital

Internal to other departments

Request assistance from language nodes

EXPORT SALES TEAM Language capital in French, German and Polish

SHOP FLOOR Unused language capital in Lithuanian

Figure 3.3 Language management practices at MagneticCo

CUSTOMERS

SUPPLIERS

ACCOUNTS DEPARTMENT Unused language capital in Bulgarian

46

Language Management

French language skills. However, they had also acquired Polish and German capabilities in an organic way, without specifically recruiting for these skills. As a result they found that they could compete in the German and Polish markets in a more substantive way than they were able to without these language abilities. Many of the employees from this organisation were quite emphatic about the importance of relevant language skills, particularly in the case of France, which was seen as a special case within the organisation, both in terms of the size and importance of this market to MagneticCo, but also in terms of the linguistic demands of the market: particularly in France we find if you don’t speak their language […] They’re less likely to deal with you. (Managing director)

This demonstrates that the approach to languages, at least within the export sales team, was heavily driven by the characteristics of the target market and the expectations of their customers around preferred working languages. Polish and German were seen by the organisation effectively as a bonus, which had certainly helped them to acquire new customers but which were not skills that the fi rm had actively sought out. In contrast, French was positioned as an essential skill, without which it would not be possible to do business in this particular market. Media use

Perhaps due to the narrower range of markets in which MagneticCo worked in comparison with AirCo, lean media was given rather less importance in customer relationships. The boundary spanners indicated that they generally preferred to talk on the telephone with customers, and when email was used it tended to be for reasons other than a language barrier. The personal contact that is provided via richer media was particularly emphasised as being key for relationships, in addition to it being a source of enjoyment to have conversations with customers, rather than email exchanges, as was explained by all the export sales executives: From a selling point of view I almost prefer to speak, because you can gauge somebody’s attitude and reactions far better than an email. (German-speaking export sales executive) Contact with customers is quite important to me, I love … speaking, talking on the phone. (French- and Polish-speaking export sales executive) Some things are too hard to explain over email … so it’s easier to pick up the phone and say whatever. (French-speaking export executive)

However, field notes from the observation that took place at this organisation indicated that email did seem to be quite extensively used, as there were relatively few telephone calls that took place in languages other than

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

47

English while the researcher was on site at the organisation. It is therefore likely that email was in fact used for transactional and routine matters, as noted by the French-speaking export sales executive, ‘sometimes a quick email’s fine’, but perhaps more in-depth and detailed issues were more typically resolved via the telephone. It was also noted that email was particularly helpful when language barriers were present, or where people were able to communicate in a foreign language but not fluently. As part of this process, the export sales executives noted the importance of managing customer expectations when it came to media choice. For example, the German-speaking sales executive highlighted the importance of confi rming orders in writing to his customers, even when they had been placed via the telephone: they’ll want a confirmation by email to say we’ve just had this conversation … this is what I’ve ordered, and just to make sure that everything’s correct. (German-speaking export sales executive)

While the linguistic capital that MagneticCo held in the export sales department meant that email was not quite as frequently used a solution as it was for AirCo, the situation in terms of the upstream communications of the company was very different. The majority of the organisation’s suppliers were located in East Asia, particularly China, and a major language barrier existed between the organisation and their suppliers. Many of the upstream relationships in East Asia were handled by the executive chairman, who explained that email was a crucial tool for him to communicate, as he found that his counterparts in China tended to have higher levels of competence in written, rather than spoken, English. However, he noted that local differences regarding email use could still reduce the effectiveness of lean media as a tool: I’m fully aware that where I might be able to send you an email and you send me an answer […] It might take four exchanges […] To get it to be clear […] And quite often, they will … what I find is, if you put too many points in an email to a Chinese person, they don’t answer them all […] So you have to send things separately in small bite sized chunks. (Executive chairman)

This demonstrates that it is not necessarily just the choice of media that contributes to effective communication, but the way in which the media is used. In this example, simply switching to lean media was not sufficient; it was also important to use that media in an appropriate way – here, by avoiding sending lengthy emails and sending shorter points which were clearly easier to process for second language speakers. External intermediaries

MagneticCo found that, due to the size of the language barrier that existed between the organisation and their Chinese suppliers, at times it

48

Language Management

was necessary to use a language intermediary who was external to the organisation in order to communicate. This was particularly important for the executive chairman, so that he was able to understand what was being said in business meetings, not just to him, but also among individuals within the supplier organisation. He viewed code-switching to be deviant behaviour which was used in order to obscure information from him, as evidenced by his statement that: we know that when we go to a meeting … they’ll like whisper in their language and you don’t know what they’re saying […] with some meetings we’ll take a translator. (Executive chairman)

In addition to the use of professionals, as detailed here, in some circumstances the organisation used informal intermediaries in order to cross language boundaries. Rather than always employing the services of a professional translator, the executive chairman had built up a network of contacts both in the UK and in China who were specialists in doing business in the Chinese market. As a result of their close relationships, he was able to ask for occasional ad hoc favours from these contacts, either to help with a specific instance of a language barrier, or to comment on the trustworthiness of potential suppliers that the organisation was looking to do business with: so … she [name] got somebody from Shanghai to call them, and spoke to them in Chinese and everything, and got so much information that they were willing to give, she then phoned our supplier … who we thought they were dealing with … and … rather miraculously, as she was on the phone, she heard somebody talking to … somebody from the company she’d just rung […] Because they’d rung up to say … something’s going on, somebody’s checking us out […] And she could overhear the conversation […] So … I mean, we just couldn’t do that. (Executive chairman)

It was also explained that this practice had the additional benefit that the chairman could avoid costly trips to China at the initial screening stage of a new relationship: ‘I say to him can you have a look at such and such, he’ll explore it for me, rather than me having to jump on a plane’ (Executive chairman). BELF

The use of English at MagneticCo was much less frequent than at AirCo, owing to the narrower range of markets in which they worked and the greater alignment between their export markets and the language capital of the organisation. However, this is not to imply that BELF was not still an important tool for the organisation. English was used to communicate in the Nordic markets in which the organisation operated, and this had not caused any particular challenges as far as the export sales executives were concerned, or at least customers had not presented this as

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

49

an issue: ‘They didn’t complain … which means, I think it’s acceptable for them’ (French- and Polish-speaking export sales executive). Additionally, BELF was the only language of communication between the organisation and their Asian suppliers. Here there were a number of communicative challenges, caused in part by the style of English that was used by native speakers, who did not always make adjustments for the fact that they were communicating in international environments. For example, the executive chairman explained that they were aware that their regional accent created difficulties when working internationally, but they did not go on to detail any accommodations that they made in their speech to ameliorate the difficulties that this caused. Company-specific practices

In addition to these practices, there were a range of approaches on which the organisation drew in order to communicate across language boundaries, which were often quite informal and ad hoc in nature. For example, the export sales executives would use Google Translate to support them with specific words, but not with the entire content of a message. Alternatively, the German-speaking executive, who was born in Germany but had lived in the UK since early childhood, explained how he had produced a translation of a product brochure and then asked his father to check over it, again demonstrating the importance of personal networks: I translated it all into German … and … with the help of my father actually, who … his written German is better than mine … so we sat down, and it took us quite some time to do that. (German-speaking export sales executive)

Additionally, the Polish- and French-speaking executive explained how passive multilingualism (Piekkari et al., 2015) could be used so he could communicate with customers in other Eastern European countries that had Slavic languages. Google Translate was used, but in quite a different way from at AirCo. Here it was mainly used by multilingual individuals to check specific words, and thus there was a much greater degree of awareness of the limitations of the tool compared to when it was used by monolinguals. For example: Interviewee: Google Translate is quite useful, it doesn’t translate it … but you can make out … Interviewer: The general sense? Interviewee: Yeah, so, you can translate it that way. (French-speaking export executive)

Here, Google Translate is used in order to get a general idea of the message and is used to translate from other languages into English for the

50

Language Management

internal understanding of the organisation, rather than using it to translate from English into other languages to send messages to external parties. AgriCo

This was the smallest of the case organisations, and the only one that was not a manufacturer. It is an online retailer operating in the agricultural sector, established in 2006, and consists of three employees, two of whom are parent and child. The core export markets for the organisation were France, Germany, Italy and Spain and, due to its limited size, the company did not have any internal language capital. All sales were managed through the organisation’s website, which was the key source of communication with customers. As an online retailer, its customers were primarily end-users of the products, who would make ad hoc and one-off purchases of their products; therefore the organisation tended not to have close relationships with its customers. As a result of the focus on online sales, AgriCo has versions of its website available in the key languages of French, German, Italian and Spanish in addition to English. In terms of upstream relationships, the firm works with a number of international suppliers for whom it acts as a UK distributor. Although it does not have exclusivity with all of these suppliers, this is the ultimate goal. These suppliers were based in the UK, Italy and the Netherlands and, at the time of fieldwork, the organisation was also developing relationships with a supplier in South Korea. Given the nature of the business, the upstream supply chain relationships were long term and based on a close, collaborative relationship, particularly with those organisations for which the company had exclusive rights to distribute in the UK. As a result of the small size of the organisation, most of the international relationships, with both customers and suppliers, were handled by the organisation’s fi nance director, as they were particularly interested in developing the overseas links of the organisation. The fi nance director was the off spring of one of the founders of the organisation, and had joined the organisation full time after studying an undergraduate degree in business at university. During the course of their studies, they also worked at the organisation full time for a year for their placement, and it was during this time that they first developed an international strategy for the company. Despite its small size, this company was one of the most creative when it came to managing linguistic diversity among their customers and suppliers, as they had considerably fewer resources than the other case organisations that they could use to manage this. They therefore engaged in a number of practices that have not previously been discussed in the extant literature on language management in IB.

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

51

CUSTOMERS

SUPPLIERS

NO INTERNAL LANGUAGE CAPITAL

Figure 3.4 Language management practices at AgriCo

The company did not have anyone who was a fluent communicator in any language other than English, and thus their overseas sales were heavily reliant on the required information being available in multiple languages on their website. See Figure 3.4 for an overview of language management practices at AgriCo. External intermediaries

Given the lack of language capital at the organisation, language intermediaries were fundamental to enabling the organisation to internationalise their website in a bid to attract international customers. A great deal of consideration had been given to the design of the website to allow it to be translated into other languages but still retain the same format: German for example, the sentences are on average 30% longer […] So I needed to make sure that we weren’t just designing with the UK in mind, we had to think okay, this button needs to be this long, because in German, the word’s longer. (Finance director)

However, given that AgriCo is also a micro-organisation, a lack of fi nancial resources was initially a significant barrier to hiring professionals. Accordingly, the organisation attempted to have their website translated through a less formal route, and the translation was given to university students who engaged with the translation task as a work-based learning

52

Language Management

project as part of their degree in modern foreign languages. As part of such collaborations between AgriCo and local universities, students were also used to research overseas markets, identify key competitors and suggest strategies for how the organisation could seek to attract international customers. While these student-led activities worked well with regard to the market research aspects, the translation presented a challenge. Firstly, as they represented the professional face of the company to potential customers, before they went live on the website the translations had to be checked by native speakers. For this, the fi nance director drew upon their personal network of contacts, largely gained through their own studies, in order to read through the students’ work. Although the quality of the translations proved to be quite good, it was the time the process took that proved to be the biggest obstacle to this method of translation: we got the home pages done and a bit of the about us, and the main pages, but when it came to the products … there was just too many of them for the students to do […] it was just taking weeks and weeks and weeks, so … I mentioned it to our website designer … he was conscious, coz all the time it’s dragging on, the site’s not live, and they want the project finished as well. (Finance director)

As a result of this, the organisation had to stop relying on student projects as a source of translation, and decided that if they wanted to seriously enter European markets, they would need to pay to have their website professionally translated, which represented a considerable fi nancial outlay for the organisation. They hired a professional translation company, which had been recommended by their website design agency, in order to have their full website with all product details translated into French, German, Italian and Spanish: you submit it and they charge you per word and they translate. But it was brilliant […] It cost a bit more money […] But it was so worth it because … the speed at which they come back to you … with translations is phenomenal. (Finance director)

This demonstrates the challenges that organisations face when trying to use less formal solutions to manage language diversity. Although the company was satisfied with the quality of the translations that were produced by students, ultimately the inability to guarantee timescales when working in this way meant that it was more appropriate to use professional translators in order to ensure the availability of the website in a timely fashion. Media use

Having resolved the question of website translation through the use of professional translators, the company then encountered a fresh linguistic

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

53

challenge with regard to consumers who had seen products on the website but then had further questions: we had a bit of a problem with the fact that we had customers ringing us up saying bonjour and we’re thinking oh god … I don’t know what to say in French. We really struggled. (Finance director)

Inadvertently, the organisation had created a problem by having the website in multiple languages, because customers then expected that they would be able to telephone the organisation and speak to someone in either French, German, Italian or Spanish. While this was not the case, the organisation found that they needed to have some practices in place to cope with this scenario or face losing business, as customers would go elsewhere if they were unable to communicate with the company to discuss their products. In order to manage this, the organisation decided that their primary strategy would be to change the communication media to email, which would give them more time to understand the message and determine how they could best reply. However, in order to do this, they had to try to communicate this somehow to customers on the telephone. Therefore, the organisation pinned up basic vocabulary lists in four foreign languages around the office, which the professional translators had prepared for them. This enabled the fi nance director, who led on the international sales for the organisation, to try and use this vocabulary to get the basic message across to the consumers that they should send an email with their question so that the organisation could deal with it: we were saying stuff like, I’m very sorry I can’t speak French, please could you send me an email. And we’ll get back to you very quickly, our email address is […], which is diffi cult because there’s no translation for @ … well there is, but you know what I mean. So you know, stuff like that we struggled with, but yeah in the end we sort of got that ritual down to a T, and when they emailed us, you know, we did use Google Translate then. (Finance director)

This is a highly pragmatic solution to the challenge, but it relies on the willingness of the fi nance director to at least try to communicate in other languages to the small extent that it was possible for them to do so. This corresponds with the fi ndings of Knowles et al. (2006) that within small organisations it is often one individual who is able to be highly influential and to lead on language-related matters. Certainly for AgriCo, this creative approach of making do with the resources that they had would not have been possible without the commitment of the fi nance director and, even with this, the approach was not without its challenges, both in terms of the time commitment required and the efficacy of the approach: I was the most fluent … which isn’t very fluent at all … so what I would do, is I would write … I would write in the language that I was wanting to write in … and I’d use Google Translate as a sort of checker to make

54

Language Management

sure that … the message wasn’t getting lost, but I was using the sentence structures, using the dictionaries at the back, whatever […] And it was quite hard work, but I got quite into it. (Finance director)

Here, Google Translate is used in a slightly different way, in that the finance director used it to translate messages in languages other than English that were received by the company, but in terms of composing messages back to customers, it was not used to translate the message in its entirety, but instead to translate key words and phrases, which were then placed in a structure that copied that of the original email. While it is likely that messages composed in this manner would still contain a number of grammatical errors, the company found that it was an adequate method of transferring meaning so as to be able to work effectively with customers. Effectively, the finance director in this organisation acted as a boundary spanner with customers in overseas markets. Despite their lack of linguistic knowledge, it was the willingness to make an attempt to communicate, rather than insist on the use of English, that made them effective in this role. In addition to its use with customers, it was explained that lean media was preferable for working with suppliers, as it maintained a paper trail so that if there were misunderstandings, these could be checked against a written document in order to resolve any confusions. BELF

Despite these creative efforts to communicate in languages other than English, the organisation found that a large part of how it worked did rely on using English in order to communicate with both customers and, more particularly, suppliers. However, as will be explored further in Chapter 6, the organisation engaged in considerable effort to make sure that the type of English they used with their overseas partners avoided native-speaker idiosyncrasies: I don’t write to the Koreans as I would write to an English speaker, I sort of have a different accent, on an email. (Finance director)

This demonstrates an awareness of the challenges that being a native speaker of English when using BELF may present, and the fi nance director’s willingness to make accommodations in their use of English is likely to have contributed to the efficacy of BELF, as Rogerson-Revell (2010) suggests that the use of such accommodative strategies by native speakers can facilitate understanding in international environments. Furthermore, the fi nance director explained that although they expended considerable effort to ensure that the style of English that was used was appropriate for working with non-native speakers, the reason that they decided to use email for these communications was because they were concerned about telephoning. As the organisation was a new supplier, the finance director was not certain how comfortable the

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

55

organisation was with speaking English. Therefore the decision was made to use email to avoid any potential issues, such as telephoning and being unable to get through to the necessary person because of a lack of a shared language with the person who answered the telephone. ToolCo

This organisation has been operating in the engineering industry since 1969, and at the time of the data collection employed 11 members of staff. Under the leadership of the current managing director, who had been in charge of the organisation since 2000, the international activities of the organisation expanded considerably. Under their tenure, exports doubled as a share of total turnover between 2000 and 2015, meaning that they went from accounting for 20% of turnover to 40%. The company exports to a number of overseas markets, primarily based in Europe, including the Nordic markets, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Outside Europe it has customers in Malaysia, Singapore and Turkey, which represented a new market for the company at the time of data collection. The organisation does not work with endusers, but instead has long-term relationships with agents and distributors who represent them in target markets. The fi rm does not have any international suppliers, so all the international activity of the company is located in its downstream operations. It does not have any language capital at the organisation and, accordingly, like AgriCo, it relies on its website in order to show potential customers the product offerings. However, rather than translating the website into a variety of different languages, it opted for a different approach and elected to focus on the provision of images in order to show the focus of the business, as this was felt to be more appropriate for the type of industry in which they operate. See Figure 3.5 for an overview of language management practices at ToolCo. It was acknowledged by the managing director, who was the only interviewee for this organisation, that at least part of the reason for choosing to work through agents and distributors, rather than directly with end-users, was driven by cultural and linguistic reasons: I suppose that’s really basically what we do with our distributors … we use distributors in the country of choice, so the customers are actually dealing with their own countrymen […] People that understand their culture, they understand the business, they understand the business culture. (Managing director) Media use

As with the other case organisations, lean media proved to be an essential tool for ToolCo in order to communicate across language

56

Language Management

All suppliers are UK based

CUSTOMERS

SUPPLIERS

NO INTERNAL LANGUAGE CAPITAL

Figure 3.5 Language management practices at ToolCo

barriers, given that the organisation did not have internal linguistic resources upon which it could draw. The vast majority of international communication took place in English via email, as it was perceived to be easier for both the company and their interlocutors: It tends to be the majority email […] I think they find that easier … and so do we because it gives them an option to … you know, sort of translate or whatever. (Managing director)

The exception to this tendency was communication with their Finnish distributor, as they found that their main contact there had excellent English skills and was quite happy to telephone them regularly for updates relating to their orders. However, it was acknowledged by the managing director that the frequency of communication with their customers was another factor that drove the use of particular forms of communication. Rather than the close, collaborative relationships that AirCo and MagneticCo had with their international partners, at ToolCo they tended to be quite arm’s length, with sporadic contact, and this meant that infrequent emails were sufficient to manage the customer relationships. At times, the organisation found that emails could be advantageous for other reasons. Given that they operated in the engineering sector, they found that the ability to attach photographs of the items under discussion was particularly valuable, as this avoided attempts at technical descriptions of products across a language barrier, which could potentially be problematic.

Managing Language Diversity as an SME

57

Additionally, as has been previously described for the other case organisations, the managing director said that they would at times use email in conjunction with Google Translate, and that in general business communication this did not cause particular problems: last week when we were talking to this French company, using the Microsoft French and Microsoft English, backwards and forwards, it actually worked incredibly well, the salutations were there […] and everything was very cordial. (Managing director)

However, it was noted that an area in which Google Translate could be particularly problematic was in the use of technical translation, which is interesting as it could reasonably be assumed that a mechanistic approach (Janssens et al., 2004) would be applicable here. However, the organisation found that free software was often unable to cope with industryspecific terminology and jargon, which is why they preferred to send photographs in order to identify products rather than trying to describe them. External intermediaries

Given the lack of internal language capital at the organisation, the company used language intermediaries at particular times. As noted by the other organisations, the cost of professional translation services could be prohibitive; however, there were particular situations in which it was unavoidable. Unlike the other companies, the managing director particularly emphasised the use of interpreters, noting how challenging it could be to communicate through a third party and suggesting that it is a particular skill that can be developed and improved even though it may be extremely difficult at fi rst, particularly at the start of a new business relationship. Although the field of IB has now begun to explore the impact of language on international management activities (Brannen et al., 2014), the work of professional translators and interpreters has received little attention within the discipline (e.g. Barner-Rasmussen & Aarnio, 2011; Blenkinsopp & Shademan Pajouh, 2010). However, the evidence from these case organisations indicates that translating and interpreting work is of fundamental importance to organisations, and therefore this issue is explored in further detail in Chapter 5. BELF

Given the lack of internal language capital at the organisation, BELF proved to be highly important at ToolCo. However, the reliance on English was not without its problems, particularly in the early stages of establishing a relationship. It was explained that in some circumstances it

58

Language Management

was impossible to make appointments with potential distributors overseas, because although senior decision makers at potential partner fi rms might speak English, the people answering the telephone might not, and therefore it could be very difficult to establish contact with the appropriate person when relying on English alone. Additionally, this organisation provided the only account in the study of the use of BELF being weaponised by non-Anglophone counterparts. The managing director explained that in the past they had hired a French speaker in order to manage some of their overseas business, and this led to a dramatic shift in the relationship that they had with one of their distributors: he used to try and shout at us in French […] I put this lady on the phone and she just started talking fluent French … completely threw him […] Because he knew that probably he couldn’t get away with saying some of the things that he would have said if he was just talking to me.

This indicates that the widespread assumption that English is sufficient to communicate in IB, particularly among SMEs (Holmes, 2017), is overstated – and just because it may be possible for British organisations to do business through the medium of English, this does not necessarily mean that this is the best solution that will help to cultivate the relationships that the organisation wants. Additionally, it can place organisations in a vulnerable position, as it means that international partners can hide behind a language barrier when BELF is used as a means of communication. Company-specific practices

As with AgriCo, the small size of ToolCo meant that they had to try to be quite creative with their use of resources. Another key practice that the organisation used was the use of university resources, although this was done in a different way from AgriCo. At this organisation, projects were done with local universities in order to investigate potential overseas markets for the organisation, as market research was one area the organisation found challenging when language skills were not present. The managing director described two recent projects that had been conducted by university students, looking at Turkey and Romania as target markets. However, they noted that, for the students, language could also be a barrier to investigating overseas markets, and although they were able to devote more time to the project than the organisation would themselves, and thus the desk research alone was quite useful, these projects were most helpful when at least one of the students on the project team had appropriate linguistic skills for the target market: They both presented really well, but the Turkish one … because they’d got a Turkish national in the team […] You got … more, in depth, than the other team that were looking at Romania. (Managing director)

Managing Language Diversity as an SME 59

Furthermore, the company highlighted the role that facilities such as local Chambers of Commerce could provide, such as advising on services like the Overseas Market Introduction Service (OMIS), which could research an overseas market and then establish contact with potential distributors on behalf of British organisations. This was a way in which ToolCo had successfully established new partnerships in the past. Conclusion

This chapter has presented an overview of the case organisations and the language management practices that they employ. The context of SMEs in the UK and the focus on interorganisational rather than intraorganisational relationships and communicative practices is relatively novel. Thus, although many of the practices used by the case organisations have been previously considered by the literature, others are underexplored. All the organisations relied on using BELF at least to some extent, which has been extensively discussed, as has the use of boundary spanners or language nodes (e.g. Feely & Harzing, 2003) as found at AirCo and MagneticCo. However, the micro-level approach that has been taken in this research enables the consideration of language-related boundaryspanning activities from the perspectives of the employees concerned. This enables an examination of how they relate to, and understand, their own agency as interlocutors, rather than exploring their use from a functionalist perspective in terms of how it may benefit the organisation (Karhunen et al., 2018). Therefore, the implications of these practices will be discussed in further detail in Chapters 4 and 5. Additionally, despite the multilingual reality of IB, translation is an area that has hitherto been largely overlooked within the business literature (Barner-Rasmussen & Aarnio, 2011; Wilmot & Tietze, 2020). The research demonstrates that SMEs engage with translation in a number of ways, and thus Chapter 5 contributes to this lacuna in the literature by exploring in greater detail how the four case organisations managed translation processes, and the decisions they made about what should be translated, and by whom. As has been demonstrated in this chapter, a variety of different translatorial agents are used by businesses, including professional translators, boundary spanners, distributors and agents, who may translate product offers to a local market, and also machine translation in the form of Google Translate. Solutions such as working with local universities and Chambers of Commerce are pragmatic solutions which, as demonstrated by the evidence presented in this chapter, are not a panacea, but can play a significant role in helping smaller organisations to bridge linguistic divides. The use of such partnerships therefore merits further study and consideration from both an organisational and a policy perspective.

60 Language Management

What is particularly striking about the data presented in this chapter is the sheer diversity of the practices used. Far from organisations located in the Anglophone world being uninteresting to study from a linguistic perspective (Hurmerinta et al., 2015), what has been demonstrated is a remarkable degree of creativity by these smaller organisations, which have found it insufficient to simply rely on English for their international communicative needs, but have discovered significant cost and resource challenges involved in using solutions that have been identified in the existing literature, such as language-sensitive recruitment practices, professional translators and language training (see Table 2.1 for further details and references). The following chapters will therefore explore these practices in greater depth, while also considering them in their specific context of use. None of the decisions around which practices to use has been taken in a vacuum, and therefore it is necessary to understand to what extent the local context of the UK, and the relationship dynamics in which certain approaches to language management are used, have influenced these decision-making processes.

4 Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

Introduction

Chapter 3 highlighted the important roles that employees in boundary-spanning positions can play, and therefore the aim of this chapter is to discuss who is available to act as boundary spanners in SMEs, and the types of global mobility in which these individuals have typically engaged in order to acquire language skills. Additionally, the chapter presents the perspectives of such boundary spanners on the work they undertake, thus providing an exploration of their feelings about language work. Thus, this chapter will begin with an organisational perspective related to recruitment practices, and then zoom in to provide a bottom-up account (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018) of what such individuals actually do and why. The previous chapter demonstrated the importance of linguistically skilled individuals acting as boundary spanners in order to assist with managing linguistic diversity in interorganisational relationships. Given that the focus of this study is on smaller organisations, the range of recruitment practices in which they are able to engage is more limited than those available to multinational corporations (MNCs), who have typically been the focus of most language-sensitive research in international business (IB) (Angouri & Piekkari, 2018). For example, there has been an extensive body of research within the field which explores the role that expatriates play in managing language diversity (e.g. Feely & Harzing, 2003; Peltokorpi, 2007; Zhang & Harzing, 2016). However, to date, the vast majority of this work has focused on organisational expatriates (OEs) – or inpatriates – individuals whom MNCs deploy to different subsidiaries or headquarters of the same organisation. Such an option is not a possibility for organisations who lack overseas subsidiaries, and thus, by necessity, they must seek other options for the acquisition of linguistically skilled individuals. 61

62

Language Management

Recruiting for Language Skills

Interviews with the case organisations noted that the availability and distribution of language skills in the UK posed challenges at times when looking to recruit individuals who possessed the foreign language skills they needed. In particular, the location of the organisations, which were all based in the north of England, was noted as a potential barrier: it seems like there is, at least here in the north, there’s not that many people with foreign language attributes […] in the South it’s more, or in London, obviously there’s more multicultural language … employees or staff or people that can assist these companies. (AirCo, Spanish-speaking export sales manager)

This lack of availability meant that, in addition to making it challenging to fi nd staff with the right mix of language and technical skills (van den Born & Peltokorpi, 2010), such individuals were able to command higher salaries than might otherwise have been expected for roles at an equivalent level: I mean we did look at a Mandarin speaking guy … but he wants a massive salary, for what we’d want him to do, it’s just not feasible. (MagneticCo, Executive chairman)

Additionally, some concerns were expressed about the type of roles that linguistically skilled individuals would want: if someone’s got their language skills would they want to sit in an office and just … customer administration, customer service point of view. (AirCo, Sales director)

This is a particularly revealing comment, as it can be linked to the generally low level of language skills in the UK, as discussed in Chapter 2. At a global level, the use of English in IB has become commoditised (Heller, 2010) and seen as an entry-level criteria for many job roles; however, this comment demonstrates that language skills are not necessarily seen in this way in the UK. Here we have an example of a senior manager, without language skills themselves, expressing doubts about the kind of organisational role that they think a linguistically skilled individual would want to take, without necessarily having explored the local recruitment market in order to investigate further. Interestingly, such a view stands in direct contrast to the viewpoint of MagneticCo, which was located in the same city as AirCo – ‘generally, expectations for salary aren’t too bad’ (Executive chairman, MagneticCo). However, conversations around the acquisition of language skills with the companies in general demonstrated that although it may not be too difficult to acquire ‘global’ European languages such as Spanish, French and German and, increasingly, Polish, other language skills such as Mandarin, Russian or Arabic were more challenging, highlighting the

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

63

limited recruitment pool for such languages in the north of England. The importance of using specialist recruitment agencies which dealt with employees with language skills was also discussed, although it was also suggested that in some circumstances language skills would be seen as a differentiator between candidates, not necessarily a specific requirement, particularly where it was especially challenging to recruit candidates with appropriate technical competences: We had a CV cross our desk last week for somebody who was more technical, but he could speak fluent, Mandarin Chinese. That’s something that always catches your attention … Wouldn’t be the be all and end all, but certainly would be a differentiator if two candidates were pretty close. (MagneticCo, Managing director) Individuals Acting as Boundary Spanners in SMEs SIEs

AirCo had two self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) who were recruited specifically because of their linguistic skills. These individuals were both in export sales roles, the French-speaking export sales manager and the Spanish/Italian-speaking export sales manager. The French-speaking export sales manager did not participate in this research. It was clear in interviews with other participants that they were at a relatively early career stage and had moved to the UK as an adult, and thus would seem to be a rather typical example of an SIE in terms of occupational level and age (Andresen et  al., 2014). Although they were recruited by the organisation specifically for their language skills, it is also notable that they were the first French speaker that the organisation had ever had who was actually French, and therefore were in possession of a greater cultural understanding of France than the previous export managers who were responsible for this market. The company felt this to be significant. When explaining the challenges encountered in working with a French distributor, and the misunderstandings that had previously occurred, it was explained that: I came to realise that’s why you need that French national … cultural and language skills. It’s not just the language, it’s the cultural language skill. (AirCo, Sales director) Even when we had [previous export manager] speaking French, when they were here, I think they found very it very hard and now whether that’s because … they weren’t French. They want to buy French anyway so their attitude is … I should deal with a French person … You know, they prefer that. (AirCo, General manager)

There are two points that are particularly relevant here. The first is that the two managers who emphasised the importance of both cultural and

64

Language Management

linguistic skills were both British managers who were only able to communicate fluently in English. Therefore, one possible interpretation of this emphasis is that it enables them to protect and maintain their professional identity as international managers. By highlighting the need for cultural understanding, it negated any requirement on them to learn to speak a foreign language themselves, because by itself this was not necessarily considered to be sufficient. The second relevant point is that, in both circumstances, the managers were particularly emphasising relationships with French customers. Given the geographic and cultural proximity of the UK and France, it is not surprising that these smaller organisations would have had significant experience of exporting to France rather than to more distant countries (Johanson & Vahlne, 1977). However, the shared history of the UK and France over the past millennium has led to a particular relationship dynamic (Hollinshead, 2010) between the two nations which is influential here, particularly in terms of the relative statuses of English and French at a global level (Ostler, 2011). The implications of this relationship will be discussed more fully in Chapter 6, although it is sufficient here to say that language is emphasised as not necessarily being enough when working with French clients specifically, as opposed to other European nations with whom the companies do business, is significant in its own right, and therefore it would be unwise to attempt too much of a generalisation from this. The second SIE at AirCo was a Hispanic US citizen who was a bilingual bicultural and who had also studied Italian at degree level. They had lived in the UK for 13 years before joining AirCo and, during this time, had not had roles that were specifically language related. They explained that they had little opportunity to use Spanish during this period, and therefore saw the export sales role as a way to engage with the language to a greater extent: I don’t really get to practice Spanish much other than when I’m speaking to you know, maybe my parents or something like that … abroad […] I don’t get to practice it, so it’s, you know, it’s just the opportunity to … to really engage with the language again. (AirCo, Spanish-speaking export sales manager)

Interestingly, they also emphasised the importance of cultural knowledge when asked about the significance of language and cultural skills, and drew on their experiences of working with the USA and Latin America to illustrate this. This is despite Spain being one of the most significant export markets for the organisation, where language skills were most important, as the individual had not spent significant amounts of time living or working in Spain: I think that both are equally important, because, yes, someone can possibly speak the language, learn the language, but if they are not very

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

65

familiar with their customs and cultures, sometimes in certain industries […] it isn’t going to … just knowing the language isn’t going to, isn’t going to take it … possibly closing the deal. (AirCo, Spanish-speaking export sales manager)

MagneticCo had one SIE who was recruited for their language skills, but interestingly not for their skills in their native language. This was a Polish national, who was originally recruited by the organisation because they were also fluent in French, having lived in France for a few years as a child and then having studied French and English to degree level in Poland. Their skills were originally required for work in the French market, and it was only after a period of time that the company felt it would be worth exploring the Polish market and using these skills to see if this would be a new potential market for the organisation: French market was always very important for [MagneticCo] and I think one person responsible for the French market left [MagneticCo] and they were … they needed someone that will be able to continue this, this work in France, and that’s … that was the main … main criteria shall I say. Poland was just addition, I think I was just told to … try to start something new, and see how it goes. And it was a success. (MagneticCo, French- and Polish-speaking export sales executive)

Therefore, MagneticCo took a different approach from AirCo in their use of SIEs, in that they were initially less concerned about cultural knowledge than the language skills required, whereas this was generally emphasised more at AirCo. However, it is notable that both SIEs who were interviewed themselves emphasised the importance of their cultural skills and understanding in addition to their language skills (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014). They stressed that although their language skills are important, cultural awareness has a role to play in supporting these language skills, particularly if the language on its own is insufficient. For example, in the following quote, the Polish export sales manager discusses how this knowledge helps him to do business in other Eastern European countries outside Poland: We have a similar culture, history, etc etc, which is again helping breaking the first barrier […] Especially in business, it’s always, to know something more about the country or about the company that you actually trying to develop, to work with, it’s always an advantage […] it’s very important to know the culture and informations like this. (MagneticCo, French- and Polish-speaking export sales executive)

In terms of professional identity, therefore, it is notable that cultural skills are emphasised as an important aspect of the sales role, in terms of building relationships with customers and local market understanding. However, they were not specifically mentioned as posing any additional challenges when working with markets in which the SIEs had a linguistic understanding that was much greater than their cultural understanding,

66

Language Management

which suggests that culture may not be quite as great a barrier as it was presented as at times. This therefore opens up the possibility of using Anglophone boundary spanners to bring linguistic knowledge to manage international relationships, which was another practice that the organisation used. Native Anglophone boundary spanners

The case organisations also employed the option of using British staff who had acquired language skills, although the current educational environment with regard to foreign language learning, as presented in Chapter 2, means that the talent pool for such individuals is somewhat limited. However, both AirCo and MagneticCo employed British individuals in export sales roles who had studied modern foreign languages to degree level, and who therefore were comfortable in communicating with their customers in languages other than English. Interestingly, none of the three French speakers at MagneticCo was French, despite France being their most important export market; they were either British or Polish. Although all but one of these individuals had spent time living in the target culture for the languages they spoke, they did not consider themselves to be biculturals, and thus emphasised their linguistic skills over their specific cultural skills in relationship to the French markets. AirCo only had one example of a native Anglophone boundary spanner, which was the German-speaking export sales manager. This individual had studied German at degree level, and as part of this course had spent a year living and studying in Germany which was their only time spent living in the country. As such, they emphasised their linguistic skills over their cultural skills. MagneticCo had two Anglophone boundary spanners who were both proficient in French – their French-speaking export sales executive and the current new product development (NPD) manager who had led the initial expansion into the French market. The export sales executive had also studied French to degree level and had spent time living and studying in the country as part of this, in addition to having spent time in France on short-term work placements. The NPD manager had learned French at night school, and spending time in the country when developing France as an export sales market had continued to help them to increase their proficiency in the language. As with AirCo, both of these individuals emphasised their language skills. The German-speaking export sales executive at MagneticCo straddled categories – they were born in Germany to German parents and had moved to the UK at the age of five. Therefore, as they considered English to be their fi rst language, they were not an SIE, but rather an example of a bicultural individual who had grown up in the UK but still had significant German cultural influences throughout their life due to their parents.

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

67

This individual highlighted the cultural aspects of working with German clients in addition to the importance of language, and acknowledged what they perceived to be some deficiencies in their written German as opposed to their oral German, as a result of the way in which they had learned the language. AgriCo provided an interesting example of a boundary spanner who was not multilingual but certainly fulfi lled a boundary-spanning role within the organisation. In contrast to the practices identified at ToolCo, which could have been carried out by a number of employees, as discussed in the previous chapter, the practices used in this case were reliant on the proactive approach of this particular individual in engaging in creative practices to communicate multilingually, despite not being fluent in any language other than English. The fi nance director from AgriCo highlighted the importance of cultural knowledge in addition to languages, and had spent some time studying in Australia as part of their degree, in what was an international and multilingual cohort, although one that did not require them to cross any language boundaries. Interestingly, therefore, none of the case organisations made use of SIRs in boundary-spanning roles. Instead, the native English-speaking boundary spanners tended to have spent shorter periods of time overseas, often as part of their university studies, in which they were able to develop their foreign language abilities. The exceptions to this were the German/ English bicultural individual, who had developed language and cultural skills as a result of their family heritage, and the NPD manager at MagneticCo, who acquired a functional level of French for business in night school, and then continued to develop their skills as part of the internationalisation process itself. This suggests that, in contrast to the extant literature on MNCs which, with its traditional focus on expatriates has tended to focus on longer term assignments, employees who have experienced even relatively short-term international mobility can use it to develop valuable linguistic skills for companies who are working internationally. How Boundary Spanners Feel about Language Work

The multilingual boundary spanners who were interviewed for this study generally felt very positively about their work, although interestingly in many cases they had not specifically sought out roles in which they could use their language skills throughout their career, but had acquired such positions through chance: I haven’t actively sought roles that erm, my language skills play a role in, up until a couple years ago I was approached by this company and they erm, you know … and that kind of sparked the idea […] and then [AirCo] … came to me, they found me, predominantly because of my language skills, that they saw on my CV. (AirCo, Spanish-speaking export sales manager)

68

Language Management

Even in such circumstances, it was clear that the language nodes related very positively to their work and derived enjoyment from it, rather than just thinking about it in a purely instrumental way, as a tool which could assist with career progression (Itani et al., 2015). Often this came from a desire to build interpersonal relationships in business: It’s just seeing similarities in language, differences in language, learning about different cultures … yeah the whole aspect of it I suppose … (MagneticCo, French-speaking export sales executive) The whole visits, exhibitions and stuff like this, is very very interesting for me so, really pleased that I can use my linguistic skills. (MagneticCo, French- and Polish-speaking export sales executive)

From this enjoyment is derived a sense of professional identity (Ibarra, 1999) related to the use of languages at work by such linguistically skilled staff. However, such identity is clearly bound up with issues related to language competence. Hitherto, the quotes provided have come from staff who considered themselves to have high linguistic proficiency in either English (in the case of SIEs) or the target language (in the case of British employees who spoke other languages) and the data demonstrate a quite different perspective from those who did not have such high proficiency in the languages they were required to use in a work environment. Here, the manager of the Chinese subsidiary of AirCo explains the challenges that his employees face when they receive unexpected telephone calls from the UK headquarters: We know … for Chinese employees … They, almost all have learned English. But because they still don’t speak English […] it’s diffi cult to communicate with the foreigners. For example, one of our employees, he gets a call, or telephone, it’s set up for his desk. So sometimes, the telephone is ringing … So … if he were … away, then on that side, he is only speaks English. So these employees scared. Will not speak! Just maybe will put a very simple English, for example ‘wait a minute.’ They cannot speak anymore. (AirCo, Chinese subsidiary manager)

This is a clear example of foreign language anxiety (FLA; Dewaele, 2007). Here, the Chinese employees have studied English, but faced with the requirement to use the language in unplanned circumstances, they experience FLA and try to avoid speaking as much as possible. In accordance with previous research (e.g. Aichhorn & Puck, 2017; Lauring & Klitmøller, 2015; Neeley et al., 2012; Park et al., 1996; San Antonio, 1987; Vaara et al., 2005), a silencing effect on employees can be observed, demonstrating that FLA is something that can be experienced in an organisational setting, rather than just the traditional understanding of it as a classroom phenomenon (Horwitz et al., 1986). This can be a particularly challenging scenario for managers in senior positions who feel they are unable to participate fully due to a lack of language skills, as this can challenge their sense of professional identity

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners 69

(Vaara et al., 2005). Although team leaders have a role to play in encouraging employees to speak and participate regardless of their skill levels (Tenzer & Pudelko, 2015), in this respect the IB literature would benefit from further perspectives on foreign language acquisition that interrogate the concept of FLA more thoroughly. In addition to the risk of FLA among boundary spanners, the extant literature also documents that being in this position is likely to add to their stress levels, and can be a potential contributory factor to employee burnout, as they are required to perform their own organisational tasks and then take on additional work related to language issues (BarnerRasmussen et al., 2014; Feely & Harzing, 2003). This was indeed a concern of the interviewees in this study: It can create a bit of a bottleneck. If you try to spin too many plates then ultimately one plate may drop, and that’s always the fear. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive)

There was also an awareness on the part of the sales managers of the burden that was placed on their colleagues when they were travelling on business, thus removing the linguistic support that they were usually able to provide to their colleagues: If I had somebody that could take on the responsibility and is as fluent in German as I am, then that would make it far easier, because reading in an email … when you’re busy … because [French export exec] had got a lot on her plate, and she looks after the export market. [Polish/ French export exec] was away with me as well, so her workload was … it had gone from here to here. If she’s then having to spend 15/20 minutes, digesting a German email, that makes her life more diffi cult as well so it has a knock-on effect. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive)

Given that all the case organisations are smaller companies, this issue of placing additional work on colleagues was a fundamental one. With the exception of French at MagneticCo, which had three French speakers, all of the other languages were supported by just one individual, and therefore if they were unavailable, then communication could become problematic. While the interviewees highlighted the importance of managing customer expectations with regard to the organisations’ language capabilities so that they were aware of the limited resources available, this was not always possible and did create frustrations and tensions for those in boundary-spanning roles: the last Spanish, Portuguese speaking sales manager did find a problem, did find that basically, what, 70% of the people he was dealing with spoke English very poorly, so any issues, the slightest issue, they were coming back to him. So he couldn’t pass hardly anything on to customer services, and that ends up taking a lot of his time. (AirCo, Germanspeaking export sales manager)

70

Language Management

This proved to be particularly challenging in staff turnover situations, when there was a gap between one boundary spanner leaving the organisation and another with the same language skills joining: we had a gap of a few months when we had no fluent Spanish speaker. So I know a couple complained, and complained to [current Spanish speaking sales manager] about that. That you know, they’d set up and that you’d promised all this and then all of sudden oh, we can’t because nobody speaks Spanish. (AirCo, German-speaking export sales manager)

Given that the majority of studies that focus on language in IB do so in the context of MNCs (Angouri & Piekkari, 2018), most of the discussion related to boundary spanners has been in terms of the pressures they face in order to facilitate intra-organisational communication. The role of language in interorganisational relationships has received comparatively little attention (Cuypers et al., 2015), and therefore it is pertinent here to note the profound impact that boundary spanners can have on relationships with customers and suppliers. Although language was an early consideration of the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) literature which explored such interorganisational relationships (e.g. Cunningham & Turnbull, 1982; Håkansson, 1982), as the field developed, less focus was given to issues of linguistic diversity, and more recent calls to reintroduce language into IMP have focused on language in the sense of discourse (e.g. Lowe et al., 2008) rather than foreign language diversity. Therefore, interorganisational relationships have received relatively little attention as the field of language-sensitive IB has matured, and thus this study highlights the fundamental importance of the issue. Additionally, it was highlighted that being a boundary spanner can be a highly pressurised position, and issues relating to invoicing and payment were identified as a particular challenge. Some of the participants found that it could be useful to have an overview of the entire customer relationship, as it enabled them to have a deeper understanding of the status of each customer and their orders: It is a bit of a pain sometimes, having to chase customers for unpaid invoices and that and especially when you know they’ve got goods to go and things, but, sometimes, it gets the invoices paid, because they know that if you don’t pay it, they’re not going to get their goods, so some aspects, you can keep an eye on the whole account I suppose. So you’re involved in the whole account, rather than just the sales side and you get a feel for if a customer hasn’t paid, or why they haven’t paid. (MagneticCo, French-speaking export sales executive)

Some studies have pointed to boundary spanners being in gate-keeping positions which can be a source of career development and enhancement, as a source of informal power within the organisation (Marschan et al., 1997; Piekkari et al., 2005). While this was not particularly evident in this

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

71

study, it emerged that language skills did have the power to enable individuals to develop their careers laterally, if not in terms of hierarchical progression. This is likely to have been due, at least in part, to the small size of the organisations involved, meaning that there was a lack of defined career progression routes within the companies. However, the lateral career moves that enabled the boundary spanners to increase their areas of responsibility proved to be quite significant for the boundary spanners, particularly in cases where they were not originally recruited for their language skills: we were lucky that we had people that could speak languages, you know, I didn’t arrive to take on the German market, I arrived here for a UK position. But through speaking German, we’ve had some more wins over there if you’d like. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive)

Hurmerinta et al. (2015) note that smaller organisations are often highly creative in their language practices, and indeed there is doubt as to whether even many large organisations are able to formalise and plan their language policies (Barner-Rasmussen & Aarnio, 2011; Piekkari et  al., 2014). While subsequent chapters will continue to demonstrate these creative practices, here it can be seen how organisations may take an emergent approach to languages, and to target particular markets based on the language skills they have at a particular time, rather than as part of a planned international expansion. Such an approach places boundary spanners at the heart of organisational strategy, and demonstrates the considerable power they are able to exert over the overall direction of the organisation. Although previous studies have demonstrated the importance of owner-managers with regard to their language skills and previous international experience (e.g. Knowles et al., 2006), this demonstrates that employees at lower levels of the organisational hierarchy, outside of senior management teams, are also highly significant in this regard. Barner-Rasmussen et  al. (2014) identify four types of boundaryspanning activity, ranging from exchanging information as the least complex type, through to intervening and shaping organisational activities as the most complex. Although this typology predominantly refers to internal boundary spanners within an MNC, some of these activities are also observed within the case organisations. Certainly, given that, with the exception of the Chinese subsidiary manager, all of the multilingual boundary spanners identified are in export sales roles at their respective organisations, exchanging information with clients is a large part of their role. Additionally, they fulfi l linking activities, as they are able to bring together departments and clients who, without their support, would be unable to communicate, as demonstrated by the boundary spanners supporting the accounts department and chasing unpaid invoices from their clients – an activity that would ordinarily be seen as outside the remit of the sales manager role. In terms of the higher order activities, we have

72

Language Management

previously seen how they are able to influence organisational strategy and open up new markets because of their language skills, or even just access new customers where there is a shared social identity with key individuals (Tajfel & Turner, 1979): In many cases, completely accidentally, we found that there was one or two Polish people working in certain companies. [MagneticCo] as a company never actually successfully managed to work with these companies and, just because I was Polish and the people on the other hand were Polish, it’s just opened the doors within ten or fifteen minutes. (MagneticCo, French- and Polish-speaking export sales executive)

Therefore, the internal boundary-spanning practices that have been previously identified in the literature can also be found when boundary spanners act in external relationships as well, although crucially some of these activities were not necessarily perceived as significant and strategic, but simply viewed as a serendipitous opportunity by the employees involved. Boundary spanning and identity

For many of the boundary spanners interviewed in this study, their language competences were a significant part of their professional identity, defi ned as ‘the relatively stable and enduring constellation of attributes, beliefs, values, motives, and experiences in terms of which people defi ne themselves in a professional role’ (Ibarra, 1999: 764–765). As language is widely considered to be an immediate and visible marker of social identity (Lauring, 2007), there is a small body of research in language-sensitive IB that examines the creation of in-groups and outgroups along linguistic lines (e.g. Hinds et al., 2014; Klitmøller et al., 2015; Woo & Giles, 2017); this uses as its base the social identity theory as expounded by Tajfel and Turner (1979) which suggests that individuals will seek to form social relationships with others whom they perceive as being like them in some way. Additionally, Bordia and Bordia (2015) have considered the role of linguistic identity, which they defi ne as an aspect of social identity and how it affects employees’ willingness to adopt and use additional languages in a work context. In this study, the linguistic identity of boundary spanners appeared to be less relevant than the linguistic identity of the monolingual English speakers in the study, who experienced identity threats when this dominance was challenged, as will be discussed further in Chapter 6. The boundary spanners in the study appear to have constructed a multilingual professional identity, which was closely tied to their sense of professional competence (Rettinger, 2011), defi ned here as ‘deep knowledge in substance matter, argumentation skills and ability to conceptualise’ (Piekkari et al., 2005: 338).

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

73

Having that German in a meeting is also invaluable. You know, we could, I would say that 90% of people that I deal with in Germany, I could probably go through business dealing with them in English. But, some of finer details in terms of what they require … they … I’ll confidently say that they would prefer to convey that message in German. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive)

Here, the export sales manager positions their language skills as being indispensable for the business. Although they recognise that it is possible for their customers to do business in English, they suggest that having language abilities helps them to develop relationships to a much deeper level than would be possible without it, and thus their language skills are tied to their general competencies and identity as an export sales manager: I’ve found over the years working at French companies that the French are more pliable if you speak their language. Basically, so, yeah, and it’s … I know they learn [English] at school and that, but they do actually prefer to speak French. And if you can speak French back to them, it’s better for business, because you’re forming a bond with them, and they’ve, I think they probably feel more comfortable, and if you’re a fluent speaker, it’s not so difficult to, you know, use French to communicate with them. (MagneticCo, French-speaking export sales executive)

Here, the notion that having language skills can improve a customer’s ‘pliability’ is highlighted as being important, but additionally it is noted that it is even more important to have high levels of competence in the target language in order to enable this to happen. Therefore, this sales manager is reinforcing their professional identity by emphasising the importance of their linguistic skills which support their competency as a sales manager. Perceptions of linguistic competence

There is an increasing body of literature, drawing on approaches in sociolinguistics, which discusses how non-native speakers in organisations are evaluated in terms of their linguistic competence, and it is suggested that often they are held up against a native speaker ideal which is often inappropriate (e.g. Boussebaa & Brown, 2017; Śliwa & Johansson, 2014; Tietze & Dick, 2013). Studies have demonstrated that foreign accents are frequently deemed less credible and trustworthy when engaging in sales roles (Tsalikis et  al., 1992), and native speakers are often assumed to be inherently more qualified (Veléz-Rendón, 2010) than nonnative speakers because they are able to express themselves more fluently. Tenzer et al. (2014) demonstrate the link between foreign language competence and trust in multinational teams, evidencing that employees with lower levels of language ability are often deemed less trustworthy. Given

74 Language Management

this, it is perhaps unsurprising that some employees with strong accents expect to encounter stigmatisation as a result (Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010) although, as Jaber and Hussein (2011) emphasise, not all accents are received equally, with some experiencing greater stigmatisation than others, and some accents even possessing a ‘halo effect’ under which they are considered to confer greater perceptions of competence on the speaker. Within the IB literature, the small number of studies in this area have focused on multicultural teams and how non-native accents are received by other members of the same organisation. This area was not a focus of this study as, given the small size of the organisations involved, and the fact that, with the exception of French at MagneticCo, such organisations only had one speaker of each language other than English, social divisions across these linguistic lines were unlikely to occur or to be disclosed at interview. Despite this, the issue of their own linguistic competence was brought up unprompted by some of the non-native English speakers in this study, suggesting that this was still an aspect of their communication of which they are aware: I’m also not a fluent English speaker [laughs] […] Especially, I know, I still need improvements on my hearing … English hearing. (AirCo, Chinese subsidiary manager) Well, as you can hear my English isn’t perfect neither, and I don’t have any issues really in communication, even when I’m recorded [laughs]. (MagneticCo, French- and Polish-speaking export sales executive)

Although both participants addressed the question of their linguistic competence with humour, the fact that it was raised completely unprompted indicates that this is something they perceive as a potential issue at times. In the case of MagneticCo, this was not an issue raised by any of the other interviewees, whereas at AirCo, the difficulties that were encountered in working with the Chinese subsidiary because of the language barrier was an area that was frequently commented on by many of the research participants. Therefore, unlike previous studies in this area, non-native speakers within the focal organisations did not appear to be the recipients of stereotyping and considered as untrustworthy, but it was noted by colleagues that at times communication could be difficult due to the perception of their English language skills. How Boundary Spanners Perform Language Work

In order to perform linguistic tasks, the boundary spanners engaged in a range of different practices to support their work. Given the high linguistic competence they had in the target languages, they all expressed a preference for communicating with customers orally rather than via email, which stands in contrast to monolingual individuals who, as discussed in the previous chapter, tended to prefer lean media such as email in order to communicate across linguistic boundaries.

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

75

However, they would still at times use tools such as Google Translate to support their work. Again, as with email, its usage was not as extensive as for monolinguals (as discussed in the next chapter); however, they did acknowledge its utility in dealing with particular words, or when covering for a colleague and, as such, reading a language with which they were only partially familiar. Despite previous discussions of machine translation in the language-sensitive IB literature (e.g. Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011), relatively little is known about how employees use Google Translate. The focus of the literature has traditionally been on organisational-level strategies that can be implemented in order to manage language diversity, rather than the micro-level practices that employees actually use in order to communicate (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018). Google Translate … is reasonably good, I’ll use the word reasonably. Sometimes. I would never use it as a form of translation, but it does allow you to digest the main points of an email. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive) Google Translate is quite useful, it doesn’t translate it, but you can make out [the general sense]. (MagneticCo, French-speaking export sales executive)

Therefore, as a supporting tool, Google Translate was seen to be very useful, although insufficient for communication by itself. Additionally, the boundary spanners would at times draw on other resources, including family members, in order to perform linguistic tasks, particularly if they were required to translate. Generally, as will be further discussed in the next chapter, written translation was not seen as a task that should be performed by the boundary spanners, as they considered it to be a specific skill, and a time-consuming activity that took them away from their usual activities of working with customers. However, there was an example of a specific activity for which a boundary spanner required the assistance of family members. In this particular case, the sales manager had moved to the UK from Germany with his family as a child, and therefore, although he was confident in his ability to speak German for business purposes, he preferred to have additional support when producing a formal translation that would be used for marketing purposes. The use of personal social networks for language tasks has previously been identified by Piekkari et al. (2013), and although it remains an underexplored area within the IB literature, it appears that a potential advantage of SIEs over those who have acquired the target language through study is that their familial networks can act as a form of social capital, which in turn contributes to their language capital (Piekkari et al., 2014). Although other types of global mobility can establish personal networks on which boundary spanners are able to draw, SIEs may additionally benefit from access to close family members who may be able and willing to provide language support, which can have an organisational benefit.

76

Language Management

An additional advantage offered by multilingual boundary spanners is that they are able to work with a variety of different customers using their language skills, and not just in the markets which speak these languages. Although English has received considerable attention in the language-sensitive IB literature as a lingua franca (e.g. Kankaanranta et al., 2018; Komori-Glatz, 2018; Sanden & Kankaanranta, 2018), other global languages are also frequently used as lingua francae in order to overcome linguistic boundaries; for example, German was used at AirCo as a lingua franca with customers in Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic and Namibia. Additionally, boundary spanners are able to engage in passive multilingualism (Piekkari et  al., 2015) where languages are sufficiently close to each other to enable mutual intelligibility: Eastern European languages are quite similar, so if I don’t speak Czech or Slovakian, or even Russian … I’m still able to communicate easier than an English person, for example, with these type of people, because languages are similar. (MagneticCo, French- and Polish-speaking export sales executive)

The ability to use languages in this way, in order to extend their usage beyond those countries in which they are habitually spoken, is particularly advantageous for smaller organisations, for whom a lack of resources is often a serious challenge when it comes to the acquisition of linguistic capital. There is an additional argument to suggest that multilingual individuals are better equipped than monolinguals with general language competences, rather than language-specific skills. That is to say that in addition to the specific skills to communicate in another language which such individuals have, they also tend to have a better developed range of intercultural communication skills in general, which help to facilitate communication regardless of the language used (Mughan, 2015). Although foreign language acquisition is not the only way to develop such skills, and it is very possible for monolinguals to be skilled intercultural communicators, there is evidence to suggest that managers (particularly Anglophone managers), who have not encountered the challenges of trying to communicate in other languages themselves, are often less likely to recognise and empathise with linguistic challenges that other may experience. As such, they may be less likely to engage in accommodative strategies that can facilitate effective communication (Sweeney & Hua, 2010). Therefore, in purely functional terms, the utility of multilingual boundary spanners to an organisation can go far beyond enabling communication in particular target markets. Boundary Spanners and Social Relationships

It is notable that, with the exception of the Chinese subsidiary manager at AirCo, all of the multilingual boundary spanners interviewed in

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

77

this study were in sales roles currently, or had been in the past in the case of the NPD manager at MagneticCo. Given that sales is a profession that often requires extensive relationship building, extroverted tendencies, either alone or in combination with other personality traits, are often highlighted as an important characteristic of sales professionals (e.g.  Dugan et  al., 2020). It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that the interviewees emphasised the value they place on developing relationships and communicating with their customers. Although prior studies suggest that lean media can be particularly valuable in situations of language diversity (Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013; Tenzer & Pudelko, 2016), in this study the boundary spanners particularly highlighted the fact that they enjoy speaking directly to their customers and prefer using the telephone or having face-to-face discussions where possible, except in the case of simply transactional matters that only require short answers: I always have preferred face to face, but obviously in this role, I’m based here and my accounts are abroad, so my face to face is going to be limited […] if it’s not face to face then I prefer, yeah, phone calls where possible … at the moment it’s been a combination of phone and email. (AirCo, Spanish export sales manager) I mean trust builds up over time, but they just … they just know that if there’s an issue I can pick the phone up … and not be frightened to discuss it in German as well. Emailing is one thing but having a direct conversation over the phone is a massive thing. The majority of my clients, for the larger business, will want a visit. It’s rarely just via email, they like to make contact with people personally. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive)

Language skills are of course fundamental in developing such social relationships. Bouchien de Groot (2012) highlights the risk of ‘thin communication’ in which communicative activities focus solely on work-related tasks, and not on the social or phatic functions of language (Tietze, 2008) which are important in building social relationships. As noted by the German export sales executive, such activities are vital for building up trust over a period of time, and it is unlikely that this will be able to develop by relying solely on email communication (Byron, 2008) which tends to remain at a more task-focused level. I think you can have a better conversation if you speak the language, not just about business but you can sort of say oh, what’s the weather like, or such and such, you can have a bit more of an in depth conversation I would say, than if you, if they spoke English, but not so good. I think you can build up a better relationship. (MagneticCo, French-speaking export sales executive)

The type of relationship is particularly relevant here. The study highlighted a dramatic difference in terms of how the case organisations worked with their customers compared to how they worked with their

78

Language Management

suppliers. Trent and Monckza (2003) note that organisations frequently consider procurement activities to be transactional, rather than strategic, and this was certainly the case for the majority of supplier relationships for the case organisations. None of the case organisations had any language capabilities to facilitate relationships with suppliers, and thus the expectation was that their international suppliers would have their own boundary spanners who would be able to communicate in English. Accordingly, with the exception of the Italian supplier at AgriCo who was treated as a strategic partner, communication with suppliers was highly transactional, and tended to rely extensively on lean media because of perceived language barriers: It’s more communicated by emails. Probably because how we purchase stuff, you know, what we actually bring in is, like with [Italian supplier], probably only do two orders a year, coz we fetch 5000 in.at a time. [Italian supplier 2), it’s scheduled with the dates, but, I mean she does email me to say yeah we’ll be dispatching this, et cetera, but other than that, I don’t really … I don’t really get involved with talking to her. (AirCo, Purchasing manager 2)

This transactional approach contrasts strongly with the strategy that the organisation adopts for its downstream relationships, in which frequent overseas travel and personal contact with customers is emphasised. This indicates that downstream relationships are seen by the organisation as more important than upstream ones, and therefore are more worthy of relationship-specific investments such as the acquisition of foreign language skills in order to manage such relationships. Although there is widespread evidence and discussion in the supply chain literature regarding the benefits of approaching procurement as a strategic, rather than a purely transactional function and the improved organisational outcomes that this can create (e.g. Cousins et al., 2006; Prajogo et al., 2021; Revilla & Knoppen, 2015), this study demonstrates that for smaller companies with limited resources, it is still customer relationships that receive significantly greater support and investment. External Boundary Spanners

Only the two largest case organisations had internal language capital in the form of multilingual boundary spanners, and even the two that did were only able to act in a limited number of languages. Therefore, in addition to boundary-spanning individuals being internal actors at the case organisations, in some cases they were located externally to the organisation. In a limited number of scenarios these were independent actors working on behalf of the organisation, but in the majority of cases this was where the case organisations relied on either their customers or suppliers having individuals with boundary-spanning abilities. In such cases, it was considered important that the boundary spanner should be

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

79

appropriately placed in the partner organisation in order to be able to manage the relationship, and not simply in place because of their language skills: He is our main point of contact, but then again, he is very senior in the company. He’s like one of the directors and co-owners of the business, so that helps. You don’t just want to have one contact who’s maybe lower down in the business and can’t have the authority to ask the questions that we need. (AgriCo, Finance director)

As with recruiting internal boundary spanners, the combination of linguistic and technical skills was also considered to be of fundamental importance: You know a lot of our distributors, whilst we rely on them, their English isn’t necessarily fantastic, by a long way. But they’re able to understand and promote the products within their country, where you can get fantastic speaking … English speaking, from wherever that haven’t got a clue. No idea about the local market … they just rely on the fact that … well I can speak English. (AirCo, Marketing manager)

Additionally, where agents and distributors were used, it was important that a relationship of honesty and trust was cultivated. If the agent was primarily used because the organisation did not have the linguistic skills to operate directly in the target market themselves, the organisation was very limited in the amount of oversight they could exercise over the agents’ activities. Furthermore, sometimes the companies needed support in the fi rst instance in order to identify potential partners with whom they were then able to work directly. In such circumstances, all of the case companies indicated that they had worked with Chambers of Commerce and the Department for International Trade, who were able to conduct initial market research and make contact with potential partners for the organisations to follow up themselves. Such an approach helped to overcome initial barriers such as telephoning a potential partner only to be unable to communicate with the person who answered the telephone, and although these services are not free, they played an important role in supporting the export development of these four organisations. Trying to, you know, make telephone appointments in Turkey was incredibly difficult without some help, yeah … because they, just answer the phone and you go … right … and as soon as they don’t speak English, that’s it, you know, sort of … And then somebody else will come on the phone, and it’s quite diffi cult, so I trotted myself off to the British Chamber of Commerce and got them to do it. (ToolCo, Managing director)

This demonstrates the challenges to smaller organisations of fi nding and working with appropriate distributors in order to be able to access

80 Language Management

international markets. Although the supply chain literature practice of working with distributors is a fundamental part of supply chain management (Chopra & Meindl, 2016), this literature has been predominantly technicist (Connelly et al., 2013), and even those studies that do consider the implications of social relations in supply chains have rarely considered the importance of language, even when the cross-cultural and boundaryspanning skills of global supply chain managers have been specifically highlighted (Kiessling et al., 2014). Indeed, a meta-analysis of barriers to exporting among SMEs by Leonidou (2004) indicates that even the focal organisations themselves are somewhat blind to the implications of language use, as the results of this study show that organisations position language as a barrier of low importance. This is despite the fact that issues such as fi nding and contacting appropriate customers, a process which is clearly facilitated by linguistic competence, were seen as highly significant barriers. Conclusion

This chapter has demonstrated the highly influential role that boundary spanners play in managing linguistic diversity in international supply chain relationships. It has demonstrated that the traditional international management literature which emphasises the role of organisational expatriates is less applicable in this particular context, and demonstrated instead the importance of SIEs (Suutari & Brewster, 2000), who have received comparatively less attention in the literature, and certainly not from a language perspective. Additionally, it highlighted the importance of Anglophone boundary spanners who have acquired their foreign language skills through short-term global mobility experiences, which typically involve a combination of study and living or working overseas on a short-term basis. The language-sensitive IB literature has not typically placed particular focus on the question of how boundary spanners have acquired their linguistic skills, perhaps because in much of Europe, the ability to speak two or more languages is quite unremarkable (Eurobarometer, 2012). This does not appear to be the case in the UK, where a much lower percentage of the population is able to converse comfortably in a language other than their mother tongue. This is also demonstrated by the high salary demands the case organisations encountered from applicants who spoke relatively rarer languages in the UK, such as Mandarin. Furthermore, it has highlighted that the strategy of smaller organisations with regard to the acquisition of language skills is largely emergent (Barner-Rasmussen & Aarnio, 2011), rather than being the result of systematic planning as is recommended for larger companies (Luo & Shenkar, 2006). It has demonstrated how the case organisations have been able to enter new markets due to language skills they have acquired by

Overcoming Language Barriers through the Use of Boundary Spanners

81

chance, rather than as the result of planned strategy. This indicates that international expansion at SMEs can be viewed as a process of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, 1974), in which the organisations make creative use of the linguistic resources they have at particular temporal moments in order to opportunistically enter relevant markets. Such an approach demonstrates an ‘unintended order’ (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985: 271) in which a pattern of behaviour can be observed of organisations taking advantage of language skills that they possess as a result of chance, rather than strategic planning. However, it is important to note that this only seems to occur when organisations fi nd that they have individuals in sales roles who have foreign language skills. AirCo and MagneticCo both had unused language capital in other departments outside of export sales, including in the accounts department and on the shop floor; however, this was not exploited in the same way. This demonstrates that language skills alone are not considered sufficient to enable successful entry into overseas markets, but that the combination of language and technical – in this case, sales – skills is required, and that this can be a rarer combination (van den Born & Peltokorpi, 2010). Additionally, it may point to the valorisation of particular language skills over others, and organisational hierarchies in which barriers are put into play in order to prevent blue-collar workers (who have typically been marginalised in language-sensitive IB research; Gaibrois, 2014), from moving up the organisational hierarchies. Although the supply chain literature argues for a strategic approach to global sourcing (Golini & Kalachschmidt, 2015; Hanna & Jackson, 2015), in these smaller organisations in which strategy is emergent, there can be seen to be a reluctance to invest in improving communication in upstream relationships, in contrast to downstream ones, in which the importance of good communication appears to be viewed as more fundamental (Oosterhuis et al., 2013). As is to be expected, greater effort in the form of the relationship-specific investment of acquiring language skills is made in those downstream relationships that have greater importance to the organisation and that are positioned at higher levels of Webster’s (1992) typology. This chapter has also demonstrated the complex interplay between linguistic and cultural skills in boundary spanners (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014) and the role that both play in such activities, while also highlighting that, at times, those in managerial roles may evaluate individuals on the basis of such skills, while not being in possession of them themselves. Overall, it has highlighted the largely positive feelings that boundary spanners have towards their work, and the sense of professional identity (Ibarra, 1999) to which they contribute. The participants emphasise how they enjoy the interpersonal contact they are able to engage in as a result of their language skills. In many cases they have sought out roles in which they are specifically able to use foreign languages at work, consistent with the fi ndings of Itani et al. (2015).

82 Language Management

Crucially, the research emphasises that the multilingual boundary spanners used by SMEs are not always internal to these organisations. The lack of resources that SMEs have means that it is impractical for them to have relevant language capital (Piekkari et al., 2014) for all of the overseas markets in which they work. In such scenarios, the companies rely on boundary spanners who are able to speak English at their partner organisations. In some scenarios, they choose to pay for the boundary-spanning services of bodies such as the Department for International Trade. In all, the chapter has demonstrated the fundamental role that boundary spanners play in managing linguistic diversity for smaller organisations, and exposes the vital work that they perform, sometimes as additional and uncompensated labour (Heller, 2010). The following chapter will go on to investigate the work of boundary spanners when acting as paraprofessional translators specifically, in addition to the use of professionals and machine translation.

5 Translation and the Challenge of Meaning

Introduction

This chapter explores how the case organisations approached translation processes as part of their multilingual activities. Although, as discussed in earlier chapters, language-related issues have received considerable empirical attention over the past 20 years, translation still remains a somewhat marginalised issue within the field (Wilmot & Tietze, 2020; Zhong & Chin, 2015), and despite some notable empirical work that investigates these activities (e.g. Blenkinsopp & Shademan Pajouh, 2010; Ciuk & James, 2015; Ciuk et  al., 2019; Tietze et  al., 2017), the majority of papers within the field of international business (IB) that engage with translation processes have done so from the perspective of research methodology, rather than from an organisational viewpoint (e.g. Chidlow et al., 2014; Holden & Michailova, 2014; Xian, 2008). This chapter will investigate organisational translation from a variety of different perspectives. It builds on the previous chapter by opening with a discussion of how boundary spanners at organisations view and relate to translation activities specifically, rather than multilingualism more broadly. Following this, the use of machine translation tools such as Google Translate is discussed in detail, as they are widely used tools in multilingual organisational life yet have received little empirical focus in the language-sensitive IB literature (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018). Additionally, the chapter will discuss the approach the organisations take to the translation of particular types of documents, including promotional literature, websites and technical manuals. Leading on from this discussion, an exploration of how the case companies use professional translators and interpreters will be included and, throughout, the chapter will draw on concepts and theories from the discipline of translation studies in order to analyse and explain these fi ndings. A key concept within this discipline is ‘translatorial action’ (HolzMänttäri, 1984), in which translators are agentic and are able to make decisions in order to address the questions of cultural interference and 83

84

Language Management

ambiguity that Holden and Michailova (2014) raise, as translators are not passive recipients of a text. Additionally, it enables them to act in different ways depending on the purpose – or skopos (Vermeer, 2012) – of a text, an approach to translation which has been somewhat neglected in IB (Chidlow et al., 2014). The approach taken in this study is therefore to focus on the agentic decisions of those involved in the translation process at the case organisations, which include translation commissioners in addition to paraprofessional translators (Tyulenev, 2014) acting in a boundary-spanning role, which leads to the fi rst part of the empirical discussion of translation. Boundary Spanners and Translation Activities

A pertinent point to note about the boundary spanners is that, unlike their attitudes towards the rest of their language work, they did not particularly enjoy translation: What I used to not particularly like when I was still doing my degree was the translating, I would just think, well I can understand that in French, why do I want to translate it into English. So it’s the translation side I’m not overly keen on I have to say, it’s not my particular strong point. (MagneticCo, French-speaking export sales executive)

This indicates that translation is seen as a particular skill which is quite separate from being able to communicate and use a foreign language in a work context. As such, it was felt quite strongly that translation was not a task that should really be part of the role of a sales manager, as it could distract them from other responsibilities: I do think that is not the job of a sales person to translate that. It’s one thing conversing with a client, it’s another thing writing a brochure in their language because very often marketing literature’s got its own style anyway, and that’s a whole other different skillset as far as I’m concerned. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive)

A clear distinction was made between their role as sales managers who happened to use foreign language skills in order to communicate with customers, which was considered to be their main task, and the function of translation, which the boundary spanners did not feel skilled in and which was considered to be the work of professionals: I think I was involved in some very basic translation, on our website, but this is just a greeting, contact information, and stuff like this, nothing heavy […] I think we prefer to use a professional company to do the translating because a) it’s time consuming and b) they know how to do it […] They’ve got experience to deal with it faster and better probably as well. (MagneticCo, French- and Polish-speaking export sales executive)

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning

85

The situation at AirCo was very similar, with the boundary spanners engaging in very little translation, although some datasheets had been translated by previous export sales managers who had left the organisation before data collection took place. It was explained that they had done this in order to facilitate communication with their customers, and to demonstrate a commitment to particular markets when a budget for professional translation was not available. It has been suggested (Piller, 2016) that monolinguals may not be aware of the complexities of foreign language use, and thus may tend to conflate an ability to speak a foreign language with the ability to translate, when these are in fact distinct skills (Munday, 2016). However, there was awareness at MagneticCo that it was preferable to use a professional translator for documents that were intended to be customer facing and were designed with the specific intent of being marketing material: he’s not comfortable doing a technical document […] Because they’re not words or phrases that he uses commonly, and knowing how seriously the Germans take those kinds of documents, it’s not worth getting it wrong. (MagneticCo, Managing director)

Unconsciously, therefore, the organisation seemed to be taking into consideration skopos theory, and were considering the purpose of the document and its translation before making specific decisions about how it should be translated, and by whom. This was the case at AirCo, who had also made the decision to use professional translators in order to provide specific types of texts, as will be discussed later in this chapter. Such decisions are particularly important for SMEs for whom resource availability is a serious challenge, and thus the decision to use the services of a professional translator represents a significant fi nancial outlay. This left the organisations with two critical decisions – fi rstly, whether the text needed to be translated at all and, if so, how it should be translated. There was a general feeling that marketing texts did not always need to be available in the target language of the customer. Customers were able to understand quite well from a brochure in English what the products were, and as long as they were then able to have a conversation with someone about the products in the language of their choice, the written artefact did not need to be translated, and doing so did not have a significant impact on sales: Did it benefit us? Probably not. Because I don’t think German companies are expecting that level of […] you know if I handed somebody an English brochure over in Germany, they would be happy to receive that, as much as they would do a German one I guess. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive)

The question then became whether, if something did need translating for non-customer facing purposes, this could be achieved by some other means. Frequently these means involved the use of Google Translate.

86

Language Management

Google Translate

Within discussions relating to machine translation in IB (e.g. Feely & Harzing, 2003), there has been a general assumption that machine translation is not yet fit for purpose (Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011). Although technology in this area is rapidly developing (Ostler, 2011), it still relies on a mechanistic understanding of translation which aligns with approaches of natural equivalence (Pym, 2014), as it is not yet able to cope well with the ambiguity that is inherent in much language use, or the impact of cultural interference (Holden & Michailova, 2014). Although the technology has improved significantly since these critiques were made, notably with the significant change to Google Translate when it moved to neural machine translation in 2016, meaning that it could translate at the sentence, rather than word level (Turovsky, 2016), machine translation still has shortcomings. Inappropriate use can lead to negative outcomes for even the largest companies. For example, in 2020 Amazon appeared to use machine translation for its Swedish website, in which a number of serious errors were discovered that were considered unlikely to be the work of a human translator (Hern, 2020). Perhaps as a result of these shortcomings, the use of machine translation as a strategy for managing language diversity has not been widely discussed in the languagesensitive IB literature, although there is increasing evidence to suggest that it is a very common micro-level practice which employees draw upon in order to perform translation tasks (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018). As a free resource, Google Translate was frequently used among all the case organisations that form this study; however, it was used in a wide variety of different ways depending on the specific circumstances of the organisation and the individual using this resource. For example, at one extreme, Google Translate (or other free resources) was the entire reason why people were able to communicate across linguistic boundaries in cases where they had no common language in which to communicate otherwise. At the other end of the scale, it was used as a tool by multilingual boundary spanners in order to look up particular words, and was recognised as being a valuable resource in this respect; however, its limitations were well recognised and it would never be used to translate an entire document: you can pretty much Google Translate. But I would never, I would never write an email in English and translate it via Google and send it because that’s an absolute crime. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive)

In this respect, there appeared to be a significant distinction between multilingual and monolingual employees as to how they used Google Translate. Although all of them were generally aware that it was far from perfect, and that it could produce numerous errors which might make the resulting text difficult to understand, multilingual employees used it as a convenient resource to check particular words or phrases, whereas

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning

87

monolingual employees, who had less language capital (Piekkari et al., 2014) and thus fewer resources on which they were able to draw, would use it for the translation of entire documents to external partners. Interestingly, both of these approaches seemed to work for the companies in question, and there was little suggestion that the use of Google Translate in itself had led to any lost business for the organisations, which also indicates that it was largely being used in a way that met the skopos of the translation project. For example, it was generally avoided when the purpose of the translation was one-to-many communication (Bovée & Thill, 2014) which was intended to act as a stand-alone piece of text, such as a website or a marketing brochure. This was in contrast to ongoing communications with existing customers, where the errors that arose through using free translation software were considered as less important. When it came to presenting a professional image to attract customers from new markets, Google was seen as unfit for this purpose: My first port of call was to go right, how am I going to get this translated, and we had this mentality where we don’t just want to be in with the rest, we want to be the best, you know, it stands for everything you do, we want to be better than everybody else, and that was no different for Europe. So our … focus was, and our sort of mission statement as it were, was to be better at selling incubators to the French … than the French suppliers are. And you know, that’s quite a big task. But that’s what we should aim for, so I thought well, we can’t very well do that by having Google Translate on the site. (AgriCo, Finance director)

It was also pointed out that, particularly in technical environments, Google Translate would operate with severe limitations which at times could be significant enough to impede understanding. A number of examples were shared from the case organisations that highlighted this: some of the tooling descriptions where we’ve tried to translate the French distributors price lists that we brought in, one of my favourites, is fraise herisson, which is a strawberry hedgehog […] But to us, it’s a porcupine cutter. (ToolCo, Managing director) I was trying to translate a Chinese email last week and it didn’t work […] it was a datasheet from a supplier and I wanted to find out what was in that datasheet and it didn’t go to plan. (MagneticCo, German export sales executive)

It is relevant that both of these scenarios, in which Google Translate completely failed and was unable to deliver adequate results, were situations in which the organisations were not trying to communicate with either a customer or supplier, but were trying to understand something for their own use that had been produced in another language. One of the difficulties of Google Translate is that translation is a social process (Ciuk & James, 2015; Tyulenev, 2014) which involves dialogue between two parties. In translation activities that involve humans, limitations can be

88

Language Management

overcome because of the relationship itself and the different resources and repertoires (Gaibrois, 2014) upon which the organisational actors are able to draw. Where machine translation occurs in isolation, it is much less effective because it lacks social context. Similarly, orthographical errors in the message, which would not impede understanding of a speaker of the language, could cause particular problems when using Google Translate, as could the use of colloquialisms and slang: They don’t use correct grammar, they don’t use, they don’t spell it correctly, and you know as an English person reading it, you’ve got no hope, because Google doesn’t know what it is, I don’t know what it is, and then I end up looking at words and going, you know, they’ve missed a letter off the end there, especially stuff like b’s and v’s. In Spanish it’s very similar so what they’ll do is, sometimes they’ll get them mixed up. So if I was reading it and I can’t understand it, I’ll go, hang on, if I change that b to a v … And then Google will go, I know what that word means, brilliant! So I’d find a lot of that, but there was times where I got completely stuck coz they’d written it in what we’d call slang. (AgriCo, Finance director)

Within the field of language-sensitive IB, there has been recent interest in the idea of flexible and hybrid language use (e.g. Gaibrois, 2018; Janssens & Steyaert, 2014) which goes beyond simply code-switching within a conversation in order to more deeply mix languages and create new terms. There is a widespread acknowledgement, particularly among business English as a lingua franca (BELF) discourse, that language use simply needs to be ‘good enough’ in order to get the message across, and therefore the focus is on the interaction in its entirety, rather than solely on the way in which language is used. However, this example demonstrates that when divorced from a social context, as is the case with machine translation, such an approach is not possible because the algorithms are unable to cope with non-standard usage. This is highly relevant, as language is dynamic and continuously evolving, changing over time. However, as machine translation becomes increasingly used in both business and personal spheres, this raises a question as to whether this in fact places pressure on language to coalesce around a particular set of norms which can be (more) easily understood by machine translation processes. Although tools such as Google Translate are based around the availability of relevant corpora of texts, and thus can develop and ‘learn’ new words and usages over time, this still leaves a lag between how language may be used in practice and what corpora may be available. As yet, research in this area is still in its infancy, as although machine translation has been around for a number of years – the fi rst attempt at a ‘translation machine’ was in the 1930s (Hutchins, 1995) – it has only recently developed to the stage where it is viable for use in order to manage business scenarios. Accordingly, the potential effect such tools may have on both language use and foreign

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning

89

language learning is not yet well understood, although increasing knowledge will be gained in this area over the next decade. The results of this study indicate that Google Translate is a highly important tool for organisations seeking to manage multilingually, regardless of the level of language capital, although this is likely to determine to a certain extent the ways in which this tool is used. Due to the fact that it is a free resource, it is extremely helpful for smaller organisations with limited resources, and as the technology continues to develop, it is likely to become still more pervasive in IB, although there is considerable scepticism as to whether it will ever be able to fully replace human translators (e.g. Cronin, 2013; Nunes Vieira, 2020). The errors identified in this study highlight Google Translate’s current inabilities to cope with cultural ambiguity, suggesting that it will be difficult for it to move beyond mechanistic approaches to translation. However, it is also important to recognise the emancipatory potential of such tools. While the potentially democratising effects of BELF have previously been highlighted in the literature (e.g. Louhiala-Salminen et al., 2005; Vaara et al., 2005), similarly the use of Google Translate can enable communication across languages, which enables smaller organisations in particular to participate in IB processes which, while not impossible, may be more difficult for them without access to such tools. Cronin (2013) reminds us that machine translation is a tool that enables the possibility of translation to occur instantaneously, and in a universal way. This enhances the autonomy of the user, and means that translation is accessible to all, not just professional translators or even multilingual individuals. This is important for the British, Anglophone organisations in this study, but may be even more relevant for organisations in non-Anglophone countries, who require access to English as a commodity (Heller, 2010) in order to be able to access international markets, given the hegemonic status of the language. However, given that machine translation dematerialises the labour of translation work (Cronin, 2013), there is also a danger that it can contribute to the further commodification of language and remove the social practice elements of translation work. External Non-Professional Translators

If one of the major advantages of Google Translate for smaller organisations is that it is a free tool, it is also the case that there are other, lower cost alternatives to professional translation services. At times, this could mean drawing on the social networks of internal organisational actors (Piekkari et al., 2013), as documented at MagneticCo where the German export sales manager asked his father to help him with the translation of technical documents. At times, other organisations in the supply chain used their own social networks in order to enable business to take place:

90

Language Management

Certainly one Polish customer speaks no English at all, his girlfriend basically does … it’s a small company, his girlfriend does a bit of translation for him, but she’s got a full time job as well, so can only do it, sort of an evening, so yeah, it’s, you know, Customer Services can’t help, I can’t help, it’s Google Translate and just waiting … (AirCo, Germanspeaking export manager)

As this quote exemplifies, one of the major problems with using nonprofessional translators who are external to the organisation is that they will often have their own jobs and other commitments, and therefore waiting for them to be available can be very time consuming and is therefore not really appropriate for urgent matters. However, having access to sources of language capital in this way (Piekkari et al., 2014) is highly advantageous for small companies, and enables them to at least manage some language barriers which they would not be able to do without access to such social networks. Another approach that may be taken is to work with language students who are looking for experience of translating in an authentic scenario. In Chapter 3 it was discussed how ToolCo would work with university students in order to conduct market research projects. Here, AgriCo worked with students in order to translate their website; however, they quickly found that it was not a viable solution for the long term due to the time constraints that the students faced, and the delays this introduced in the creation of the website. Ultimately, this organisation was obliged to use professional translators for the translation of their website because the students, with all their other commitments, were unable to produce the volume of translations required in the timescales they were given. The use of students for translation projects additionally raises two important issues which merit further discussion. Firstly, it brings us back to a consideration of translation quality. By defi nition, students are not fully qualified professional translators, and in this particular instance the students were undergraduates in modern foreign languages and another discipline (such as IB or tourism), as opposed to students of modern foreign languages or translation specifically. AgriCo quality-checked their work by drawing on their own social networks, sending the translations to friends and contacts who were native speakers of the target language. Although they found the work to be of a high standard, the feedback tended to revolve around the specific register of language use: what they would sometimes say is, they’d usually … if there was a problem, they’d say, they’re not wrong … It’s not wrong … it just doesn’t sound natural. (AgriCo, Finance director)

This does not necessarily simply demonstrate the importance of having a cultural understanding of language use, but also shows the difficulties of translating industry-specific terminology. Where internal boundary

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning

91

spanners were used to engage in non-professional translation work, although they often found it very challenging, they at least had a technical understanding of the industry. As Lønsmann and Kraft (2018) remind us, for those who are part of a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) such as occurs among professionals working in particular industries, access to shared professional knowledge can often ease communication regardless of language barriers. This makes the task especially challenging for students, as not only do they lack industry-specific knowledge as they are not part of a professional community, but in such written translation activity, they do not have the opportunity to engage in translation as a social process, and to arrive at a shared meaning with other interlocutors. It is therefore unsurprising that the students found translation activities of this type to be an enormous undertaking. This leads to the second point which is in regard to the ethics of using student labour in this way. Heller (2010) commented that language skills may be treated as a non-remunerated commodity, and this has already been mentioned in the context of the additional linguistic labour that boundary spanners are forced to perform in addition to their usual employment responsibilities. When this linguistic labour is being performed by students, this adds another level of complexity, and Munday (2016) raises the question of whether it is ethical to expect and require high-quality translation work from non-professionals who are not remunerated at a market rate. Although it is quite common for many degree courses in the UK to incorporate some form of work-based project, particularly in applied disciplines which include both languages and business studies, a question remains about how appropriate it is for students to perform what is essentially unpaid labour for organisations as a requirement of their degrees, or in order to enhance their CVs, despite the potential benefits to both parties that such activities may bring. In this particular case, AgriCo recognised that what they initially wanted the students to do was not achievable within the scope of the project, and so ultimately they made the decision to pay for the services of a professional translator. It is not suggested that the organisation was exploiting unpaid labour. However, it does raise a broader and important issue for organisations who are looking to use non-professionals in order to perform language work, particularly translation tasks. As previously discussed, linguistic capital is a component of social capital (Piekkari et al., 2014), and the exploitation of social capital in order to acquire competitive advantage is nothing new (e.g. Van Laere & Heene, 2003). However, it does demonstrate how language skills can become still further commoditised (Heller, 2010), rather than fully recognised as an important professional skill in the workplace and remunerated as such, particularly in the UK where the monolingual environment contributes to a general lack of understanding among domestic managers of the implications and challenges of language work.

92

Language Management

Professional Language Services

Given the limitations of using non-professionals and free translation software, all of the case organisations used professional translation services in specific circumstances. Within this study, the term ‘translation services’ is used in order to incorporate the work of interpreters. Although a distinction is made within translation studies between translation as a written activity and interpreting as an oral one, within IB this distinction is not widely discussed (Blenkinsopp & Shademan Pajouh, 2010), and the understanding of translation adopted follows Piekkari et  al. (2013) in allowing for translation as both an oral and a written activity. Therefore this study does not make a specific conceptual distinction between the use of translators and interpreters by organisations. Unsurprisingly, the most important barrier the case organisations found to the use of professional translation services was the cost. As previously discussed, the efficient use of limited fi nancial resources was something of fundamental concern to these smaller organisations and, as such, if they were going to invest in professional translation, they wanted to be sure that it was going to have an impact and to be valued by their customers. Following this, once the decision to translate had been made, cost remained an important factor. When discussing the redesign of their website, it was explained by ToolCo that: I was being asked, I suppose, by a company at one point, that wanted to do microlanguage sites for us … Stupid prices. Absolutely stupid. Restrictive prices. You know and they kept coming back, well what if I offer it you at this price … I think in the end it came down from something stupid like £1500 to £300. But he wanted a minimum of, it might have been a minimum of five languages, so he still wanted his £1500. I just thought I can’t see, necessarily see, the benefit, I’d rather spend the money on a good quality website, and then see where we go. (ToolCo, Finance director)

Similarly, AirCo explained how they altered their decisions about which materials they would have translated because of cost restrictions, which led them to scale back the amount of planned translation activity: we were going to get all the datasheets translated, and the cost came back for doing those, oh my word … we’ll wait for the catalogue, that’s come back and it’s still … oh my word … but not quite as big. (AirCo, Marketing manager)

Interestingly, this organisation explained how the majority of their translation budget was not used on promotional material, or even on communication with their supply chain partners, but was instead spent to ensure compliance regarding the provision of appropriate technical information in a variety of languages: we probably spend the most time and effort, money included in that, in translation in product manuals and installation guides, so, again the key

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning 93

ones have been translated into … the five key European languages and then others will be specifi cally for German or for Spanish or for Portuguese whichever sort of market that those are all going into. So, it’s quite ironic that it’s the aftersales that gets the lion’s share of the translation budget if you like, and packaging is a one off hit I suppose. (AirCo, Marketing manager)

Therefore, the use of professional translation services is a very purposeful activity for smaller organisations, where they aim to be sure that translation is required by their customers before making an investment. Additionally, other barriers beyond that of cost were noted. Particularly with regard to website translation, it was highlighted that in addition to the initial translation costs, there were ongoing challenges regarding keeping the website up to date in a variety of different languages as new products were launched and others became obsolete. The cost of translation on its own is expensive but then the cost of supporting and using that translation, so you’re basically doubling up on the cost of what you would do in English so a different language for your website, a different language for your brochure, et cetera, and I think we find internationally as well as in the UK, that it’s a fine line to walk between supporting the distributors and coming across as wanting to take the business direct from the actual end users, which in the UK is less likely to happen, but perhaps more so for the traditional model we use for international sales where we’re not looking at general consumables, we’re looking at tenders, we’re looking at bigger projects, the riper fruit. (AirCo, Marketing manager)

Interestingly, at the time of the fieldwork, the overall international strategy for this company was shifting from a model that was based around long relationships (Webster, 1992), which often involved a high degree of trust and collaboration between the supply chain partners, to a home replication approach (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1989). This attempt to replicate the strategy used in the UK – which was based on the company having a large number of distributors and customers, with market-based governance (Gereffi et al., 2005) – in European markets, necessitated a change in the approach to translation, which was what had stimulated the interest in the translation of datasheets and product catalogues. MagneticCo and ToolCo had comparatively little material available on their websites in other languages and, as mentioned, in the case of ToolCo in particular, this was a result of a strategic decision to invest in the quality of the website as a whole rather than translation in particular. Given the nature of the industry in which they operated, as part of this process the company had opted for the inclusion of a variety of images which, for informed customers, would demonstrate the type of activities that formed their core business operations. In contrast, despite being the smallest organisation in the sample, AgriCo had given a great deal of consideration to the translation and localisation of

94

Language Management

their website, and after the initial failed attempt to reduce costs by using students as translators, they then made the decision to hire professional translation services in order to complete the task. Given that they are an online retailer, the decision to use professionals was then made quite quickly, regardless of the costs involved, because the website was the primary route to market, as was not the case for any of the other organisations. The structure of the organisations’ distribution channels had an impact on their decisions regarding whether, and how much, to invest in translation of promotional materials such as the website. For AgriCo, which had an extremely short distribution channel (Dent, 2011), and were the only organisation working in a B2C environment, rather than B2B, translation was a fundamental way for them to reach their customers. However, somewhat paradoxically, they found that having their website professionally translated caused them additional challenges in their customer communication which they had not anticipated. They found that having the languages available on their website led customers to believe that the organisation had internal language skills. Accordingly, they received many telephone calls from customers who wished to discuss the products further, and who expected that they would be able to conduct this conversation in languages other than English. This links to a point that the marketing manager at AirCo made, that for a small organisation, having the website translated is only a partial solution, and that it is the ability to provide ongoing service and conduct the relationship in additional languages that is particularly important. Otherwise, there is potential to damage fledgling sales relationships, as customer expectations, created by the availability of other languages on the website, are not met, which can lead to a lack of trust. Although the linkages between language and trust have been explored at the level of multilingual teams (e.g. Tenzer et al., 2014), they have not really been explored at the level of buyer/seller relations and how unmet expectations at a linguistic level can affect a supply chain relationship. This fi nding therefore provides a relevant insight into the factors that organisations take into consideration when deciding what, or how much, of the marketing materials to translate when exporting to overseas markets. It demonstrates that the organisations attached somewhat less importance to having materials available in other languages than they did in being able to maintain and service the relationship with customers – with the exception of AgriCo, who were not specifically trying to cultivate a long-term relationship with their customers in the same way as the other three organisations who operated in a B2B environment. Even at AgriCo, it was recognised that this could have a significant negative effect on their international market entry efforts, and therefore they chose to use the translation agency who had translated the website in the fi rst place in order to generate lists of vocabulary and key phrases which were displayed prominently in their offices.

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning

95

Interactions with professional language service providers

Another relevant aspect of working with professional language service providers is the type of interaction that the organisations have with them. Although trust in the provider is important (Jansen, 2019), not least in terms of quality assurance, which is discussed in a later section, there is also an interpersonal dynamic between the translation commissioner and the translator. This is particularly relevant in interpreting scenarios in which communication is synchronous and the commissioner is able to obtain a greater sense of how they are being represented to the other party in the interaction, as such face-to-face interactions constitute the richest type of communication in which there are clues to meaning other than the purely linguistic. Therefore, in such scenarios, even without understanding any of the language, the translation commissioner may be able to detect signals such as tone and body language: I think that you tend to get a feeling for what’s being said, even if you don’t know what’s being said. It’s all, ultimately, I think that is down to body language. You know, and you can tell the positive body language or the … sort of the … I don’t understand what you’re saying sort of thing. (ToolCo, Managing director)

In the above quote, the managing director is reflecting on an experience where an interpreter was used in order to communicate with an Italian supplier. Body language is not necessarily universal, and there are many differences as to how different cultures may express themselves non-verbally (Jandt, 2013); however, even in scenarios where the cultural distance is much greater than between the UK and Italy, body language was still highlighted as a way of facilitating communication and transferring meaning even where the language of communication was not shared to a high level: I think, for some Chinese people, cannot speak English or cannot hear the meaning, cannot understand the meaning. But some language is the same, body language. So you can show you’re friendly, how friendly, is a thing, just smiling, or yes, show some friendly ways. (AirCo, Chinese subsidiary manager)

Additionally, it was suggested that conducting a meeting through the medium of an interpreter required a specific communication skill in itself, and that it was something which improved over time: I found it not hard work, but I found it tiring, because you’re going through everything twice. Because if the interpreter didn’t understand then she’d have to come back to me […] So, but it’s very very tiring, but it got, I think it got easier as the day, you know sort of the day went on. (ToolCo, Managing director)

This is a pertinent point, as it is often assumed that the use of language service providers is a solution to managing a language barrier (e.g. Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011). However, it is rarely discussed in

96

Language Management

the IB literature that there are general communication skills aside from language (Mughan, 2015) that are of great importance in IB interactions and that the development of competences in this area is just as important for international managers as foreign language acquisition. This will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter, as it also relates to how monolingual English speakers use and understand BELF, but it is significant that it was raised here as a factor to consider when working with interpreters, who are presented in the literature as a solution in their own right to overcome a lack of communicative competence. The fact that the process is facilitated by certain communicative behaviours on the part of the translation commissioner is a lacuna in the IB literature. Intersemiotic Translation

Another approach to translation that was identified by the case organisations was that of intersemiotic translation, which is the ‘interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems’ (Jakobson, 1959: 233). For example, it was explained by ToolCo that they did not provide any material in other languages, but on their website they preferred to use images in order to explain their products to potential clients. You know, if you’ve got a good website, and we were advised to put more pictures on, and less words, because pictures tell a story, yeah, and that’s sort of the route that we went down with the new web developer to get it more modern looking. (ToolCo, Managing director)

This is an interesting approach as it avoids some of the difficulties highlighted by other organisations of maintaining a website in multiple languages and keeping that information up to date. It is still an example of translation, but a different kind from that which is usually discussed in the IB literature. Not only was it an approach used in marketing communications by the company themselves, but it was also used by their customers in order to communicate: predominantly people that we’re dealing with are the people that know the industry, so where we might have some differences on what words actually mean, we can usually get around it with a picture … So now we’ve obviously with the benefit of instant digital availability, if we don’t know what they’re talking about, is it possible to send us a picture … Oh right yes, it’s one of those … Of course we can help you, it’s this, this and this. And now the majority of them, if they want to ask us something, will send us a picture anyway. (ToolCo, Managing director)

While there are some similarities between this approach and that of changing the communication media, such as moving between lean and rich media in order to ensure understanding, in intersemiotic translation it is the semiotic mode of communication that changes – email and

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning

97

websites are still used, but the signs that are relied upon to transmit information are visual, rather than verbal. While translation studies as a discipline has investigated intersemiotic translation, this has typically related to performance, for example, between written text and dramatic performance (e.g. Borowiec, 2018; Dusi, 2015). Within the broad discipline of management there has been relatively little explicit consideration of the semiotic aspects of communication, perhaps because, as Meyer et  al. (2018) point out in their discussion of semiotics in institutionalisation processes, scholars in the field ‘regard the verbal as the sole, or at least the dominant, semiotic mode’ (Meyer et al., 2018: 392). Although in recent years the field of organisation studies has paid increased attention to multimodal communication (Boxenbaum et al., 2018), and what it means for issues such as sense-making (Höllerer et  al., 2018) and organisational legitimacy (Lefsrud et al., 2020), this has not extended to the IB literature. Furthermore, although there has also been some consideration of intersemiotic translation in the advertising literature, which explores, for example, translation across television, radio and magazine adverts (Freitas, 2004), this is an aspect that translation studies itself has frequently overlooked (Munday, 2004). In terms of intersemiotic translation as a replacement form of interlingual translation within management, despite the influential discussion of Brannen (2004), little explicit consideration has been given to this practice within the IB literature. Despite this lack of empirical work, this study indicates that intersemiotic translation may indeed be an important practice for organisations managing language diversity, particularly where professional interlingual translation may not be a possibility – in this case due to financial resources. Clearly, such an approach lends itself to some scenarios more than others – ToolCo operates in the manufacturing industry and thus deals with physical products. It is likely to be much more challenging to rely on pictorial representations of a service. However, this demonstrates that multimodal communication is a potentially important practice in organisational repertoires of managing translation. Translation Quality

Beyond the cost, and the ongoing challenge of providing a service in other languages beyond merely translating marketing materials, one of the other key concerns expressed by the case organisations was how to ensure accuracy and quality in their translations. This was still a concern even when professional translation services were used, which suggests that there is a certain anxiety around business being represented in a language that you do not understand and thus that management cannot verify the accuracy of. Although it has been noted in the relevant IB literature (e.g. Hinds et  al., 2014; Tenzer et  al., 2014) that code-switching is often regarded as deviant behaviour, as it is seen to be exclusionary for those

98 Language Management

who cannot speak the language that is switched to, it seems that even professional translation can provoke feelings of concern in the same way. Ultimately, the importance of choosing a reputable professional was stressed, and this was what the organisations trusted in: I hadn’t got a clue, whether that interpreter’s actually telling them the right thing, but you know that they are and a professional interpreter will do that. (ToolCo, Managing director)

However, even when using professionals, there was still scepticism among certain interviewees regarding the accuracy of translation: We check translations for German, and some of them come back sometimes and they’re horrendous, and other times they can be really really good, and it’s the same supposed translators. So, it’s very very hard, and there’s a plethora of translation companies out there […] How do you make that decision? I know, I know. It’s like anything, it’s like, choosing a design agency, they’ll all show you the best they’ve ever done, and it’s until you start to work with them and then realise, well actually they are good, or no, they’re not actually, we’re getting a lot of complaints about this. It’s a tricky one, it’s very hard. (AirCo, Marketing manager)

This is particularly relevant for technical documents, which was the case for AirCo where precision in meaning when discussing aspects of products was particularly important. It was highlighted by the company that in those markets where they had longstanding relationships with distributors, any discrepancies would be pointed out by these customers, and this had happened in the past. However, when entering new markets where they did not have longstanding relationships, and for which correct marketing materials were even more fundamental, they were unlikely to notice these errors because they had no close relationships where customers would draw attention to them. Additionally, the company highlighted that there were technical terms within their industry for which, although the word might be recognisable across languages, the meaning was different or used in an industry-specific way, which created challenges in reaching a shared understanding: I mean, one of the biggest words in our industry is calibration. In many European languages, it’s a very similar word, in German it’s calibrarung […] in Polish it’s very similar to German …. But, what most of our industry outside of England believe that is to calibrate a unit, so you’re basically calibrating so it reads correctly. That’s not necessarily what … sorry, say that back, when they say to calibrate it, they mean to test it, which in English, it doesn’t mean to test. It means, you know, to actually calibrate the instrument, where you actually change its readings to make it correct. And so, that is a problem. I wouldn’t say every week but, every couple of months it always comes up again, well somebody has used calibration, and I have to go through a full explanation. (AirCo, Germanspeaking export sales manager)

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning

99

Professional language service providers increasingly use sophisticated terminology management tools which are valuable in building a database of terms that are used in specific industries; however, other than the marketing manager at AirCo, none of the interviewees mentioned this. Interestingly, this concept of building a database of terms has also been noted among paraprofessional translators (e.g. Albuquerque & Costa, 2018). However, this was not a solution to which any of the boundary spanners in this study referred. The discussion of translation quality is one around which many of the central theories of translation studies revolve (e.g. Munday, 2016; Pym, 2014) and there is much debate about what the term actually means and how this should be achieved. Throughout this study, the interviewees demonstrated different understandings of what quality meant and what was actually required from different pieces of translation. For this reason, skopos theory (Vermeer, 2012) is a helpful explanatory concept, as this does not explicitly focus on the aesthetic and technical merits of a translation, which may be particularly important in marketing literature, but not necessarily in email communication with a longstanding customer, or a transactional interaction with a supplier which is simply confi rming an order. The emphasis that skopos theory places on the purpose of the translation is highly pragmatic, which is particularly important for smaller organisations. It has already been discussed that the idea of a formal language strategy (Luo & Shenkar, 2006) is not particularly helpful for organisations of this type, and that the idea of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, 1974), and using resources creatively when they are available at specific moments in time, is an approach which is much more common. By focusing on the purpose of a translation, the organisations are able to leverage their limited resources in the most appropriate way for the task at hand, whether this is using paraprofessionals, Google Translate or professional translation services. The idea of ‘good enough’ is important, because rather than establishing an objective benchmark for what constitutes a quality translation, it leaves space to recognise the contextual factors that will influence what this is, and again recognises that translation is a social practice (Ciuk & James, 2015) rather than something that has universal standards, which reflects a more mechanistic approach of how translation works (Janssens et al., 2004). Additionally, the process of translation was acknowledged to be easier if there was a shared cultural understanding between the translator and the target audience, and this was also reassuring to the commissioner who was unable to understand the interaction: I chose the particular one, and she was very very good. And local as well, so although she was Italian, she was local to [city where ToolCo based], so it was easier because we had an understanding in English sort of locally, and she then had got an understanding with the Italians and they

100 Language Management

didn’t actually know each other but they were very close, where their families came from. So it was a good link, between all of us you could say, that made it easier. (ToolCo, Managing director)

It has been pointed out in the literature that effective boundary spanners have both linguistic and cultural skills (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014). Here, the importance of this is underlined by this quote, as it is clear that the shared cultural identity between commissioner, translator and audience (and the bicultural identity of the interpreter in this scenario) was a factor in instilling confidence in the commission about the quality and appropriateness of the translation work that was taking place. In this example, in addition to the linguistic identity of the translator (Bordia & Bordia, 2015), it is also the specific regional identities that are considered as important by the commissioner, not just the relationship between the source and target languages. Conclusion

This chapter has explored how organisations approach translation in their IB relationships. It has demonstrated that, although language is now fi rmly established as part of the IB research agenda (Brannen et al., 2014), this literature largely seems to ignore the fact that multiple acts of translation are required when working multilingually. As such, there is still a ‘silence’ on translation-related matters in IB (Chidlow et al., 2014). Accordingly, the chapter has drawn on concepts from translation studies in order to analyse the approaches taken to translation by the organisations in this book, particularly with regard to issues associated with translation equivalence (Pym, 2014), as well as functional approaches to translation such as skopos theory (Vermeer, 2012), which requires translations to consider the purpose of the original text and the translation. Given that cost was raised as a fundamental challenge for smaller organisations who wish to access the services of professional translators, pragmatic approaches enable them to consider when lower cost or free solutions are appropriate, and when a professional is required. Although this may initially seem to be a simple dichotomy between personal, oneto-one communications, and marketing campaigns which are one-tomany (Bovée & Thill, 2014), the fi ndings from the cases demonstrated greater nuance in the approach than this. Differing practices were used depending on the specific relationship or interaction type, such as the use of interpreters in order to facilitate key business meetings at ToolCo. Furthermore, cost was shown to be just one of the factors that organisations consider when making translations, with quality also being a key issue, and the fact that the organisations were unable to verify this themselves was highlighted as a particular challenge. Additionally, it demonstrated the creativity and innovation smaller organisations can use in order to overcome linguistic boundaries. As a

Translation and the Challenge of Meaning

101

micro-enterprise, AgriCo lacked the resources to be able to recruit multilingual staff or to use professional translators on a regular basis, and thus they used professional translation as a springboard from which the fi nance director undertook a boundary-spanning role, in which they drew on a variety of different tools including Google Translate and dictionaries in order to be able to communicate with customers. They, as did other case organisations, also relied on their social networks to help with translation-related tasks, and although there is a limited extent to which can be done, as it relies on goodwill, it proved to be useful in order to cope with specific circumstances. Given that the last chapter focused entirely on the role and actions of boundary spanners, it is particularly relevant to note here that they did not consider translation to be one of their tasks. They instead tended to consider it as a distraction from their real work, which in this study, revolved around sales activities. They explicitly positioned translation as a separate skill which is quite distinct from multilingual abilities, and therefore tried to avoid translation tasks as much as possible. Machine translation has been considered for some time as a potential solution to language barriers in IB (e.g. Feely & Harzing, 2003), but given that the focus in the language-sensitive IB literature has predominantly been on organisational-level strategies (Karhunen et al., 2018) for which machine translation is not yet fully fit for purpose, this literature has rarely explored how employees use such tools as part of micro-level practices related to language work in organisations (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018). This chapter has provided an in-depth account of how employees with a wide range of linguistic abilities rely on Google Translate in order to interact across language boundaries, with an extreme example being an entire business relationship which is conducted via this medium at ToolCo. The chapter has also considered the ways in which organisations work with external translators – both non-professional and professional – and considered the reasons why such decisions are made. It has not only demonstrated that cost is a key factor in this decision-making process, but highlighted some of the challenges organisations face in managing and maintaining up-to-date information across a range of different languages. Finally, the potential for intersemiotic translation in order to manage IB communication has been highlighted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the limited attention that interlingual translation has received within the language-sensitive management literature, the possibilities for intersemiotic translation appear to have been completely overlooked. This is despite its being a pragmatic tool which is particularly suitable for SMEs given that it does not necessarily involve costly (in the case of professional) or time-consuming (in the case of paraprofessional) translation work. However, organisations need to keep in mind the suitability of this practice across different industries, as it is likely to be more effective when

102

Language Management

dealing with products, rather than services. Accordingly, given the increasing technological capabilities of all organisations, the possibilities for multimodal communication as a way of managing language diversity should not be overlooked. It has often been argued within translation studies that the work of the translator is ‘invisible’ (Venuti, 2008), and this has certainly been the case when language issues in IB are discussed (e.g. Barner-Rasmussen & Aarnio, 2011; Chidlow et al., 2014). Although the situation is changing with key contributions in this area (e.g. Blenkinsopp & Shademan Pajouh, 2010; Ciuk & James, 2015; Ciuk et al., 2019; Tietze et al., 2017), there is still much to explore. A particularly fruitful area for future work is to incorporate theories and concepts from translation studies into the IB discourse on language. Although there is an increasing dialogue between IB and sociolinguistics on language issues (Angouri & Piekkari, 2018; Karhunen et al., 2018), translation studies has yet to make a significant impact on the language-sensitive IB literature. By explicitly focusing on translation, and by drawing on explanatory concepts such as skopos theory, understandings of equivalence and thus perceptions of translation quality, this chapter has aimed to stimulate a greater dialogue between the two disciplines and to break the silence on translation in IB (Chidlow et al., 2014). At this stage, the roles of boundary spanners and acts of translation in IB communication have been extensively discussed. However, it is highly significant that this study was located in the UK, and focused on Anglophone organisations, which have received less attention in the extant literature, perhaps because of a perception that it is less interesting to study Anglophone organisations due to the widespread use of English in IB (Hurmerinta et  al., 2015). The following chapter will therefore address the question of English, and explore how it acts as a source of both privilege and disadvantage for British organisations operating internationally.

6 BELF and its Malcontents

Introduction

The English language has reached hegemonic status in many domains (Phillipson, 1992, 2009), and is currently the undisputed dominant language of global business. On the one hand, from the perspective of the case organisations, this is highly advantageous for native speakers of English, because they do not have to learn additional languages in order to participate in international business (IB) activities (Neeley, 2017). As such, the ability to express themselves freely in a language in which they are entirely comfortable can be seen as a significant source of privilege, which often goes unrecognised by the speakers themselves (Méndez García & Pérez Cañado, 2005). On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that the dominance of English as a lingua franca has contributed to low levels of foreign language learning in Anglophone countries, particularly the UK, which is the context of this study. Furthermore, it has been suggested (Sweeney & Hua, 2010) that native speakers of English often lack proficiency in using the specific varieties of international English that are used in a business context, because they lack sensitivity to linguistic issues and as such are prone to using idioms and colloquialisms, may have strong accents that they do not attempt to soften for the ease of international interlocutors, and generally speak too quickly which can make comprehension difficult for non-native speakers. The aim of this chapter is to explore how the case organisations use English, and how the employees understand and use the language in order to communicate in an international environment. This chapter has a critical orientation, as it interrogates the hegemonic status of English in order to explore the implications of this, rather than simply presenting business English as a lingua franca (BELF) as a functional solution to managing language diversity, which it has sometimes been considered in the past (Feely & Harzing, 2003). In order to do so, it draws upon the faces of power framework of Fleming and Spicer (2007), which uses the concept of struggle in order to demonstrate that power does not happen in a vacuum, but is often met by acts of resistance in a dyadic relationship. The framework differentiates between episodic and systemic acts of power and resistance, in terms of language use, which will be presented in this chapter. 103

104 Language Management

The fi rst thing to note regarding the use of English in this study is just how prevalent it was in the international relationships of the companies studied. Although this may not seem particularly surprising, given that the focal organisations are British, these organisations were specifically chosen because they were among the very small number of exporting SMEs – less than 20% (Holmes, 2017) – who took a proactive approach to language and did not just rely on the use of English. As has been demonstrated in previous chapters, even where the organisations did not have internal language capital in languages other than English, they used a variety of creative solutions to ensure that they were able to communicate with their clients and suppliers in other languages. However, despite this, English was still hugely important for all the organisations. Hierarchies of English

A fundamental theme that emerged from the study is the question of what variety of English could and should be used in particular circumstances by the case organisations (Louhiala-Salminen & Kankaanranta, 2012). Most of the research on language use in IB has taken a monological approach in which languages are conceived of as discrete systems with clearly demarcated boundaries (Janssens & Steyaert, 2014). In reality, however, the situation is much more complex. What we speak of as ‘English’ in IB is not a monolithic entity but in fact a constellation of many different varieties of English. Although this has been accepted in sociolinguistics for some time (for example, the academic journal World Englishes, which is ‘committed to empirical research on Englishes in their cultural, global, linguistic and social contexts’, was founded in 1981), empirical approaches which are sensitive to this hybridity have yet to make significant inroads in IB, despite some notable exceptions such as Gaibrois (2018). Kachru (1992) presented an influential concept of circles of English (see Figure 6.1) in order to demonstrate how the official status of English in a country varies, and that although ‘English’ may be acknowledged as a language, the legitimacy of that usage ripples out from those Anglophone countries where it is the primary, official language, through those where it has an official status alongside others (a status often found in former British colonies), and those where English has no official status, but may be learnt as a foreign language. If all these varieties of English are equally legitimate, as Kachru suggests, then BELF can act as a neutral, democratic means of communications between different speech communities of English. This aligns with the generally positive way in which BELF has been conceptualised in the IB literature, where it is frequently claimed to be a neutral means of communication that is owned by the international community, unfettered by grammatical or orthographical conventions which are often seen to be part of standard English usage (Kankaanranta, 2006). Such fluidity

BELF and its Malcontents

105

BELF

Inner Circle (e.g. UK, USA) Outer Circle (e.g. India, Nigeria) Expanding Circle (e.g. Brazil, China)

Figure 6.1 BELF and the circles of English Source: Adapted from Kachru (1992).

therefore positions BELF within a multilingual franca approach (Janssens & Steyaert, 2014), in which ‘languages are so deeply intertwined and fused into each other that the level of fluidity renders it difficult to determine any boundaries that may indicate that there are different languages involved’ (Makoni & Pennycook, 2012: 447). Although this may be a more accurate representation of the way in which languages are used by social actors, it does not account for the way in which epistemic authority over correct language use is claimed by inner circle users of English, or indeed the fact that language users may view their English language use in more discrete terms (Angouri & Piekkari, 2018). For example, an incident was described at AirCo where Indian (outer circle) English and British (inner circle) English came into conflict, and it was immediately assumed by the British employee that their version was correct, and that the Indian employee had made an error: I wanted certain delivery of certain material urgently so I requested him, can you prepone the delivery, by two weeks or three weeks, can you prepone the delivery by two or three weeks. I gave written message, I talked to him and then I gave a written message … please, so and so order, I don’t want all material, at least, for this order, can you please prepone the delivery, other materials, I am not interested at present. So, he send me confirmation, okay [interviewee name] I will give this … 20th May … I will give you 20th June […] So that situation, now in India, prepone and postpone are very common language we use here for delivery purpose. […] So there’s, I don’t know, I thought this prepone was a … but then I saw the dictionary and dictionary doesn’t have the prepone meaning. Prepone, if you put in a dictionary it doesn’t show any meaning […] So that happens. Yes, but [General Manager] being a marketing man [He], he immediately understood. Sorry, but [Sales Rep] has considered it as postpone …. (AirCo, Indian joint venture manager)

106 Language Management

This incident is noteworthy for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is a demonstration of how different varieties of English can come into conflict to the extent that meaning is obscured. Secondly, it highlights how the inner circle user of English immediately assumes that this was an error on the part of the outer circle user and acts on this basis by postponing the order, without fi rst checking with them, despite the fact that the meaning was unclear. Finally, it was a cultural, rather than linguistic boundary spanner (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014) in the form of the general manager who was able to explain how the misunderstanding had arisen. This individual was a boundary spanner in two ways – the explanation given by the interviewee suggests that it was his organisational background and specific marketing knowledge that enabled him to address the confusion. An alternative explanation would be that this particular individual had also worked with Indian partners for many years, and had travelled many times to India in a business capacity, and therefore had an understanding of the local business culture and discourse. In either case, the required intervention of a boundary spanner in this way demonstrates that the notion of one English which can be used in IB is somewhat simplistic. A further example of Englishes in conflict was also demonstrated at AirCo, but here it was accent rather than vocabulary that led to the following scenario: we have an African gentleman ring, and he’s very broad in his … and I’ve taken the call in the past and thought, do you know, I keep saying I’m sorry, email me, write it me down, because I just can’t – when he calls, we all go, it’s that chap, you get it, no you get it, no you get it, because no one wants to struggle to communicate. (AirCo, Customer service manager)

As with the previous example, this situation seems to represent an interaction between inner and outer circle users of English, where the nonstandard accent of the outer circle user is deemed as insufficient by the inner circle members, to the extent that they did not want to engage in communication using this variety of English because they found it to be challenging. In international management and critical management studies more broadly, there is a small but growing body of literature which takes a postcolonial perspective and considers how cultural Others are marginalised in mainstream management discourse (e.g. Jack & Westwood, 2006; Jack et al., 2011; Westwood, 2006). However, as Wilmot and Tietze (2020) point out, within management studies itself the postcolonial approach has not really engaged with the idea of linguistic Others, and how stigmatisation on this basis can occur. Skutnabb-Kangas (1988) has presented the concept of ‘linguicism’, which she argues to be a prejudice, akin to racism or sexism, against others because of the languages they speak. Although this idea has received some attention within the

BELF and its Malcontents

107

linguistics literature, it has been largely overlooked within IB, possibly because attention has only just begun to move away from a consideration of linguistic diversity as a functional problem to be solved by strategies imposed by senior management, towards a micro-level approach which emphasises language use as social practice (Karhunen et al., 2018). There is therefore an argument to be made that although there are many different varieties of English, as Kachru (1992) suggests, rather than them being all viewed and accepted as equally legitimate, they actually form a hierarchy, particularly when native speakers of English are present in interactions, as they are able to dominate and establish the norms of the conversation through manipulation (Fleming & Spicer, 2007) without necessarily being aware of this. Indeed, the above two examples do not necessarily represent a deliberate attempt to marginalise. In the first case, the issue stems from an unquestioned assumption that everyone uses English in the same way as native speakers. In the second case, the problem is caused by a lack of sensitivity in that the attitude represented is that if a conversation is linguistically challenging, an appropriate course of action is to leave it, regardless of the impact on the other interlocutor. However, it is not necessarily the intent that matters in such circumstances, but the outcome, and therefore the unthinking acceptance of the hegemonic status of English still perpetuates and reinforces privilege and a hierarchy of core and periphery. This is visible among the participants who would, unthinkingly and unprompted, discuss hierarchies of different nationalities which they perceived to have the best English language skills: there are certain cultures that are worse at speaking English than others, you know, Scandinavia, Swedish, Danish, usually pretty good, the Finnish, nowhere near as good, from my experience. The Dutch are usually better than the Belgians at speaking English. If you go to my markets – I mean Poland, people who are generally in business can speak some English. But when you travel round the country, in shops and things, they’re not, compared to Holland or Sweden, where everybody seems to be able to speak some amount of English. And, I mean I found that down in Portugal and Spain, the Portuguese I thought were generally better at speaking English than the Spanish. (AirCo, German-speaking export sales manager)

This is a particularly interesting list, as some of the perceptions contained within it are not supported by data with regard to the English language skills of these populations – for example, the EF English Proficiency Index of 2020 positions Finland at number three out of 100 countries in terms of English proficiency, above both Sweden and Norway (EF, 2020). Equally, there is no consideration given to how language skills within a population change over time – there is substantial evidence to indicate that within Europe, English language skills are typically much

108 Language Management

better among younger people than older people, as English language learning is taking place at a younger age in school, and instead of other languages which may have been more prevalent in the past due to geopolitical situations (Eurobarometer, 2012). Subjectification and Resistance

Despite the fact that much of the extant literature that engages with language in a critical way within the discipline of IB has tended to consider English as a source of power and privilege for native speakers – particularly for those from the Anglosphere (e.g. Boussebaa et al., 2014; Mendéz García & Pérez Cañado, 2005; Neeley, 2017; Neeley & Dumas, 2016), the evidence from this study demonstrates that it can also be, somewhat paradoxically, a source of disadvantage to its native speakers. This is in accordance with Mumby (1997), who argues that hegemony is a harmful state of affairs for all actors, albeit to different extents. Due to the ubiquity of English in global communication, there are fewer incentives for Anglophones to engage in foreign language learning, and in the UK this has led to a self-fulfi lling prophecy of a low take-up of foreign language study from an early age. This then feeds into the myth that ‘English people aren’t good at speaking other languages’, which has become a taken-for-granted belief in popular discourse that is rarely interrogated (Coleman, 2009). This creates a situation where there is a belief that linguistic Others are somehow inherently better at foreign language learning and fosters an arrogance and complacency that it is perhaps better to rely on the efforts of the other interlocutor, as the quotes below demonstrate: my experience is that most people … know English better than we know anything else. (AirCo, Customer service manager) it puts us in that lovely arrogant position of not having to make an effort really. (AirCo, Finance director) I mean it’s only our country that’s lazy isn’t it and don’t learn other languages. (AirCo, Purchasing manager)

Such quotes are illustrative of processes of subjectification due to the hegemonic force of the English language. While hegemony can be generally understood as a seemingly obvious, taken-for-granted state of affairs which frequently serves to perpetuate the dominance of elites, and is an example of domination, Fleming and Spicer (2007) argue that subjectification is where dominant values are internalised by social actors to the extent that it affects how they perceive themselves. There are already some examples of this in the literature on language-sensitive IB: for example, Ehrenreich (2010) discusses how employees felt more international and had a greater sense of organisational belonging when English was used as

BELF and its Malcontents

109

a common corporate language; Boussebaa et al. (2014) point out how certain types of accent were stigmatised by call centre workers and managers in India; and Vaara et al. (2005) discuss the shame that Finnish managers felt due to their perceived deficiencies in Swedish (for further examples and discussion, see Wilmot, 2017). Such processes were certainly evident in this research, leading one manager, when asked about international businesses that did not wish to communicate in English, to comment: If they ask, they are not suitable for doing the business internationally. They will have limitations. (AirCo, International joint venture manager)

These processes of subjectification demonstrate the full extent to which the neutral and democratic discourse of BELF (Kankaanranta, 2006) is distorted when native speakers are present (Harzing et al., 2011; Méndez García & Pérez Cañado, 2006). In the most extreme circumstances, English is viewed not just as a legitimate and pragmatic choice for IB communications, but as the only choice, and any attempt to challenge this can be met with strong resistance, as is demonstrated by this incident: I then decided that we should then have a French answerphone. So I got this French lady to rehearse the script so that at weekends, or in the morning earlier, late in the evening if somebody rings and they don’t get through, they get this English and French version. The French version was absolutely spot on for the French, but when English people heard it, they really didn’t like it, so some of our UK clients, really questioned it. (MagneticCo, New product development manager)

As previously discussed, Fleming and Spicer (2007) argue that for every act of power, there are corresponding acts of resistance leading to a situation of struggle. Interestingly, however, they posit that power which is exercised through subjectification is likely to be met by creativity, where actors seek out new and playful forms of resistance via the construction of new identities, in order to escape the internalised values that subjectification creates. In this study, however, resistance was most typically a withdrawal of engagement or outright refusal, in contrast with the more subtle forms that are suggested as forms of resistance to systemic power structures. MagneticCo ultimately withdrew the answerphone message in French after direct comments and complaints from their customers. Similarly, both they and other companies found that customers would directly inform them that they were not interested in doing business unless they were able to communicate in their preferred language, rather than English: they said ‘oh well if you’ve not got any French literature then we can’t deal with you’. (AirCo, German-speaking export sales manager) if nobody was here who could speak French when they rang up … they’d rather put the phone down. (MagneticCo, Executive director)

110

Language Management

This is particularly relevant as it demonstrates how particular types of power may be resisted in different ways depending on the domain. Although the literature on sociolinguistics has many different examples of creativity and hybridity in language use as an act of resistance to dominant forms of use (e.g. Billings, 2014; Blommaert, 2013), hybridity in language use has hitherto been rather less discussed in the literature on IB, despite some notable exceptions (e.g. Gaibrois, 2018; Steyaert et al., 2011). It also demonstrates the importance of the nature of the relationship in determining which acts of resistance are used. The relationships described here, where power is met by avoidance, are one-off transactions which are at the lowest level of Webster’s typology (1992), and characterised by market-based governance (Gereffi et al., 2005). There is no incentive for customers to engage in alternative forms of resistance which would require further engagement with the case organisations when they can simply go to an alternative provider without incurring any switching costs, as there was no incentive to make an effort in order to work with the case organisations. This is explained by the fi nance director of AgriCo: We had … obviously we had a few people drop out at the … can you give us an email stage, where they would probably think … you know this is going to be hard work … I’ll just call up a French company. (AgriCo, Finance director)

It could be argued that BELF itself is an example of hybrid language use, given its focus on communication as the ultimate goal, with lexical and orthographic norms being secondary to this, and it indeed may be considered as such when it is used among second language speakers. However, as soon as one particularly dominant group is able to exercise epistemic authority over how the language should be used, and use this authority to oppress and exclude others from using English as an epistemic resource (Dotson, 2014), the evidence from this study indicates that at this point it ceases to be democratic and instead acts as another tool supporting the hegemonic state of English. It is also pertinent to note the location of much of this resistance to English language hegemony. In some cases, the use of English is perceived as perfectly acceptable and a pragmatic solution to overcoming linguistic differences in international relationships: I must have been to Sweden and Denmark fifty times, I have never learnt a single word in Swedish or Danish. And never needed to, and I didn’t think I was being expected to. (MagneticCo, New product development manager)

As Chapter 2 notes, proficiency in several languages varies widely at a global level. Even within Europe, which was the dominant location in which the case organisations worked, there is significant variation between countries with regard to the ability to speak additional languages

BELF and its Malcontents

111

(Eurobarometer, 2012), despite the EU’s official policy of member citizens being able to speak their mother tongue plus two other European languages. However, it is particularly relevant to explore the fi nding that throughout all the case organisations, the site of most resistance to the use of English was found in France. In some respects, this is unsurprising, and can be simply explained by the fact that, as small companies, the organisations have followed an incremental path to international expansion (Johanson & Vahlne, 1977). France is a large developed market which has low geographic, economic and cultural (and at the time of the fieldwork, administrative) distance from the UK (Ghemawat, 2007), so it is understandable why it is an attractive market for British exporters and that, as such, all the case organisations in this study have considerable experience working with France, and so are able to comment on their relationships with French companies. In contrast, there are other markets identified in the study as particularly challenging from a linguistic perspective such as Japan, but these did not represent such a significant amount of business for the case organisations as does France. In contrast, the Franco-Britannic relationship is one of prolonged contact and conflict over the past millennium. Despite the fact that management studies in general have been criticised for being ahistorical (Kieser, 1994; Rowlinson & Proctor, 1999), more recent work has engaged with historical perspectives in order to explore the effects that they may have on contemporary management history (e.g. Boussebaa & Brown, 2017; Yousfi, 2014). Although a historical perspective is particularly relevant when engaging in a postcolonial analysis, and France and Britain do not share a colonial history with each other, when considering the effect of the English language, Boussebaa and Brown (2017) argue that English is now effectively colonising other former colonial powers, including France, which may be a contributing factor to some of the tensions and experiences which were recounted by the interviewees when working with France. When exploring business relationships between Finland and Russia, Koveshnikov (2015: 411) observes that ‘due to a long joint history and geographic proximity, people in both countries have had many opportunities to be subjected to various public and media opinions and ideas about one another’, and the same is certainly true of Britain and France. As a result, these public perceptions can have a profound influence on how organisational actors relate to each other, and the accounts in the interviews from this study certainly indicate a unique dynamic in the relationship between Britain and France which is not necessarily replicated in other national relationships. Furthermore, some of these tensions can be explained by the fact that both English and French have been, at different points in their history, major world languages, which was achieved through being the language of colonising powers. However, since the advent of the Second World War, English, led primarily through North American economic and cultural

112 Language Management

dominance, has largely supplanted French as an international vehicular language. As a result, many French speakers view English in a somewhat negative light (Saulière, 2014), as its dominance is seen as existing at the expense of French. Accordingly, France seeks to regulate the use of English in public life through such means as the Loi Toublon, which was passed in 1994. Although this does not specifically mention English, it is largely seen as an attempt to preserve French and resist American influence on French language and culture (Saulière, 2014). Therefore, when considering the reception of English as a global language in IB, the role of history ‘cannot be isolated from broader societal issues’ (Hollinshead, 2010: 174). On a methodological point, it is surprising that none of the interviewees in this study was French. All those interviewed who acted as boundary spanners between French and English spoke French as a second language. At the time of the fieldwork, AirCo had recently appointed a French export sales manager for the fi rst time in their history – previously they had used employees of other nationalities who spoke French as a second language. However, due to particular organisational circumstances, it was not possible to interview this employee. It is therefore vital to note that these accounts exclusively represent British (and in one case, Polish) perceptions of the Franco-Britannic relationship and how English functions as a lingua franca in it. As such, it is very possible that having French interviewees would have provided alternative perspectives which were not considered by the interviewees in this study. Perceptions on BELF by English Native Speakers

One of the striking fi ndings from the study was with regard to how some native speakers of English perceive and use BELF. Although this area has received significant attention in the literature, within the IB field in particular (for an overview, see Komori-Glatz, 2018), the views of native speakers on BELF have been somewhat neglected, and therefore the insights from this study can shed further light on this matter. The viewpoint of BELF as a neutral language of communication was certainly a minority one among the interviewees. Indeed, it was only expressed explicitly by one person who, despite not fluently speaking languages other than English, had extensive experience of working overseas and with non-native speakers, which appeared to have given them greater sensitivity to linguistic issues than interviewees who were predominantly UK based, and used lean media in order to communicate with international partners: English is not English, so yeah, there’s lots of variants of it, and so yeah, you don’t get lulled into a false sense of security that yeah, you speak it, and you don’t. It’s not our language, it’s an international language owned by everybody to be interpreted by themselves and there’s no right or wrong. (AirCo, General manager)

BELF and its Malcontents

113

Indeed, one of the major challenges that appeared to be faced by many of the monolingual employees was a seeming inability to consider the struggles that might be encountered by linguistic Others when communicating using BELF. As a result, divergent (Babcock & Du-Babcock, 2001) strategies which emphasise the differences between speakers were commonly recounted in these interviews, and the focus was primarily on how difficult it could be for the native English speakers in such situations, because they were forced to change their usual way of speaking, which they found to be very challenging, in line with the findings of Wang et al. (2020). Accordingly, it appeared that only a small number of interviewees attempted to use convergent strategies, and others refused to make changes to their speech or, indeed, suggested that this would not be necessary, because they found themselves to be quite easy to understand anyway. The below quotes demonstrate some of the diversity of opinions and thoughts on this topic: Coz then I think at least the other person’s got the opportunity to read, reflect before they reply and particularly our Chinese partners, they generally have a better understanding of written English than spoken English. So, I do resort to email as my second choice rather than telephoning. Even though I appreciate that telephoning has perhaps got a bit more of a personal touch to it. I think it kind of puts them on the spot then and then their brain must be on real overload. I know again when our German partners have come over … and Chinese, and for them to speak a foreign language, all day at work and then we go out in an evening. So it could be from 7am to 11pm they have to speak, and it must be enormously draining and tiring, and challenging for them as well. (AirCo, Finance director) I think what I’ve seen from my what, fifteen years now being in this industry doing similar sort of roles, is, I feel I’m very good at talking to non-English speakers and making myself understood in English, using correct vocabulary, speaking at a speed that’s not mega slow, but just at a speed that will help them, trying to speak clearly. I’ve got my accent, I can go back to speaking my [local] language that I did as a young kid. But I try and speak clearly, and basically, proper Queen’s English. Whereas I see my colleagues, you know, when we go to exhibitions and things, then they’re still using the language they would with their English customers and the speed of what they’re saying … You can see the customers, they’re looking ‘I don’t know what they said but I daren’t say anything!’ (AirCo, German-speaking export sales manager) I am conscious that my accent, and the way I speak, is quite problematic for people like that, and I don’t, modify the way I speak, some people go … *exaggerated slowness* OH … HELLO … GOOD … MORNING … And I, I just don’t know it. I just talk to them the way it is […] When I worked for [company] yeah, I remember being in a meeting in Paris, and they said, can you just slow down, because we can’t understand you, and these were people that were really good at speaking English. (MagneticCo, Executive chairman)

114

Language Management

This is diffi cult, because we’ve only emailed, I haven’t even spoken to them on the phone, just because I don’t know how – it’s an interesting one – I don’t know how good their English is. And I don’t …. I quite enjoy the email conversation coz I can word it in a way that, I don’t write to the Koreans as I would write to an English speaker, I sort of have a different accent, on an email. (AgriCo, Finance director) Hopefully I don’t slow down and shout and I don’t, I don’t think I have got a particularly strong [British regional] accent, because I’ve been used to dealing with people all over this country that you can’t necessarily pick up on certain accents, so I tend to have a business language anyway. And sometimes you do just have to do it that little bit more slowly, or, use more direct words and leave out a lot of the conversational stuff that, you know, if you and I were talking, there’d be more in there. You tend to leave out some of the enhancements that you’d have put in. (ToolCo, Managing director)

These accounts, which are all from native speakers of English in the UK, demonstrate a variety of different perspectives and attitudes towards their own BELF usage. On the one hand, there is some awareness demonstrated of the ultimate goals of BELF, and attempts to engage in inclusive practices, particularly in the case of the German-speaking export sales manager at AirCo. This suggests that multilingual individuals may tend to have greater general language competencies (Mughan, 2015) which enable them to empathise with others on linguistic matters to a greater extent than monolinguals, who do not necessarily have first-hand experiences of the challenges faced (Sweeney & Hua, 2010). The practice of using lean media, as discussed in Chapter 4, was emphasised, particularly in relation to ensuring the use of clear language and avoiding writing emails to international customers and suppliers in the same way as they would write to British suppliers. On the other hand, there were also accounts of English speakers who worked extensively with international partners still demonstrating relatively little awareness of effective intercultural communication. These remarks evidence a clear desire to avoid patronising non-native English speakers, as shown by the emphasis given to not shouting to try to communicate (which is a very typical stereotype of English speakers trying to communicate overseas); however, this appears to have been conflated with a reluctance even to slow down, or consider ways in which accents can cause problems and make attempts to neutralise these to a certain extent. Again, this does not necessarily suggest that these are deliberate attempts at exclusion of non-native speakers of English in the communication, but rather a lack of awareness and perhaps lower skills in intercultural communication more generally than the interviewees would care to admit. There is also a possibility that this is done in order to save face – it can be difficult for senior managers to admit deficiencies in core management skills such as communication. Therefore, if this is encountered in the form of a linguistic identity threat (Bordia & Bordia, 2015) in an organisational

BELF and its Malcontents

115

environment in which the linguistic landscape (Landry & Bourhis, 1997) is predominantly English, which is the case in these examples, this is another potential explanation as to why the burden of communication is placed onto linguistic Others. This is so that it does not threaten the professional identity of senior management who are unable to communicate internationally as fluidly as they may wish. Additionally, cultural approaches to language (Janssens et al., 2004) were drawn upon by some of the interviewees when using BELF in order to explain why, even where the words were ‘correct’ insofar as the message was understandable, differences in register and style could sometimes lead to conflict: I know I was fortunate with my Slovenian rep in that she speaks perfect English, she can be very brash with it. But I’d take that again, it’s the literal translation of what she wants to say, and we have had a few snaps on email, when, you know, over certain things, where you’re not getting the emphasis over in the right way, and through an email, it’s how you read it and perceive it anyway, as well as having a language or a cultural difference. (ToolCo, Managing director)

The use of lean media such as email has been suggested by many participants in this study as a solution where there are language barriers present. However, this anecdote concurs with studies that fi nd that where language fluency is high, email can exacerbate problems rather than facilitate communication (Klitmøller & Lauring, 2013), as messages are interpreted in the wrong way due, in part to cultural differences, but also because there appears to be a general tendency to interpret emails in a more negative way than they may have originally been intended (Byron, 2008). Linguistic Perspective Taking

The quotes in the previous section provide further support for the idea that monolinguals, and perhaps English speakers in particular, have little empathy for linguistic Others in communicative exchanges. Rather than practising convergent communication strategies which emphasise shared traits of interlocutors (Babcock & Du-Babcock, 2001) and enable everyone to participate as much as possible in the event, there is instead a tendency to engage in exclusionary strategies which reinforce hierarchies and prevent Others from effectively joining the conversation. Examples include refusals to speak more slowly or consciously trying to avoid the use of local idioms and heavy regional accents. Additionally, these accounts demonstrate how English speakers position themselves as the focal point of the communication. Rather than considering the challenges that others are facing, many of the interviewees recount feelings of frustration and annoyance because of how hard it is for them to communicate with linguistic Others who may not be fully fluent in English. Within the psychology literature there is a concept of social perspective taking which requires the ‘active cognitive process of imagining the

116

Language Management

world from another’s vantage point’ (Ku et al., 2015: 48). This idea has been drawn on extensively in the international negotiation literature in the form of cultural perspective taking, which requires organisational actors to specifically consider how culturally mediated protocols would impact the world view of other parties in the negotiation (Lee et al., 2013). Such an approach has been demonstrated to reduce stereotyping (Wang et al., 2018) and to result in increased value claiming in intercultural negotiations (Lee et al., 2013). Accordingly, social perspective taking is an area that has received extensive empirical investigation (Wolgast et al., 2020), and cultural perspective taking is argued to be an important subject for training on negotiation for global managers (Mor et al., 2013). It has also been investigated among groups of bicultural bilinguals, in order to understand how perspective-taking behaviour can change when different cultural and linguistic primes are used (Luk et al., 2012). However, based on this study, it would appear that actors in IB would also benefit from linguistic perspective taking – that is to say, to specifically consider the experiences of those who are participating in communicative events in a variety of different languages that are not their mother tongues, and how this can shape their behaviours and interaction styles. This is an area that has yet to claim significant attention in the IB literature, despite the recent interest in bilinguals as boundary spanners and the emphasis placed by Neeley and Dumas (2016) on perspective taking in a scenario where an English language mandate was imposed on a Japanese organisation, where US-based employees experienced an unearned status gain as a result of their language skills. Bilinguals are argued to engage in perspective taking almost as an automatic behaviour from an early age, as ‘they must grasp the language, and therefore the perspective, in order to communicate, as not everyone in their environment speaks both of their languages’ (Hsin & Snow, 2013). Given that monolingualism is the exception rather than the norm – throughout history and in contemporary society more people speak two or more languages than only one (Piller, 2016) – it therefore appears to be a curious omission that more focus has not been given to perspective taking from a linguistic perspective within IB. It is likely once again that it is the dominance of English that has led to this lacuna. The colonial expansion of the British empire, and the subsequent economic and cultural power of the USA, have contributed enormously to this status quo, and it is significant that both the UK and the USA are, at least nominally, monolingual societies at an official level. This may have contributed to some of the blindness around linguistic perspective taking in IB, in which the assumed default tends to be English, which is only recently becoming questioned. I think just the opening gambit about, you know, we need to get things right first time, we’ve got to have a structured approach, and I did say, you know, you don’t want to get your knickers in a twist over things that

BELF and its Malcontents

117

aren’t important. And I got all these blank looks, and I got a look from [finance director] saying … I don’t think they quite understood the analogy there … And then I thought ooh yeah, why would they … obviously. And then I went into mime … and I was trying to say … if you get dressed, in the dark (gesticulating) and you pull up your knickers (still gesticulating) and you go ‘oh, they’re all twisted, I’ve got to do it again’. And the mime I think made it even worse, but I came away from that thinking, you’ve got to be very careful about how you litter your conversation in your head with euphemisms and analogies that don’t translate, so, I find it very hard work, a week in China. (AirCo, Customer service manager)

This quote can be used to illustrate the benefits of a linguistic perspectivetaking approach. In this anecdote, the English native speaker has unthinkingly used a very British idiom when visiting China to colleagues who did not understand the reference. Rather than apologising and moving on from what seems to have been a rather throwaway comment, instead this error is compounded by an explanation which created more confusion than it solved. However, it was a useful learning experience insofar as it encouraged the manager to think about the way in which they use language with non-native speakers, although still they have centred themselves in the narrative by thinking about how hard it makes it for them to try to remove idioms from their speech, rather than demonstrating an awareness of how difficult it is for their interlocutors in the first place. Despite this, it clearly demonstrates that an act of linguistic perspective taking has occurred – the British manager has been compelled to consider, from the perspective of linguistic Others, how the language they use is understood, or not, and this has led them to adopt more convergent strategies in future interactions (Babcock & du-Babcock, 2001). The challenge, therefore, is to encourage native speakers to do this in the fi rst place, rather than being prompted by difficult encounters. Although it may come naturally to bilinguals, for monolinguals such acts of linguistic perspective taking are challenging because they have not faced the difficulties of trying to make themselves understood when communicating in another language, and therefore it is something to which they are less sensitised. The lacuna in the literature on this indicates that, unlike cultural perspective taking, a linguistic approach is not something that is prioritised or even taught in management education programmes, as they are often delivered in English (Tietze, 2004) and therefore very rarely consider linguistic issues (Gaibrois & Piekkari, 2018). Linguistic landscapes

In this spirit of perspective taking and tolerance, it is also relevant to consider the environment in which linguistic interactions occur. As has been discussed in Chapter 2, the UK is still a highly monolingual society,

118

Language Management

with fewer people able to speak a second language than the European average (Eurobarometer, 2012) and a significant proportion of these speaking English as a second language, meaning that among British nationals the figure is lower still. Despite London regularly appearing in lists of the world’s global cities, and environments best characterised as superdiverse (Vertovec, 2007) in many other large British cities such as Manchester and Birmingham, the linguistic landscape in the UK is one that is overwhelmingly dominated by the English language. Landry and Bourhis (1997: 23) define the linguistic landscape as ‘the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region. It is proposed that the linguistic landscape may serve an important informational and symbolic function as a marker of the relative power and status of the linguistic communities inhabiting the territory’. It is therefore relevant that this study was conducted among organisations located in the postindustrial towns and cities of the north of England, which tend to have greater cultural and linguistic homogeneity than their larger counterparts (Office for National Statistics, 2013). This in itself may therefore be an explanatory factor as to the relatively limited understandings of BELF that are displayed in some of the interview accounts. Having been socialised in environments in which the linguistic landscapes are monolingual and in English, many of the interviewees had a strong linguistic identity in English (Bordia & Bordia, 2015) which can cause the use of other languages to be seen as an identity threat, and therefore resisted or simply not considered at all when making organisational decisions. Similarly, social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) indicates that individuals will try to form groups with those they perceive as being similar to themselves in some way, and previous literature has established that language is an immediate and visible identity marker (Lauring, 2007). This can also help to explain why linguistic perspective taking can be a challenging task for monolinguals, as from a social identity perspective the Other is seen as being unlike them in some fundamental way, and therefore it can be difficult for them to empathise. This highlights the importance of the environment when considering language use in IB – certainly the research context of the UK and the particular geographical locations in which the case organisations are located has have an impact on the results, specifically with regard to the use of English. While fi ndings from other countries on the use of BELF obviously differ, particularly where English native speakers are not involved, had the case organisations been located in more linguistically diverse parts of the UK itself, then different viewpoints are likely to have emerged. The Bright Side of English

It is not the intention of this chapter to present the case that the way in which English native speakers use BELF is inherently negative and that,

BELF and its Malcontents

119

in doing so, they are an obstacle to effective communication across linguistic boundaries, although the evidence from this and other studies indicates that they would benefit from training in how to communicate in English in an international environment (Charles & Marschan-Piekkari, 2002). Despite the most common approach to language in IB being to characterise it as a barrier that impedes interaction, Hadjichristidis et al. (2017) point out that language diversity can also lead to positive organisational outcomes, and this is equally true when it comes to the use of BELF by English native speakers and by British organisations more generally. Therefore, the remainder of this chapter adopts a positive organisational scholarship (POS; Stahl & Tung, 2015) approach in order to explore the bright side of BELF and English language use in IB as a whole. Firstly, it was pointed out by one of the interviewees that a language barrier can actually be beneficial in that it forces both parties in the interaction to really listen to each other to ensure that understanding has taken place, rather than an assumption of understanding being relied upon because both parties share a common language, which in itself is no guarantee of understanding: In China because it’s not a main language, then they are, they are almost translating anyway. They know that they are translating, therefore they are always thinking about what does that really mean and all the rest of it. Whereas the Indians aren’t, they’re just taking it as […] You said this, because I speak English, therefore I automatically understand what you’re saying! Well, no! Not necessarily the case! So don’t fall into the trap! And that’s true for all countries, even when you’re speaking to the Germans you think they understand it and then sometimes you go away and you think, no, they obviously didn’t understand what I meant. America’s the same, you can tell the Americans something and they’ll do the same. Yeah, they’ll think something completely different from what you’ve said … no I didn’t mean that! (AirCo, General manager)

In this anecdote, BELF usage between inner and expanding circle members (Kachru, 1992) is presented as preferable to BELF communication both within the inner circle itself and between the inner and outer circles, because more of an effort is made to ensure that understanding has actually occurred, rather than simply relying on the idea of a shared language. Additionally, a number of English monolinguals said how much they enjoyed working with counterparts in other organisations who did not speak English as a fi rst language because they valued the diversity it brought to their perspectives and therefore, although communication could sometimes be a challenge, it was one they enjoyed: It’s interesting, it, I enjoy it, yeah, and I think that diversity … adds to [company name] it certainly adds to me as an individual […] I get much more reward out of my working life. (AirCo, Finance director)

120 Language Management

You know, there was no communication, but things like that, they’re the oddities that you pick up as you’re going along […] You know, and that’s unique to them, so you know, it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry. (MagneticCo, Executive chairman)

Therefore, far from being seen as a barrier, although it was acknowledged that working across language boundaries could slow down processes, it was often a source of enjoyment as well, for monolingual employees but particularly for boundary spanners who, as discussed in Chapter 4, derived a sense of professional satisfaction and identity from being able to use their language skills at work (Itani et al., 2015; Yamao & Sekiguchi, 2015). Some of the previous literature identifies English as a factor that promotes equality in organisations, both as a result of its structure, which does not emphasise formality in address compared to many other languages (Tenzer & Pudelko, 2017), and because it is a neutraliser when it is used as a vehicular language with no native speakers present (Vaara et al., 2005). Although no evidence for these perspectives was present in the study, there was an acknowledgement among all the case organisations that they felt extremely lucky to be based in an Anglophone country, which meant that they were able to use English in order to communicate with international partners, and that this opened up the possibility of internationalisation and export, processes that might otherwise have been much more complex (e.g. Hurmerinta et al., 2015). we’re reasonably successful in that we’ve met some very good people and somewhere along the line, fortunately for us, most of them have got somebody English speaking, in the companies, because English is a second language in most European countries, so it makes us incredibly lazy! (ToolCo, Managing director)

Here the double-edged sword of the privilege of English is recognised by a native speaker, in that it is highly advantageous for British companies that to a great extent they are able to rely on speaking English when working internationally. This is of benefit for small firms such as those featured in this study, but at the same time it can lead to complacency, and a reluctance to learn other languages even where they may be beneficial. Furthermore, there is an emerging perspective which suggests that linguistic ability, in both a language-specific and language-general sense (Mughan, 2015), is a key aspect of strategic agility, given that ‘language (in all of its forms) is the medium by which data from the external environment is obtained, interpreted, and used to inform changes in internal structure and resource allocation in the firm’ (Brannen & Mughan, 2018: 57). What the results of this study have shown is that all of the case organisations are extremely agile. Far from being imprisoned by their corporate jargon, which can frequently be a challenge for larger organisations (Brannen & Doz, 2012), all of the organisations have demonstrated an ability to use language in emergent and creative ways. Accordingly, they

BELF and its Malcontents

121

demonstrate all three of the key enabling capabilities of strategic agility identified by Doz and Kosonen (2008): strategic sensitivity, leadership unity and resource fluidity. The fact that so much information is available to the organisations in English is undoubtedly of great benefit, but many of the anecdotes that have been recounted in this chapter have also been learning experiences for the organisations, where employees in key positions have learned and developed language-general skills after initial setbacks and challenges. This can help to move away from the prevalent perspective of language in IB as purely instrumental, to instead helping to develop a greater awareness of language in all its complexity, and to shift focus to communication and creative solutions, some of which involve English, and some of which do not. Furthermore, this approach has enabled the companies to take advantage of their language capital by redeploying resources after opportunities are spotted, for example, by moving potential boundary spanners into new positions and new markets for development even where this was not the reason why these individuals were originally employed. Their use of BELF has enabled them to be highly successful exporters in a context where only around 20% of British SMEs export, despite enjoying the same benefits of English as these case organisations do. Therefore, the use of BELF has undoubtedly enabled the case organisations to internationalise in a way that might not have been possible without being Anglophone organisations. As language is a part of psychic distance (Johanson & Widersheim-Paul, 1975), it has been well established that language plays a role in the choice of markets in which to expand internationally (Piekkari et al., 2014). All of the case organisations have followed an incremental expansion path (Johanson & Vahlne, 1977) in which it was acknowledged that language was at least one factor in their strategic decisions on internationalisation, although it may not have been the most important one. What is particularly significant is that, as British organisations, the case companies were able to follow an ‘empire language path’ (Piekkari et al., 2014) in which significant international expansion is able to take place before encountering language barriers into countries in which English is used as an official language and, to a certain extent, is also able to continue in countries in the expanding circle which typically have high English language proficiency, such as the Netherlands and the Nordic economies. There is, however, a danger that this perceived language similarity can mask communication issues and lead to a presumption of overfamiliarity which does not in fact exist (O’Grady & Lane, 1996; Tréguer-Felten, 2018), as demonstrated in the anecdote earlier in this chapter about difficulties in communicating between the UK and India. On the whole, access to English is an important advantage that British firms have over their counterparts in non-Anglophone countries, particularly

122 Language Management

smaller organisations that may lack English language competences (Fixman, 1990). Despite the fact that these case organisations have not strictly followed the empire language path because they have used their organisational resources, particularly boundary spanners, in order to expand into other markets where the skills were available (Welch et al., 2001), it is clear that English has been a great benefit for them. Conclusion

The aim of this chapter has been to explore how British organisations use English in order to work internationally, and to explore this as a source of both privilege and disadvantage for them. On the one hand, it has been assumed that, as English is hegemonic in global business, there is little of interest to be gained by studying Anglophone organisations from a language-sensitive perspective (Hurmerinta et al., 2015). Although this has not necessarily been the case, as the literature review of Tenzer et al. (2017) demonstrates that Anglophone organisations have received significant empirical attention – although significantly less than Nordic organisations – SMEs and interorganisational relationships have still largely remained a lacuna in the language-sensitive IB literature. Furthermore, English native speakers have not always received empirical attention as users of BELF (Komori-Glatz, 2018), and therefore this chapter has demonstrated some of the rich insights gained from the study which specifically investigated these individuals who have been hitherto somewhat overlooked. The study demonstrates that although some experienced individuals in IB use BELF in the neutral way in which it is often discussed in the literature, more frequently English native speakers claim epistemic authority over the language and judge others for not adhering to what they perceive to be standards of correct English. This can lead to frequent miscommunications and the slowing down of the communicative process, but also demonstrates that, to many Anglophones, the idea of ‘circles of English’ (Kachru, 1992) remains something of a myth. Although they may accept that there are many variants of English, they are not all viewed as equally legitimate, and therefore the idea of a ‘pyramid’ of English, as shown in Figure 6.2, would more accurately represent the views of many of the British users of BELF interviewed for this study. Under this understanding, English native speakers from the inner circle position themselves at the top of a hierarchy in which they are able to determine which variations of English should be considered as appropriate usage. Outer circle users are considered as legitimate users of English, as long as their usage does not conflict with inner circle norms, to which they are subordinate. Finally, the expanding circle, which comprises the majority of English language speakers across the globe, are not seen as users who can claim authority to shape and use the language as

BELF and its Malcontents

123

Upper Tier (Inner Circle) Middle Tier (Outer Circle)

Lower Tier (Expanding Circle)

Figure 6.2 Pyramid of Englishes Source: Adapted from Kachru (1992) Circles of English.

they see fit, but rather that they should seek to emulate the varieties used by the inner circle, who are able to set and determine these norms. Dovchin (2019) highlights the linguistic discrimination that users of hybrid language practices experience. The present study demonstrates that it exists in professional environments as well, and that far from being a neutral tool for communication, the hybridity inherent in BELF means that it can be another source of marginalisation and exclusion for those whose usage is viewed by native speakers as deficient. Additionally, the study demonstrates that many English native speakers may lack proficiency in communicating using BELF, because they are applying expectations and standards that are not appropriate for these specific sets of circumstances and, accordingly, many of them have experienced challenges when communicating in English across language boundaries (which may at times reinforce some of the negative perceptions reflected in the pyramid of Englishes). However, in other cases, this can be a learning experience which can help individuals to develop language-general competences (Mughan, 2015) and therefore become more proficient intercultural communicators. This would seem to be a particularly important development for the UK, given the generally low levels of language competence and the impact that this has on the British economy (Foreman-Peck & Wang, 2014). Although the fieldwork for this study was conducted before Brexit took place, and therefore the effects of this on respondents’ perceptions are unknown, it would appear that Brexit only increases the importance of effective intercultural communication, rather than diminishing it. Therefore, it is not the intention of the study, or this chapter in particular, to portray BELF, or English speakers, in a negative light. There are many advantages to using BELF that have been outlined in this chapter, both in terms of the strategic agility of the organisations and also with regard to the professional enrichment and satisfaction that it can bring to

124 Language Management

employees who, without it, may not be able to participate effectively in IB contexts because of a lack of language skills. In this sense, English can be seen to have a democratising effect which includes native speakers, rather than considering them purely as recipients of an unearned status gain (Neeley & Dumas, 2016) who are able to dominate conversations as a result of their linguistic ability (Méndez García & Pérez Cañado, 2005). Therefore, while BELF has its malcontents, and should not be viewed as a simple panacea to managing a perceived ‘problem’ of language diversity, a more nuanced analysis presents it as a source of both privilege and disadvantage to its users depending on their linguistic backgrounds, and therefore the challenge for IB is to ensure that it is used in a similarly nuanced way in order to ensure participation for all.

7 Conclusion

Introduction

As stated in the introductory chapter, the aim of this book is threefold. Firstly, by presenting four contemporary case studies of small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, the goal was to contribute to the language-sensitive international business (IB) literature by researching an underexplored context. While there have been a number of previous studies that examine how SMEs manage language diversity (e.g. Chiocchetti, 2018; Crick, 1999; Enderwick & Akoorie, 1994; Incelli, 2008), for the most part these studies have adopted a more functional approach, using survey data in order to identify the different languages that SMEs use, and the different communication media that they use in order to communicate with international partners. By employing a case study methodology, this research has taken a micro-level approach in order to introduce the perspectives of the people involved, thus bringing individual employees into IB, which has been a typical feature of the research on language located in multinational corporations (MNCs) over the past 20 years (e.g. Karhunen et al., 2018; Tenzer et al., 2017). In doing so, attention has been drawn to how language is used in interorganisational relationships. Given that the focus of the field has been on MNCs, the emphasis has been on intra-organisational relationships, and in particular the work of multicultural and multilingual teams (e.g. Kassis-Henderson, 2005; Tenzer & Pudelko, 2017). Correspondingly, the ways in which language is used in interorganisational relationships has received rather less attention (Cuypers et al., 2015). This book has therefore provided a detailed account of the practices the case organisations use in order to manage linguistic diversity in such interorganisational relationships, and the struggles they encounter while doing so. In demonstrating this complexity, these accounts have also demonstrated that it is not somehow less interesting to research Anglophone organisations (Hurmerinta et al., 2015) because, despite the dominant position of English, they still encounter a wide variety of challenges which affect the language practices used in their external relationships. Secondly, the book has drawn upon literature from a range of disciplines in order to analyse and interrogate the fi ndings. In particular, contributions from translation studies have been emphasised in order to 125

126

Language Management

explore how the case organisations deal with interlingual translation, in its broadest sense, when working with international partners. It has particularly challenged the notion of mechanistic translation, which has hitherto been dominant within the field of IB (Janssens et al., 2004; Peltokorpi & Vaara, 2014), and drawn on alternative explanations from translation studies, with particular reference to skopos theory (Reiss & Vermeer, 2013) in order to present a way in which companies, who are often limited in both their time and resources, can evaluate the efficacy of translation activities in their international communication efforts. Additionally, work from the human resource management (HRM) literature has been drawn upon in order to better understand the motivations of self-initiated expatriates (SIEs), and how other forms of global mobility can enable individuals to develop both cultural and linguistic skills in order to act as boundary spanners and to analyse the approaches they take to crossing such language boundaries in an organisational context. Finally, it was the aim of the book to provide a critical perspective on the use of English in international relationships, so that it was not explored purely from a functionalist approach which explores in a techno-rational way the development of corporate language strategies in organisations (Luo & Shenkar, 2006). In order to do this, a critical approach has been taken to the concept of business English as a lingua franca (BELF), and how the English language is used within IB, particularly from the viewpoint of native speakers, whose perspective is often excluded from such accounts. It has never been the intention of the study to present the use of English in IB as a purely negative force, as do some scholars in the field of critical intercultural communication (e.g. Tsuda, 2013); the aim was to appraise the use of English as a tool of both privilege and oppression. In order to do this, particular emphasis was given to the perspective of native speakers who are frequently presented as highly privileged by the dominance of English, and as able to exert power over others purely by virtue of their command of the language (Méndez García & Pérez Cañado, 2005; Neeley, 2017; Neeley & Dumas, 2016). In practice, the study reveals that the situation is more complex than this. It demonstrates how the global dominance of English can serve to imprison native speakers within the confi nes of English, and discourage them from learning and using other languages. Not only does this have negative economic consequences for the UK (Foreman-Peck & Wang, 2014), but also potentially for the career development of individuals, for whom foreign language skills can act as a mechanism for career progression (Itani et al., 2015; Yamao & Sekiguchi, 2015). Having achieved these aims, this study has raised a number of key issues which are conceptualised below. The chapter then concludes with recommendations and suggestions as to how these findings can be used in a practical way by organisations that are seeking to manage issues of language diversity. Although these should not be taken as normative prescriptions, it

Conclusion 127

is hoped that managers may find resonance with the challenges they face at their own organisations (Tracy, 2010), for which these recommendations and suggestions may prove useful. Strategy or Bricolage?

One of the core themes that has emerged from this research is the extent to which organisations can seek to manage language diversity as a matter of corporate strategy (Luo & Shenkar, 2006), or whether this remains a more emergent process (Barner-Rasmussen & Aarnio, 2011). With regard to MNCs, which have formed the primary research context in the language-sensitive IB literature, the question remains open; for the fi rms in this study it seems that management of linguistic diversity is largely a matter of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, 1974). Rather than having a clear strategy and then ensuring that appropriate resources are in place to meet this strategy, instead the case organisations have largely attempted to exploit the resources that they have in place at particular temporal moments in order to facilitate new market entry or the development of new customer relationships. However, it is important to note that this ‘emergent strategy means, not chaos, but in essence, unintended order’ (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985: 271, emphasis in original). The organisations have demonstrated a high degree of creativity in order to address the challenges that they face of working in multiple markets with limited organisational resources, as a whole, not just from a language perspective. As such, the organisations have adapted a learning approach, where they have identified – often by chance – what works, and then sought to continue this development over time. For example, at MagneticCo, it was largely by chance that they had a sales manager (who later became their new product development manager) who spoke French and was happy to travel to France in order to attempt to develop this market. Despite the fact that this individual did not have export responsibilities at this time, they saw such international travel as an exciting career development opportunity and, as a result, aided by their language skills, the company was able to establish a foothold in the French market. Following this initial success, the organisation then recruited other French speakers over a 30-year period so that France became responsible for a significant percentage of the organisation’s total (not just export) turnover. However, this was a result of the use of an unplanned resource that the company held at a particular point in time, which subsequently developed into a pattern (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985) that enabled the organisation to continue to meet and develop their language needs (Piekkari et al., 2014). As a result, the language capital at the organisation became one of its most important resources. The strategy literature advises us that in order to determine the utility of a resource to an organisation, it should be determined if it is valuable, rare and easy to imitate, and how easily the

128 Language Management

organisation is able to exploit the resource or capability (Barney, 1995). When asking these questions of linguistic resources, it becomes clear how language skills are able to add organisational value. Language skills are valuable to an organisation not necessarily because of their intrinsic merit, but because of the relationships they enable an organisation to develop. At MagneticCo, the organisation was able to successfully penetrate the Polish market after unsuccessful attempts in the past once they hired a Polish speaker. Again, this was not deliberate, as the individual was recruited for their French rather than their Polish language skills, but this added value to the organisation because of the relationships they were then able to develop, which had not previously been possible without language skills. As discussed in Chapter 2, skills in particular languages may be rare in the UK, and are distributed unequally across the country. Although language skills are easy to imitate in the sense that they can be learned, there is a vast literature demonstrating the challenges of foreign language acquisition, particularly among adults (e.g. Birdsong, 2006), and specifically the difficulties in a work context, where motivation to learn a foreign language is often lower than when it takes place for intrinsic reasons (Liu et al., 2011; Swift, 1993). Furthermore, training budgets may be restrictive, particularly in smaller organisations (Swift, 1993). Also, certainly in an Anglophone context, it is not immediately clear which would be the most rational foreign language to learn from a purely economic perspective (British Council, 2017a). In terms of an organisation’s ability to exploit language resources, at the case organisations this largely seemed to depend on the agility of the organisation and, to a certain extent, where such resources are located in the organisational hierarchy. Both AirCo and MagneticCo had unused language resources because the resource in question was held by employees who were based on the shop floor or in a department other than the sales team. However, when the resource was located within the sales teams, and thus combined with the other skills necessary to make it valuable to the organisation, which is often a challenge (van den Born & Peltokorpi, 2010), all the case organisations proved themselves to be agile enough to take advantage of this through processes of bricolage. Therefore, in determining the strategic importance of language resources to organisations, it is important to acknowledge that language capital is both an individual and a social resource (Piekkari et al., 2014). Language skills reside within an individual, and therefore intersect with the other skills and capabilities that individual possesses. This includes the ability of that individual to use such skills in order to perform linguistic tasks which would benefit the organisation. However, it is also a social resource in that it becomes embedded into the organisation itself, in terms of the material artefacts that are created as a result of such language capabilities (emails, promotional literature, etc.) which then become routinely used by the organisation. At times this usage can be for purposes for

Conclusion 129

which they were not originally intended, as occurred at AirCo which used translated sales literature which was then put on the organisation’s website after the paraprofessional translator – the export sales manager – who had originally created them had left the organisation. Languages, therefore, are part of the intangible resources that an organisation possesses. However, because, to a large extent, the ability to exploit and use them resides within individuals, rather than organisations, it is difficult to do this in a structured way as a corporate language strategy would suggest (Luo & Shenkar, 2006), because employees have their own motivations and perceptions regarding how they should deploy their skills. This is demonstrated by the reluctance of many of the boundary spanners to engage in tasks of translation, as they saw this as being an additional skillset which was outside the remit of their role. The challenge for organisations, and particularly smaller ones therefore, is to ensure that they are able to react in order to use language capital that they have acquired, but that this process of bricolage does not then leave them vulnerable if this language capital goes away because an individual decides to leave the organisation. Previous chapters and earlier literature have demonstrated the dangers of relying on a single boundary spanner to maintain key relationships (e.g. Feely & Harzing, 2003). Not only does this place significant pressure on this individual which increases their risk of burnout, but it also raises the question of what happens if they decide to leave the organisation, or simply are unavailable during a period of time due to illness or leave. Given that little emphasis has been placed in the extant literature on the kind of bottom-up strategies that can be used to cope with language diversity (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018), this study reinforces the point that when an organisation has only limited resources, bricolage is a key way to deploy the resources that a company does have in a way that adds value to the organisation. At the same time, however, this creates a risk that the company is left highly vulnerable if that resource becomes unavailable for any reason. This therefore leads to a call for both strategy and bricolage: creativity and innovation in the ways in which resources are used can be highly valuable and enable new market entry, but if this then leads to the development of a mature market, it is wise for an organisation to engage in contingency planning in order to avoid reputational and relationship damage by purely relying on ad hoc solutions. Translation and Translators

Although language issues have received considerable empirical attention in IB over the past 20 years, the same cannot be said of translation. In 2011, Barner-Rasmussen and Aarnio posed the questions: ‘To the extent that translations are needed, who undertakes these translations? Are there hidden costs of translation? What is the potential power of “unofficial” translators?’ (Barner-Rasmussen & Aarnio, 2011: 294), and

130 Language Management

to a large extent these are questions that remain to be answered, not just within IB, but also within translation studies, in which translators themselves have only quite recently emerged from the shadows so as not to be invisible actors without their own agency (Venuti, 2008). At the same time, within IB, there has been an increased interest in the role of boundary spanners (Barner-Rasmussen et al., 2014; Mäkelä et al., 2019), who often act as unofficial translators, or paraprofessional translators (Tyulenev, 2014). However, this study has revealed that the types of translation work they do varies significantly, and that, crucially, they often do not perceive themselves as being translators. Additionally, given that these employees have highly visible boundary-spanning roles in the small organisations that form these cases, they also differ from boundary spanners in MNCs, who may be less visible and more difficult to identify (Mäkelä et al., 2019). Within smaller organisations, the power and influence of these individuals cannot be overstated. As discussed in the previous section, they are able to exert a profound influence on the direction of organisational strategy by shaping the language development path to international expansion that their organisation takes (Piekkari et al., 2014). However, it is interesting to note that, in this study, none of them was in a senior management role at their organisation, despite previous studies at SMEs noting that it is often the international and linguistic experience of top managers that shapes the internationalisation journeys of their organisations (Knowles et al., 2006). All the paraprofessional translators demonstrated highly pragmatic approaches towards the translation tasks that they encountered, including the extensive use of Google Translate which, despite its widespread use in IB (Sanden & Lønsmann, 2018), has yet to be systematically studied in the language-sensitive IB literature. This is largely due to the focus being on corporate policies which govern the use of practices to manage language diversity, rather than the micro-level practices that individuals use to cope with language diversity. In this sense, studies that highlight the use of relational networks to manage translation tasks (e.g. Piekkari et al., 2013) are rare, and therefore the accounts in this study – for example, that of AgriCo drawing on a network of contacts established at university in order to check translations, and AirCo working with a Polish customer who has to wait until his girlfriend gets home to translate their emails and respond – contribute to demonstrating just how widespread such practices are. It indicates that, far from being sidelined because of their informality, they actually merit further empirical study if we are to understand how companies really cope with language diversity in practice. Instead of considering what corporate language policies say, there is a continued need for studies that demonstrate what people in organisations actually do. In line with this pragmatic approach, there is an argument for giving greater emphasis to approaches with a focus on enabling communication

Conclusion 131

to take place, rather than assessing the quality of that communication against some arbitrary native speaker ideal which is unlikely to effectively facilitate communication in an international environment. Therefore, this study makes a clear case for the systematic integration of skopos theory into international management research and practice. Given that skopos theory emphasises the need for translations to be evaluated based on the purpose of the translation, this functional approach is very much in line with the arguments that have been made in the literature to support the use of BELF and other hybrid forms of language use. In particular, it aligns with these arguments: that BELF is democratising (Kankaanranta, 2006); that it encourages participation (Gaibrois, 2018); and that it encourages a focus on language-in-practice as it is used by individuals, rather than against some ideal form to which this may not correspond (Janssens & Steyaert, 2014). Additionally, and in line with the approach taken throughout this study, the emphasis on purpose afforded by skopos theory means that it allows space for the agentic decisions of a translator. Rather than reducing this role to that of a mere technical conduit between languages, skopos requires that translators use their knowledge of the context of a translation in order to make decisions about how that purpose can best be met. Such an approach is particularly valuable for SMEs because it does not always require the use of professional language agents such as translators or interpreters, which can be prohibitively expensive for smaller organisations. Instead, skopos emphasises the strategic deployment of scarce resources, and explores how the organisation can use its language capital in order to meet the needs of a communicative event. In some circumstances, this may well require the use of professionals; this is not to suggest that skopos precludes such an approach. However, the ability to engage in bricolage is emphasised: to do translation by using the skills of paraprofessional translators who were not employed for the purposes of translation; by using Google Translate; by using family and friends to perform translation tasks or to check translations which have been performed by other means; or to use other external sources such as university students who are looking for work experience. Skopos opens up all these possible agents of translatorial action which have been identified in this study. All the organisations presented have been successful at working internationally using such a pragmatic approach. However, as discussed in Chapter 6, the cost of translations may act as a barrier to SMEs using professional language service providers. Therefore, organisations need to think more generally about the purposes of their translation tasks, and the many ways in which translation can be achieved, instead of assuming that boundary spanners or professional translators necessarily need to be present. This could potentially help them to overcome the perception of language as a barrier to international activities which can only be overcome with difficulty (Leonidou, 2004).

132 Language Management

Opportunity Recognition and Relationship Maintenance

In line with previous research (Angelsberger et al., 2017; Hurmentina et al., 2015), it was noted that language skills had an effect on the ability of the companies to identify international opportunities. Indeed, among the substantial body of literature on entrepreneurship and fi rm internationalisation, there is a recognition of language skills as one of the antecedents to establishing international relationships due to how it facilitates greater market understanding. Previous studies have emphasised the language skills of decision makers in firm internationalisation (e.g. Hurmerinta et al., 2015; Knowles et al., 2006). In this study, none of the individuals in senior managerial roles had any language skills other than English. However, they recognised the value of language skills in opening up new markets, and took steps both to strategically acquire language capital aligned to markets already identified as important – for example, AirCo recruiting French and Spanish speakers – and to exploit language skills that were acquired by chance – MagneticCo entering into Poland after acquiring unplanned Polish language skills – thus showing the existence of both passive and active opportunity recognition (Kontinen & Ojala, 2011). The study therefore suggests that it is not only the language skills of decision makers that are important, but their ability to recognise skills and resources within the organisation which may be of strategic benefit, and act to exploit them, thus aligning with resource-based views on international entrepreneurship (Zahra et al., 2005). In accordance with Shane (2000), senior decision makers at the case organisation were able to recognise the opportunities that existed as a result of the language skills of others, rather than their own, as has typically been the focus of previous investigations in this area such as Karra et al. (2008), who highlight the cross-cultural skills of founding entrepreneurs, rather than their ability to acquire such skills via employee recruitment. Thus, the study points to the importance of language skills in opportunity recognition. However, of much greater importance in the data is the significance of language in ongoing relationships maintenance, and how this differed in the maintenance of various types of interorganisational relationships of the focal companies, as the structure and nature of interorganisational relationships had an effect on the practices that organisations used to manage linguistic diversity within these relationships. Firstly, as originally highlighted by Piekkari et al. (2014), it should not be assumed that upstream and downstream relationships are simply inversions of each other from a language-sensitive perspective. Despite a growing body of research in global supply chain management, indicating that international sourcing and procurement needs to be treated as a strategic, rather than purely transactional, activity (e.g. Golini & Kalachschmidt, 2015; Hanna & Jackson, 2015; Trent & Monckza, 2003), it is still largely the case that customer relationships are treated as more important than

Conclusion 133

supplier relationships, and the way in which language is managed in them is treated accordingly. The decision to actively take convergent approaches towards language and communication with supply chain partners, rather than simply expecting them to accommodate to the organisation’s needs, requires some kind of relationship-specific investment (Palmatier et al., 2007). This may be to engage in specific recruitment practices in order to acquire language skills, to hire professional translators and interpreters, or even to offer language training to relevant staff. There is therefore a strong tendency for organisations to make such investments for their customers, while expecting their own suppliers to make similar investments for them. Although such an approach neglects the idea that global sourcing strategies can be an important source of competitive advantage for an organisation (Revilla & Knoppen, 2015), it is also somewhat simplistic and artificial to draw a dichotomy between upstream and downstream, as this neglects the complex layers of interactions and network ties that exist as part of many global supply chain relationships. Furthermore, such an approach does not sufficiently explain the variations that exist between different types of downstream relationship. All the case organisations made significantly greater relationship-specific investments in their relationships with their customers than they did with their suppliers when it came to issues of language, and expected that their suppliers would make the effort to communicate with them in English. None of the organisations had acquired any foreign language capital in the language of their suppliers – although MagneticCo had aspirations to do so in the future – and there was also enormous variation in the types of relationships in which the organisations had made language-specific investments from a downstream perspective. From the perspective of Webster’s typology (1992), which was used to consider the different types of downstream relationships that may exist, relationships at the lower end of this typology (particularly transactions and repeated transactions) did not appear to be important enough to merit significant linguistic investment. At this level, the relationships are largely governed by market-based mechanisms (Gereffi et al., 2005) in which switching costs were low, as the lack of relationship-specific investments meant few sunk costs and an ability to relatively easily establish new relationships at the same level. Here, organisations were likely to rely on the use of BELF, or use practices such as Google Translate in combination with lean media communication, in order to transmit simple messages and requests. This was also the most common response taken to upstream communication with suppliers. In contrast, as the type of relationships became deeper and more complex and at the higher levels of this typology, so the relationship-specific investments increased from a language perspective. It was these kinds of relationships that merited the use of professional translators and interpreters and language-sensitive recruitment practices. However, as previously discussed, this often only took place after significant relationships had

134

Language Management

been established, which in many cases was through luck, chance and serendipity rather than strategic design. By considering the nexus of ties between language, relationship structure and relationship-specific investments, this study also points to the need to integrate perspectives from international HRM into the management of global supply chains and interorganisational relationships (González-Loureiro et  al., 2014). This is an emerging trend in a field which has previously been dominated by techno-rational approaches (Connelly et al., 2013). Although this study is located primarily within the domain of IB, in which it has long been acknowledged that organisational structure will affect both strategic implementation (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1989) and enactment (Marschan-Piekkari et al., 1999) from a languagesensitive perspective, there are further insights in this area which are likely to be gained from the field of supply chain management and related disciplines, including the distribution channels literature, which has previously emphasised the importance of effective communication. However, these fields have not typically emphasised a language-sensitive perspective (e.g. Dent, 2011), with the exception of the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) literature, which moved away from an early orientation towards language (e.g. Turnbull & Cunningham, 1981; Welch et al., 1996) to a direction in which language is rarely considered in more recent work in this area. Thus, while language skills are a significant factor in the ability of firms to recognise and exploit international opportunities, this study demonstrates that they are equally, if not more, important in the ongoing activities that contribute towards relationship maintenance in international environments, and that the acquisition of internal language capital is a relationship-specific investment which signals a commitment to a longer term partnership characterised by high levels of interaction and trust, rather than market-based governance. Power

The fi nal major theme to emerge from this study is that of power. Despite the fact that the linguistic turn in organisation studies has given specific consideration to how power is constructed and enacted through language (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000), this often presumes a monolingual world, and language diversity is rarely incorporated into this literature (Steyaert & Janssens, 2013). Furthermore, the historic lack of dialogue between IB and organisation studies has meant that the link between language practices and power is rather less theorised in the language-sensitive IB literature. The historic preoccupation of IB with the fi rm as the smallest unit of analysis has left little room for analyses that emphasise the relational nature of power (Hardy, 1996) and how this plays out as a result of language practices and dynamics. Therefore,

Conclusion 135

despite some seminal works in the field which explicitly consider these issues (e.g. Boussebaa et al., 2014; Vaara et al., 2005), this remains an undertheorised area within IB. This study has used the framework of Fleming and Spicer (2007) and applied it to the implementation of language practices in the case organisations, following the theoretical suggestions made by Wilmot (2017). Evidence of manipulation, domination and subjectification were found across the four organisations, but not coercion, and interestingly the four corresponding faces of resistance indicated by Fleming and Spicer (2007) were not found in the way that Wilmot (2017) envisaged, with only refusal and voice being present, and not escape and creation. These fi ndings are significant because they demonstrate the importance of context on power dynamics in relationships. Unlike in MNCs, which are able to establish corporate language mandates and thus dictate the language practices that their employees should use (e.g. Bouchien de Groot, 2012; Sanden, 2016), within interorganisational relationships, focal firms do not have the ability to oblige their supply chain partners to communicate with them using a specific language. The most they are able to do as an individual company or individual employee within a company is to rely on manipulation, and attempt to present their own preferred language of communication as a natural and legitimate choice. Of course, their counterparts are still free to resist this through refusal, either by withdrawing from the relationships or by attempting to present their own preferred language as a natural choice, perhaps by drawing upon the particular location they are in, or the type of interlocutors involved in the relationship (Steyaert et al., 2011). Alternatively, they are free to resist through voice, and by making known their complaints about the use of a particular language, as was observed at AirCo when complaints were received about the organisation not having Spanish language capabilities during a period of time, which had obliged their customers to communicate with them in English. It appears that resistance through escape was not present because in a supply chain relationship there is no pressure on employees to engage in a weary acquiescence which may be characterised as a form of mental escape (Ezzamel et al., 2001). Customers can simply go elsewhere if their needs are not being met. Additionally, as discussed in Chapter 6, creativity and playfulness with prescribed language norms – which can also constitute a form of resistance – may be prohibited by beliefs about the appropriateness of playfulness in a work environment. This is likely to discourage hybrid forms of language use. Although there is evidence of such linguistic creativity in a small number of other studies in a work environment (e.g. Gaibrois, 2018), it is also possible that, in particular, beliefs around the use of English in a business context also serve to prevent hybrid forms emerging (Evans, 2018). Accordingly, the most common manifestations of power with regard to language practices were structural, and appear as both domination and

136 Language Management

subjectification related to the English language. As discussed at length in Chapter 6, the English language has hegemonic status in IB, which results in a range of scenarios including the presence of other languages in organisational life being experienced as an identity threat (Bordia & Bordia, 2015) by English native speakers, who are able to place the burden and responsibility for convergent language practices on the shoulder of linguistic Others. This latter point means that many English native speakers in the study do not make the attempt to communicate in other languages, as there was a perception that it was somehow easier for other nationalities, due to differences in national education systems and how foreign language acquisition was treated within them. Additionally, it was found that English native speakers are less likely to use BELF in an inclusive way that encourages participation, and instead would use it to make epistemic judgements about different varieties of English, and to use the language in an unreflexive way with regard to their speed, accent and vocabulary, which could create difficulties for those using English as a second language. Given that the privileged status that English enjoys globally is unlikely to change in the short term (Ostler, 2011), it is therefore imperative that native speakers of the language give greater consideration to the way in which they use it. Rather than dominating conversations and preventing others from contributing (Méndez García & Pérez Cañado, 2005), convergent strategies should be incorporated, and communication viewed as a ‘challenge that requires everyone to participate’ (Neeley et al., 2012: 240). In this way, the benefits of speaking such a widespread lingua franca can be more equitably spread among all the speakers of BELF, regardless of whether they are native speakers or not.

Managerial Implications

One of the challenges faced in academia is the balancing act between ‘the intellectual capital of the academy and the pragmatism of management decision-making in the real world’ (Parker, 2003: 200). Although this research makes a number of theoretical contributions to the study of language in IB, the aim of the book is also to offer something of practical use to managers, particularly those who are grappling with issues of language diversity. This is applicable to organisations of any size, although the recommendations are aimed in particular at managers of smaller organisations who have fewer resources at their disposal. It is the goal of this penultimate section to therefore distil the findings and analysis of this study into a brief summary of the key suggestions for management practice. •

Firstly, it is insufficient for any organisation working internationally, even those based in the UK, to simply rely on English for their international supply chain relationships. Although English will undoubtedly be of great utility, and enable the establishment of a significant

Conclusion 137

•

•

•

number of relationships within a wide range of overseas markets, it is inherently a risky approach. One of the main problems that it can cause is that it creates a scenario where the organisation is forced to work with an international partner, not because of their technical proficiency or knowledge of the target market, but because of their English language skills. This is far from being an ideal method of partner selection, and can cause a number of problems. In the most serious cases it can lead to the Anglophone organisation being taken advantage of fi nancially because they are not able to understand what is happening and how they are being represented in the overseas market. Organisations need to be careful not to make assumptions that a shared language – particularly English – will necessarily ensure effective communication. Although it is clear that a shared language needs to be present in order for this to take place, it is not a guarantee by itself. There were many examples from this study where different types of English, both in accent and vocabulary, led to misunderstanding and miscommunication where such understanding was not checked. Native speakers of English are in a highly advantageous position, given the dominance of the language in IB. However, they need to be aware of the limits of this, and to be more aware of how they use the language. Although it can be very difficult to change one’s preferred mode of speech in order to slow it down, managers should try to neutralise strong regional accents and remove slang and idioms from their speech as much as possible. Doing so is often necessary in order to ensure effective communication in BELF. There are a range of convergent practices that can be included in their communication with linguistic Others. Additionally, it is important that English native speakers do not claim ownership of the language, and approach other forms of language use in a spirit of openness rather than judgement, in order to ensure that communication can take place. As part of this, English speakers can think about the different types of communication media they use, and how these can contribute to ensuring understanding. For example, it is often easier for non-native speakers, particularly those who are not highly proficient in a language, to read an email and then to respond, than it is to have a telephone conversation, as written forms allow time to think and reflect rather than requiring spontaneous production of a language. Where telephone or face-to-face meetings are required for business purposes, written agendas should be sent in advance so that all participants are able to prepare themselves linguistically in advance, not just from a content perspective. Similarly, when working in technical environments, participants can consider sending photographs, images or diagrams which may promote understanding more easily than trying to

138

•

•

•

•

•

Language Management

explain something verbally. Additionally, interlocutors should be aware of their body language, and the message that this can convey or impede. As part of this, participants in international communicative events should have a basic awareness of culturally mediated communication protocols, such as those around turn-taking, hierarchy and status, and other norms around body language and gestures. Google Translate is a valuable tool, which can help to understand the gist of a written message. However, it has numerous limitations and is often unable to cope with highly technical language. While it is a pragmatic solution to overcoming language barriers within previously established relationships in which email is the main method of communication, it should not be used in order to translate promotional literature that is designed for a mass audience with whom the organisation has had little prior contact, as it is insufficiently accurate to meet the skopos of such a translation. Furthermore, awareness of other cultures and languages can be demonstrated even where proficiency is not present by including the use of stock phrases in email greetings and sign-offs, which can help to generate a more inclusive communication environment. Organisations should use personal networks to help with translation tasks sparingly. Although it can be done in rare circumstances, it is not an effective method of dealing with regular translation requests, as it puts undue pressure on individuals, and creates a delay in responding to the original message which may cause difficulties if the enquiry was of a time-sensitive nature. There are other free or low-cost resources that organisations can use for translations or language tasks of a sporadic and infrequent nature, which include working with university students or local Chambers of Commerce who can help to advise on such issues. There are circumstances, particularly for economically important or other relationships that require close network ties, in which the use of language professionals such as translators or interpreters will be necessary. Where it is identified that the purpose of a translation is such that it requires a highly accurate translation with a specialised knowledge of context (for example, a legal contract, a technical instruction manual or promotional literature for a mass audience), organisations should be aware that paraprofessional translators of any kind, even their own employees, are unlikely to be able to fulfi l the task. Therefore, careful evaluation is required regarding whether the translation is necessary and, if so, what kind of translator should perform the task. It may be helpful for organisations to undertake periodic language audits. Although, on average, individuals in the UK have more limited language skills than in other European countries, it may well be that some employees have additional language skills which could be of

Conclusion 139

•

•

•

•

•

benefit to the organisation. This is particularly the case where the employee is already working in an area of the company that requires other functional skills in order to meet the job requirements, and for which language capabilities would be an additional bonus, such as export sales, customer service or accounting. Where boundary spanners are used, managers should be aware of the perceptions of these individuals in relation to their language abilities and any limitations they may feel. Language use is situational, and although they may be proficient in two or more languages, this does not necessarily mean that they will be comfortable performing translation tasks or working with highly technically specific vocabulary, and this should be discussed with them. Additionally, if using boundary spanners, organisations need to be aware of both the potential additional stress that acting in this role may cause them, and also the potential for them to act as organisational gatekeepers who have the power to restrict the flow of information within an organisation depending on their own agendas. Furthermore, attention needs to be paid to the amount of coverage available in other languages. Although the use of boundary spanners has the advantage that it enables customers or suppliers to communicate with the organisation in their own language, the company should establish clear protocols regarding what to do if the language node is not available through sickness, ill health or any other reason. There is a danger that if the organisation is reliant on one individual, this creates expectations in the minds of supply chain partners that they will always be able to communicate with someone who speaks their language, and if this is not always likely to be the case, then this should be established up front in order to avoid potential breaches in trust and thus relationship damage. Although English is the dominant lingua franca in IB, it may be possible for other languages, particularly other globally dominant languages such as French, Spanish or German, to act as lingua francae with customers located in nations other than those where these languages are usually spoken. Alternatively, it may be possible to engage in passive multilingualism in order to communicate with customers in locations that have linguistically proximate languages, such as Spanish and Portuguese, or Polish and other Slavic languages. This is particularly true when lean media is used. Finally, organisations, particularly smaller companies which have more limited resources, should embrace creativity and hybridity in language use, and should feel free to engage in bricolage in order to meet their linguistic needs. Although it may be possible to engage in some planning of a language strategy in order to meet the needs of certain established relationships, it can often be difficult, particularly in certain locations, to recruit employees with a specific combination

140 Language Management

of language and technical skills, who also have salary expectations that match what the organisation is able to offer. Accordingly, it is important that organisations are flexible enough to take advantage of pre-existing language skills that the organisation already has, but may not have previously exploited.

Conclusion

The management of linguistic diversity is an issue that lies at the heart of IB (Piekkari et al., 2014). Although it is no longer ‘the forgotten factor’ (Marschan et al., 1997), there are certain aspects that have received relatively little empirical attention in contrast with the large and increasing body of literature on matters such as multilingual teams (KassisHenderson, 2005; Tenzer & Pudelko, 2017), knowledge transfer (Bjorkman & Barner-Rasmussen, 2007; Welch & Welch, 2008) and corporate language policies (Bouchien de Groot, 2012; Ehrenreich, 2010; Sanden, 2016). Language management in SMEs is one such area. It is the aim of this book to have therefore contributed to filling this lacuna in the literature by shedding light on these issues and demonstrating the linguistic challenges that smaller organisations may encounter, presenting solutions as to how they may be overcome and, crucially, highlighting the perspectives on language matters of the individual employees who work in such organisations. Ultimately, it is not organisations that communicate, but people. By drawing on a broad range of literature from a variety of relevant fields, including IB, organisation studies, international HRM, translation studies and sociolinguistics, it is hoped that this book has helped to bring both interorganisational relationships and smaller organisations into the mainstream of language-sensitive IB research and, in doing so, has stimulated further ideas for future research in these contexts so that their linguistic activities join those of intra-organisational relationships within MNCs in having emerged from the shadows.

Appendix

This appendix details the methodological approach that was taken to the study. As has been detailed in previous chapters, a case study approach was used, which is the most widely used qualitative research method within international business (Piekkari et al., 2009). This approach was chosen because the research is of an exploratory nature, and set out to investigate questions about how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manage language diversity in their international relationships, and why they use particular practices in specific circumstances and not others. Qualitative research enables the black box of organisational processes to be opened (Doz, 2011) in order to answer such questions, and the use of multiple methods of data collection within the case study (Piekkari et al., 2009) enabled a rich picture to be generated of language use at the case organisations. Sampling

The sampling approach used in this study was purposive sampling, which is a specific type of theoretical sampling (Fletcher & Plakoyiannaki, 2011). This was done in order to ensure that among the case organisations there was a constellation of different relationship types, on a scale of lower engagement to higher engagement, as exemplified by Webster’s (1992) typology. The use of contrasting cases with different types of relationships was in order to generate greater theoretical insights (Pauwels & Matthysens, 2004) than would have been possible when focusing on organisations with a more limited range of relationships. However, although the types of relationships at each organisation differed, homogeneity was sought among the type of organisations themselves in order to gather a deep understanding of how similar organisations managed these different relationships, to enable a granular analysis of the choices made. Thus, context was important, and all cases were located in the north of England and outside highly cosmopolitan environments such as London, Birmingham and Manchester. This therefore had an impact on the types of language practices and resources the organisations were able to draw upon, and thus provides a situated perspective explanation

141

142 Language Management

(Welch et al., 2022) which is important in understanding the choices that were made to manage language diversity. A further, crucial, inclusion criterion was that the case organisations were required to rely not only on the use of English in their international relationships with external organisations. Although some information about this can be gathered from corporate websites, typically it is quite difficult to ascertain the level of foreign language use without speaking to the organisations. Therefore, in order to identify prospective organisations, the researcher drew upon their personal networks to have initial conversations with potential organisations to confirm their suitability for inclusion. Within the introductory stage at each organisation, permission was sought from senior management to conduct the research. At this time, a list of interview participants was requested from management. They provided this after being informed that the purpose of the research was to understand language management practices in both the upstream and downstream international relationships of the organisation, and therefore they were able to identify the individuals who were responsible for these activities. In the two largest organisations, AirCo and MagneticCo, the interviewees typically had job roles such as ‘export sales manager’ or ‘purchasing manager’ in addition to members of the senior management team who were involved in working internationally. In AgriCo and ToolCo, due to their small size, there was only one individual at each organisation at the time of fieldwork who was responsible for coordinating international relationships. In both cases this was a senior staff member, who at these organisations were the sole interviewees. Semi-Structured Interviews

One of the key methods of gathering data, and the one that is most extensively referred to in this book, is that of semi-structured interviews, which have a long tradition within case study research. They were deployed here because they enabled questions to be tailored to the specific job roles of participants within each organisation (Charmaz, 2002), while still ensuring appropriate coverage and consistency in the key interview themes which were discussed with all participants. Semi-structured interviews enabled the participants to explain the aspects of language management that were particularly relevant to their individual circumstances, while still being free to reflect more broadly on organisational practices as a whole. An additional relevant point, considering the focus of the research, is that the use of semi-structured interviews enables questions to be clarified and further explanations to be given, by both the researcher and the participants. Although English was used as the language of communication for all interviews, given that the interviews were taking place in multilingual environments, the opportunity to be able to ask for clarification was an important consideration.

Appendix

143

All interviews were recorded and transcribed post-interview by the researcher. The transcripts were not shared with the interviewees for verification following this process, as the aim was to capture their authentic and spontaneous thoughts and views during the interview itself (Alvesson, 2009). Sharing the transcripts for verification would raise the possibility that the interviewees might subsequently have wished to change or reframe some of their comments. However, following the conclusion of the study, including the analytical process, a summary of fi ndings was sent to each individual organisation. Observation

Access for observation can be very challenging to gain, although in this fieldwork it was invaluable to gain an ‘insider account’ (Ekanem, 2007) of organisational life at the SMEs, as it enabled a comparison between the values espoused by the interviewees and what they actually did in organisational practice. This was helpful to understand to a greater extent how language was used at all the case organisations. As detailed in Table A.1, the amount of time spent at each organisation varied, depending on the level of language activity that was taking place. Accordingly, the longest time was spent at the two largest case organisations, as they had the most language-related activity to observe and a greater number of staff working in international roles, observations of whom enabled us to generate further insights. During the observation process, a diary of detailed field notes was kept by the researcher, which then fed into the analytical process. Document Analysis

As part of the fieldwork, documents were studied relating to interactions with supply chain partners of the case organisations. In all cases, this included the provision of marketing materials and the company website, which was a rich source of data when considering translation, as it enabled an understanding of what had been chosen for translation by the organisation. This could then be followed up on in interviews with regard to why these specific documents had been chosen, and by whom the translations had been performed. In one case, AgriCo, the organisation shared samples of email exchanges that they had with their supply chain partners. This represented a very high level of access to the organisation and it was not possible to gain this at the other case companies. Where this was possible, these email exchanges provided further examples of language-in-use at the organisations, and therefore contributed a holistic understanding of the language practices used. With regard to the publicly available material, which was used in all cases, consideration was given to the question of what the documents

Description

This is a manufacturing company which was established over 70 years ago and works in the automotive sector. It exports to over 80 countries and as such has a dedicated international sales team. It employs approximately 80 people in the UK, and it also has a JV in India and a wholly owned subsidiary in China. This is the largest organisation in the study, as it was acquired in 2011 by a German multinational enterprise. However, given that the primary business of AirCo is different from that of the MNC that acquired it, the company still operates in the manner of an SME when working with customers and suppliers, as it still negotiates with them on an individual basis, rather than as part of the larger group. I was previously employed at this organisation.

This is a manufacturing company in the metallurgical industry which has been established for approximately 30 years and employs approximately 50 people. While it sells products in the UK and Europe, via direct sales and distributors, its upstream supply chain is worldwide.

This is a microenterprise employing three people working in the poultry industry. They are an online retailer distributing products made by other manufacturers.

This is a tool repair service which employs 18 people. They work in 17 different markets and have won several export awards.

Company

AirCo

MagneticCo

AgriCo

ToolCo

Table A.1 Summary of data collection

•

•

• • •

Managing director

Finance director

• •

• •

• •

Company website Printed marketing materials

Company website Emails between company and international supplier

Company website Brochures in French

One afternoon on site

One afternoon on site

Two days spent on site

Executive chairman Export executive (French) Export executive (French and Polish) Export executive (German) Managing director New product development manager

• • •

• • • • • • • •

•

One week spent on site

• •

Customer service manager Export sales manager (German) Export sales manager (Spanish) Finance director General manager JV manager (India) Marketing manager Purchasing manager Purchasing manager 2 Sales director Subsidiary manager (China)

• •

Company website Promotional materials in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Mandarin and Japanese

Observation

Documents

Interviewees

144 Language Management

Appendix

145

actually did (Wright, 2011), and what their purpose was, as this enabled an investigation of translation using skopos theory (Vermeer, 2012). The content, which typically related to the organisations’ products, was for the purposes of the analysis somewhat less important than questions about the purpose of the document, and an understanding of how and by whom it had been translated. Analytical Procedure

In order to analyse the data collected during fieldwork, both thematic analysis and narrative analysis were used. Narrative analysis was drawn on in order to understand the dominant discourses (Boje, 2001) that were present at each organisation around language management practices. This was especially helpful in order to consider practices from a power-sensitive perspective and, in particular, to understand the multiple and at times conflicting understandings of the role and value of English as it was used to facilitate the international relationships of the case organisations. In addition to this fi ne-grained approach, thematic analysis was used in order to understand the constellation of practices that were used at each organisation to manage language diversity, and the different circumstances in which particular practices were typically used. For this process, an inductive thematic analysis (Spradley, 1980) was used, which enabled the data to be considered in the light of existing categories from the literature, in addition to exploring new categories which emerged from the data itself. For example, the extant literature identifies a wide variety of practices that organisations can use to manage linguistic diversity. These categories were used to make sense of the data but, as has been detailed in the chapters, a variety of novel practices were also identified from the data that had not previously been discussed in the literature. NVivo10 was used to manage the data, although this analytical process itself was one that was largely manual, and the identification of categories and themes was done without the aid of software, which in this study was used in order to manage quotes and to help to organise the data for presentation and write-up. Individual and Cross-Case Analysis

For each individual case, a narrative account was written as part of the analytical process, in order to understand the wide range of practices and perspectives on language use that was present within each organisation. This enabled a rich account of how the individual organisations managed language diversity, and enabled a detailed picture to be built of the specific approaches of each company, and the circumstances that enabled or constrained their practices of language management. This enabled ‘contextualised explanations’ (Welch et  al., 2011) to be produced for each

146

Language Management

organisation, allowing the research to make sense not only of which practices were used but, crucially, why. Following this process, cross-case analysis took place, which enabled the comparison of similarities and differences in use across the four organisations. This led to the emergence of a number of themes which were present at all organisations, although the specific practices themselves manifested in different ways, depending on a variety of factors including the level of organisational resources, the type of relationship, and the significance of the relationship to the focal organisation. Research Ethics

The relationship between the researcher and the case organisations was a transactional one (Cunliffe & Alcadipani, 2016) in that access to the organisations was granted on the understanding that the organisations themselves would receive something in return. All organisations received a personalised report of the fi ndings, which outlined the practices currently in use at their organisation, and suggestions and recommendations for how they could continue to develop their international operations in a language-sensitive way. These reports were fully anonymised, so that no organisation would be able to identify any opinions shared by particular individuals, in the case of AirCo and MagneticCo. AgriCo and ToolCo were aware upon receiving the report that it was based on the interviews with one specific individual at the company, and both of these individuals had consented to this. The research was motivated by a genuine interest in furthering understanding (Watson, 1994) in the issue of language management in SMEs, and therefore the rights of the research participants were paramount throughout the process. Ethical approval for the study to take place was granted by the Faculty Research Ethics Committee of Sheffield Hallam University prior to the fieldwork taking place.

References

Agar, M. (1991) The biculture in bilingual. Language in Society 20 (2), 167–181. Agar, M. (1994) Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation. New York: HarperCollins. Ahmad, F. and Barner-Rasmussen, W. (2019) False foe? When and how code switching practices can support knowledge sharing in multinational corporations. Journal of International Management 5 (3), 100671. Aichhorn, N. and Puck, J. (2017) ‘I just don’t feel comfortable speaking English’: Foreign language anxiety as a catalyst for spoken-language barriers in MNCs. International Business Review 26, 749–763. Albuquerque, A. and Costa, R. (2018) The satisfactory cycle of terminology management in translation mediated business communication: Problems and opportunities. In E. Poirier and D. Gallego-Hernández (eds) Business and Institutional Translation: New Insights and Reflections (pp. 149–164). Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Alvesson, M. (2009) Interpreting Interviews. London: Sage. Alvesson, M. and Deetz, S. (2000) Doing Critical Management Research. London: Sage. Alvesson, M. and Kärreman, D. (2000) Taking the linguistic turn in organization research: Challenges, responses, consequences. Journal of Applied Behavioural Science 36 (2), 136–158. Anders, A.D., Coleman, J.T. and Castleberry, S.B. (2020) Communication preferences of business-to-business buyers for receiving initial sales messages: A comparison of media channel selection theories. Journal of Business Communication 57 (3), 370–400. Andresen, M. (2021) When at home, do as they do at home? Valuation of self-initiated repatriates’ competences in French and German management career structures. International Journal of Human Resource Management 32 (4), 789–821. Andresen, M., Bergdolt, F., Margenfeld, J. and Dickmann, M. (2014) Addressing international mobility confusion – developing defi nitions and diff erentiations for selfinitiated and assignment expatriates as well as migrants. International Journal of Human Resource Management 25 (16), 2295–2318. Angelsberger, M., Kraus, S., Mas-Tur, A. and Roig-Tierno, N. (2017) International opportunity recognition: An overview. Journal of Small Business Strategy 27 (1), 19–36. Angouri, J. (2013) The multilingual reality of the multinational workplace: Language policy and language use. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34 (6), 564–581. Angouri, J. and Piekkari, R. (2018) Organising multilingually: Setting an agenda for studying language at work. European Journal of International Management 12 (1/2), 8–27. Asasongtham, J. and Wichadee, S. (2014) The roles of foreign language in export operations of Thai SMEs. International Journal of Entrepreneurship 18, 41–58. Babcock, R.D. and Du-Babcock, B. (2001) Language-based communication zones in international business communication. Journal of Business Communication 38 (4), 372–412.

147

148

Language Management

Barner-Rasmussen, W. and Aarnio, C. (2011) Shifting the faultlines of language: A quantitative functional-level exploration of language use in MNC subsidiaries. Journal of World Business 46 (3), 288–295. Barner-Rasmussen, W. and Björkman, I. (2007) Language fluency, socialization and interunit relationships in Chinese and Finnish subsidiaries. Management and Organization Review 3 (1), 105–128. Barner-Rasmussen, W., Ehrnooth, M., Koveshnikov, A. and Mäkelä, K. (2014) Cultural and language skills as resources for boundary spanning within the MNC. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (7), 886–905. Barney, J.B. (1995) Looking inside for competitive advantage. Academy of Management Executive 9 (4), 49–61. Bartlett, C.A. and Ghoshal, S. (1989) Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Bell, M.P. and Harrison, D.A. (1996) Using intra-national diversity for international assignments: A model of bicultural competence and expatriate adjustment. Human Resource Management Review 6 (1), 47–74. Biemann, T. and Andresen, M. (2010) Self-initiated foreign expatriates versus assigned expatriates: Two distinct types of international careers? Journal of Managerial Psychology 25 (4), 430–448. Billings, S. (2014) Language, Globalization and the Making of a Tanzanian Beauty Queen. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Bin Dahmash, N. (2020) ‘I can’t live without Google Translate’: A close look at the use of Google Translate app by second language learners in Saudi Arabia. Arab World English Journal 11 (3), 226–240. Birdsong, D. (2006) Age and second language acquisition and processing: A selective overview. Language Learning 56 (1), 9–49. Blenkinsopp, J. and Shademan Pajouh, M. (2010) Lost in translation? Culture, language and the role of the translator in international business. Critical Perspectives on International Business 6 (1), 38–52. Bloch, B. and Starks, D. (1999) The many faces of English: Intra-language variation and its implications for international business. Corporate Communications: An International Journal 4 (2), 80–88. Blommaert, J. (2013) Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Boje, D.M. (2001) Narrative Methods for Organizational & Communication Research. London: Sage. Bordia, S. and Bordia, P. (2015) Employees’ willingness to adopt a foreign functional language in multilingual organizations: The role of linguistic identity. Journal of International Business Studies 46 (4), 415–528. Borowiec, L. (2018) Inside noise: A case of intersemiotic translation and metatheatre in radio drama. Cultural Intertexts 8 (8), 32–44. Bouchien de Groot, E. (2012) Personal preference or policy? Language choice in a European based international organization. Corporate Communications 17 (3), 255–271. Boussebaa, M. and Brown, A.D. (2017) Englishization, identity regulation and imperialism. Organization Studies 38 (1), 7–29. Boussebaa, M., Sinha, S. and Gabriel, Y. (2014) Englishization in off shore call centres: A postcolonial perspective. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (9), 1152–1169. Bovée, C.L. and Thill, J.V. (2014) Business Communication Today (12th edn). Harlow: Pearson. Boxenbaum, E., Jones, C., Meyer, R.E. and Svejenova, S. (2018) Towards an articulation of the material and visual turn in organization studies. Organization Studies 39 (5–6), 597–616.

References

149

Brannen, M.Y. and Salk, J.E. (2000) Partnering across borders: Negotiating organizational culture in a German-Japanese joint venture. Human Relations 53 (4), 451–487. Brannen, M.Y. (2004) When Mickey loses face: Recontextualisation, semantic fit, and the semiotics of foreignness. Academy of Management Review 29 (4), 593–616. Brannen, M.Y. and Doz, Y. (2012) Corporate languages and strategic agility. California Management Review 54 (3), 77–97. Brannen, M.Y. and Mughan, T. (2017) Language in International Business: Developing a Field. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Brannen, M.Y. and Mughan, T. (2018) Strategic agility: The critical role of language. In C.  Prangle and L. Heracleous (eds) Agility.X: How Organizations Thrive in Unpredictable Times (pp. 54–68). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brannen, M.Y. and Thomas, D. (2010) Bicultural individuals in organizations: Implications and opportunity. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 10 (1), 5–16. Brannen, M.Y., Piekkari, R. and Tietze, S. (2014) The multifaceted role of language in international business: Unpacking the forms, functions and features of a critical challenge to MNC theory and performance. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (5), 495–507. British Academy, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Association of School and College Leaders, British Council and Universities UK (2020) Towards a National Languages Strategy: Education and Skills. See https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/ publications/towards-national-languages-strategy-education-and-skills/ British Council (2017a) Languages for the Future: The Foreign Languages the United Kingdom Needs to Become a Truly Global Nation. London: British Council. British Council (2017b) Parlez-vous English? British holidaymakers embarrassed by poor language skills. British Council Voices, 3 August. See https://www.britishcouncil. org/contact/press/british-holidaymakers-embarrassed-poor-language-skills Byron, K. (2008) Carrying too heavy a load? The communication and miscommunication of emotion by email. Academy of Management Review 33 (2), 309–327. Charles, M. (2007) Language matters in global communication. Journal of Business Communication 44 (3), 260–282. Charles, M. and Marschan-Piekkari, R. (2002) Language training for enhanced horizontal communication: A challenge for MNCs. Business Communication Quarterly 65 (2), 9–29. Charmaz, K. (2002) Qualitative interviewing and grounded theory analysis. In J. Holstein and J. Gubrium (eds) Inside Interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Chartered Institute of Linguists (2017) Code of Professional Conduct. See https://www. ciol.org.uk/sites/default/fi les/Code_5.pdf Chen, M.K. (2013) The effect of language on economic behaviour: Evidence from savings rates, health behaviours and retirement assets. American Economic Review 103 (2), 690–731. Chidlow, A., Plakoyiannaki, E. and Welch, C. (2014) Translation in cross-language international business research: Beyond equivalence. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (5), 565–582. Chiocchetti, E. (2018) Small- and medium-sized enterprises in a multilingual region: Best practices in multilingualism or missed opportunities? European Journal of International Management 12 (1/2), 138–157. Chopra, S. and Meindl, P. (2016) Supply Chain Management: Strategy, Planning and Operation (6th edn). Harlow: Pearson. CILT (2006) ELAN: Effects on the European Economy of Shortage of Foreign Language Skills in Enterprise. See https://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/languages/policy/strategicframework/documents/elan_en.pdf Ciuk, S. and James, P. (2015) Interlingual translation and the transfer of value-infused practices: An in-depth qualitative exploration. Management Learning 46 (5), 565–581.

150

Language Management

Ciuk, S., James, P. and Śliwa, M. (2019) Micropolitical dynamics of interlingual translation processes in an MNC subsidiary. British Journal of Management 30 (4), 926–942. Clarke, W.M. (2000) The use of foreign languages by Irish exporters. European Journal of Marketing 34 (1/2), 80–90. Cogo, A. and Jenkins, J. (2010) English as a lingua franca in Europe: A mismatch between policy and practice. European Journal of Language Policy 2 (2), 271–294. Cohen, L. and Kassis-Henderson, J. (2017) Revisiting culture and language in global management teams: Toward a multilingual turn. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 17 (1), 7–22. Coleman, J.A. (2009) Why the British do not learn languages: Myths and motivation in the United Kingdom. The Language Learning Journal 37 (1), 111–127. Connelly, B.L., Ketchen, D.J. and Hult, G.T.M. (2013) Global supply chain management: Towards a theoretically driven research agenda. Global Strategy Journal 3, 227–243. Cousins, P.D., Lawson, B. and Squire, B. (2006) An empirical taxonomy of purchasing functions. International Journal of Operations and Production Management 26 (7), 775–794. Crick, D. (1999) An investigation into SMEs’ use of languages in their export operations. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research 5 (1), 19–31. Cronin, M. (2013) Translation in the Digital Age. Abingdon: Routledge. Crystal, D. (1999) A Dictionary of Language (2nd edn). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Cunliffe, A.L. and Alcadipani, R. (2016) The politics of access in fieldwork: Immersion, backstage dramas, and deception. Organizational Research Methods 19 (4), 535–561. Cunningham, M.T. and Turnbull, P.W. (1982) Inter-organizational personal contact patterns. In H. Håkansson (ed.) International Marketing and Purchasing of Industrial Goods (pp. 304–316). Chichester: John Wiley. Cuypers, I.R.P., Ertug, G. and Hennart, J.-F. (2015) The effects of linguistic distance and lingua franca proficiency on the stake taken by acquirers in cross-border acquisitions. Journal of International Business Studies 46 (4), 429–442. Cuypers, I.R.P., Ertug, G., Cantwell, J., Zaheer, A. and Kilduff, M. (2020) Making connections: Social networks in international business. Journal of International Business Studies 51, 714–736. Daft, R.L. and Lengel, R.H. (1986) Organizational information requirements. Media Richness and Structural Design 32 (5), 554–571. Das, T.K. and Bing-Sheng, T. (1998) Between trust and control: Developing confidence in partner cooperation in alliances. Academy of Management Review 23 (3), 491–512. Delbufalo, E. (2012) Outcomes of inter-organizational trust in supply chain relationships: A systemic literature review and a meta-analysis. Supply Chain Management 17 (4), 377–402. Dennis, A.R., Fuller, R.M. and Valacich, J.S. (2008) Media, tasks and communication processes: A theory of media synchronicity. MIS Quarterly 32 (3), 575–600. Dent, J. (2011) Distribution Channels: Understanding and Managing Channels to Market (2nd edn). London: Kogan Page. Dewaele, J.-M. (2007) The effect of multilinguism, sociobiographical, and situational factors on communicative anxiety and foreign language anxiety of mature language learners. International Journal of Bilingualism 11 (4), 391–409. Dhir, K. and Gòke-Paríolá, A. (2002) The case for language policies in multinational corporations. Corporate Communications: An International Journal 7 (4), 241–251. Dirks, K.T., Lewicki, R.J. and Zaheer, A. (2009) Repairing relationships within and between organizations: Building a conceptual foundation. Academy of Management Review 34 (1), 68–84. Dotson, K. (2014) Conceptualizing epistemic oppression. Social Epistemology 28 (2), 115–138.

References

151

Dovchin, S. (2019) The politics of injustice in translingualism: Linguistic discrimination. In T.A. Barrett and S.  Dovchin (eds) Critical Inquiries in the Sociolinguistics of Globalization (pp. 84–101). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Doz, Y. (2011) Qualitative research for international business. Journal of International Business Studies 42 (5), 582–590. Doz, Y. and Kosonen, M. (2008) Fast Strategy: How Strategic Agility Will Help You Stay Ahead of the Game. Harlow: Pearson Education. Ducar, C. and Schocket, D.H. (2018) Machine translation and the L2 classroom: Pedagogical solutions for making peace with Google Translate. Foreign Language Annals 51 (4), 779–795. Dugan, R., Rouziou, M. and Bolander, W. (2020) The case for hiring neurotic salespeople: A longitudinal growth modelling analysis. Journal of Business Research 116, 123–136. Dusi, N. (2015) Intersemiotic translation: Theories, problems, analysis. Semiotica 206, 181–205. EF English Proficiency Index (2020) Finland. See https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/regions/ europe/fi nland/ Ehrenreich, S. (2010) English as a business lingua franca in a German multinational corporation: Meeting the challenge. Journal of Business Communication 47 (4), 408–431. Ekanem, I. (2007) ‘Insider accounts’: A qualitative research method for small fi rms. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development 14 (1), 105–117. Ellis, N.C. and Sagarra, N. (2010) The bounds of adult language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 32 (4), 553–580. Enderwick, P. and Akoorie, M. (1994) Pilot study research note: The employment of foreign language specialists and export success – the case of New Zealand. International Marketing Review 11 (4), 4–18. Ethnologue (2021) What is the Most Spoken Language? See https://www.ethnologue.com/ guides/most-spoken-languages Eurobarometer (2012) Europeans and their Languages, Special Eurobarometer 386. See https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/s1049_77_1_ebs386?locale=en European Commission (2016) User Guide to the SME Definition. See https://ec.europa. eu/regional_policy/sources/conferences/state-aid/sme/smedefi nitionguide_en.pdf Evans, L. (2018) Language, translation and accounting: Towards a critical research agenda. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 31 (7), 1844–1876. Evans, L. and Kamla, N. (2018) Language and translation in accounting: A scandal of silence and displacement? Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 31 (7), 1837–1843. Ezzamel, M., Willmott, H. and Worthington, F. (2001) Power, control and resistance in the factory that time forgot. Journal of Management Studies 38 (8), 1053–1079. Fast, N.J. and Chen, S. (2009) When the boss feels inadequate: Power, incompetence and aggression. Psychological Science 20 (11), 1406–1413. Federation for Small Business (2016) Destination Export: The Small Business Export Landscape. See https://www.fsb.org.uk/resources-page/destination-export.html Federation for Small Business (2020) UK Small Business Statistics. See https://www.fsb. org.uk/uk-small-business-statistics.html Feely, A.J. and Harzing, A.-W. (2002) Forgotten and neglected language: The orphan of international business research. Paper presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Denver, CO, 9–14 August. Feely, A.J. and Harzing, A.-W. (2003) Language management in multinational companies. Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal 10 (2), 37–52. Fixman, C.S. (1990) The foreign language needs of U.S.-based corporations. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 511, 25–46. Fleming, P. and Spicer, A. (2007) Contesting the Corporation: Struggle, Power and Resistance in Organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

152

Language Management

Fletcher, M. and Plakoyiannaki, E. (2011) Case selection in international business: Key issues and common misconceptions. In R. Piekkari and C. Welch (eds) Rethinking the Case Study in International Business and Management Research (pp. 171–191). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Ford, D. (1984) Buyer-seller relationships in international industrial markets. Industrial Marketing Management 13 (2), 101–112. Foreman-Peck, J. and Wang, Y. (2014) The Costs to the UK of Language Deficiencies as a Barrier to UK Engagement in Exporting: A Report to UK Trade & Investment. See https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/309899/ Costs_to_UK_of_language_deficiencies_as_barrier_to_UK_engagement_in_exporting.pdf Foreman-Peck, J. and Zhou, P. (2015) Firm-level evidence for the language investment effect on SME exporters. Scottish Journal of Political Economy 62 (4), 351–377. Fredriksson, R., Barner-Rasmussen, W. and Piekkari, R. (2006) The multinational corporation as a multilingual organization. Corporate Communications: An International Journal 11 (4), 406–423. Freitas, E.S.L. (2004) Similar concepts, different channels: Intersemiotic translation in three Portuguese advertising campaigns. The Translator 10 (2), 219–311. French, J.R.P. and Raven, B. (1959) The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (ed.) Studies in Social Power (pp. 150–167). Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research. Furusawa, M. and Brewster, C. (2017) Japanese self-initiated expatriates as boundary spanners in Chinese subsidiaries of Japanese MNEs: Antecedents, social capital and HRM practices. Thunderbird International Business Review 60 (6), 911–919. Gaibrois, C. (2014) Power at work: The discursive construction of power relations in multilingual organizations. PhD Thesis, University of St Gallen. Gaibrois, C. (2018) ‘It crosses all the boundaries’: Hybrid language use as empowering resource. European Journal of International Management 12 (1/2), 82–110. Gaibrois, C. and Piekkari, R. (2018) Co-creation instead of teaching: Joint production knowledge on management of language diversity. Paper presented at the 12th GEM&L International Conference on Management and Language: The Impact of Language on Knowledge Creating and Sharing, Paris, 22–23 May. Gereffi, G., Humphrey, J. and Sturgeon, T. (2005) The governance of global value chains. Review of International Political Economy 12 (1), 78–104. Ghemawat, P. (2007) Redefi ning Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gligor, D.M. and Autry, C.W. (2012) The role of personal relationships in facilitating supply chain communications: A qualitative study. Journal of Supply Chain Management 48 (1), 24–43. Gluszek, A. and Dovidio, J.F. (2010) Speaking with a nonnative accent: Perceptions of bias, communication, difficulties and belonging in the United States. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 29 (2), 224–234. Golini, R. and Kalchschmidt, M. (2015) Designing an expert system to support competitiveness through global sourcing. International Journal of Production Research 53 (13), 3836–3855. González Loureiro, M., Dabic, M. and Puig, F. (2014) Global organization and supply chain. International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management 44 (8/9), 689–712. Graddol, D. (1997) The Future of English? See https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/ teacheng/fi les/pub_learning-elt-future.pdf Hadjichristidis, C., Geipel, J. and Surian, L. (2017) How foreign language affects decisions: Rethinking the brain drain model. Journal of International Business Studies 48 (5), 645–651. Hagen, S., Angouri, J., Dippold, D. and Aponte-Moreno, M. (2013) ARCTIC: Assessing and Reviewing Cultural Transaction in International Companies. See RCUK:AHRC

References

153

Håkansson, H. (ed.) (1982) International Marketing and Purchasing of Industrial Goods. Chichester: John Wiley. Hanna, V. and Jackson, J. (2015) An examination of the strategic and operation impact of global sourcing on UK small fi rms. Production Planning and Control 26 (10), 786–798. Hardy, C. (1996) Understanding power: Bringing about strategic change. British Journal of Management 7, S3–S16. Harzing, A.-W. and Pudelko, M. (2014) Hablas vielleicht un peu la mia language? A comprehensive overview of the role of language differences in headquarters-subsidiary communication. International Journal of Human Resource Management 25 (5), 696–717. Harzing, A.-W., Köster, K. and Magner, U. (2011) Babel in business: The language barrier and its solutions in the HQ-subsidiary relationship. Journal of World Business 46 (3), 279–287. Heller, M. (2010) The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 39, 101–114. Hern, A. (2020) Amazon hits trouble with Sweden launch over lewd translation. The Guardian, 29 October. See https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/29/ amazon-hits-trouble-with-sweden-launch-over-lewd-pussy-translation Hinds, P.J., Neeley, T.B. and Durnell Cramton, C. (2014) Language as a lightning rod: Power contests, emotion regulation and subgroup dynamics in global teams. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (5), 536–561. Holden, N.J. (2002) Cross-Cultural Management: A Knowledge Management Perspective. Harlow: Pearson. Holden, N.J. and Michailova, S. (2014) A more expansive perspective on translation in IB research, insights from the Russian ‘Handbook of Knowledge Management’. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (7), 906–918. Holden, N.J., Kuznetsova, O. and Fink, G. (2008) Russia’s long struggle with Western terms of management and the concepts behind them. In S. Tietze (ed.) International Management and Language (pp. 115–127). Abingdon: Routledge. Höllerer, M.A., Jancsary, D. and Grafström, M. (2018) ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’: Multimodal sensemaking of the global fi nancial crisis. Organization Studies 39 (5–6), 617–644. Hollinshead, G. (2010) International and Comparative HRM. London: McGraw-Hill. Holmes, B. (2017) Speaking to a global future: The increasing value of language and culture to British business post-Brexit. In M. Kelly (ed.) Languages After Brexit: How the UK Speaks to the World (pp. 61–74). London: Palgrave MacMillan. Holz-Mänttäri, J. (1984) Translatorisches Handeln: Theorie und Methode. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Hong, Y.-Y., Morris, M.W., Chiu, C.-Y. and Benet-Martínez, V. (2000) Multicultural minds: A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. American Psychologist 55 (7), 709–720. Horwitz, E.K. (2010) Foreign and second language anxiety. Language Teaching 43 (2), 154–167. Horwitz, E.K., Horwitz, M.B. and Cope, J. (1986) Foreign language classroom anxiety. The Modern Language Journal 70 (2), 125–132. Hsin, L. and Snow, C. (2017) Social perspective taking: A benefit of bilingualism in academic writing. Reading and Writing 30, 1193–1214. Hua, Z. (2014) Piecing together the ‘workplace multilingualism’ jigsaw puzzle. Multilingua 33 (1–2), 233–242. Hurmerinta, L., Nummela, N. and Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, E. (2015) Opening and closing doors: The role of language in international opportunity recognition and exploitation. International Business Review 24 (6), 1082–1094.

154

Language Management

Hutchins, W.J. (1995) Machine translation: A brief history. In E.F.K. Koerner and R.E. Asher (eds) Concise History of the Language Sciences: From the Sumerians to the Cognitivists (pp. 431–445). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Ibarra, H. (1999) Provisional selves: Experimenting with image and identity in professional adaptation. Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (4), 764–791. Incelli, E. (2008) Foreign language management in Lazio SMEs. Language Policy 7 (2), 99–120. Ireland, R.D. and Webb, J.W. (2007) A multi-theoretic perspective on trust and power in strategic supply chains. Journal of Operations Management 25 (2), 482–497. Itani, S., Järlstrom, M. and Piekkari, R. (2015) The meaning of language skills for career mobility in the new career landscape. Journal of World Business 50 (2), 368–378. Jaber, M. and Hussein, R.F. (2011) Native speakers’ perception of non-native English speech. English Language Teaching 4 (4), 77–87. Jack, G. and Westwood, R. (2006) Postcolonialism and the politics of qualitative research in international business. Management International Review 46 (4), 481–501. Jack, G., Westwood, R., Srinivas, N. and Sardar, Z. (2011) Deepening, broadening and re-asserting a post-colonial interrogative space in organization studies. Organization 18 (3), 275–302. Jakobson, R. (1959) On linguistic aspects of translation. In R. Brower (ed.) On Translation (pp. 232–239). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jandt, F.E. (2013) An Introduction to Intercultural Communication: Identities in a Global Community (7th edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Jansen, H. (2019) I’m a translator and I’m proud: How literary translators view authors and authorship. Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice 27 (5), 675–688. Janssens, M. and Steyaert, C. (2014) Re-considering language within a cosmopolitan understanding: Toward a multilingual franca approach in international business studies. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (5), 623–639. Janssens, M., Lambert, J. and Steyaert, C. (2004) Developing language strategies for international companies: The contribution of translation studies. Journal of World Business 39 (4), 414–430. Johanson, J. and Vahlne, J.-E. (1977) The internationalization process of the fi rm: A model of knowledge development and increasing foreign market commitments. Journal of International Business Studies 8 (1), 23–32. Johanson, J. and Widersheim-Paul, F. (1975) The internationalization of the fi rm: Four Swedish cases. Journal of Management Studies 12 (3), 305–322. Kachru, B.B. (1992) World Englishes: Approaches, issues and resources. Language Teaching 25 (1), 1–14. Kankaanranta, A. (2006) ‘Hej Seppo, could you pls comment on this!’ – internal email communication in lingua franca English in a multinational company. Business Communication Quarterly 69 (2), 216–225. Kankaanranta, A. and Planken, B. (2010) BELF competence as business knowledge of internationally operating business professionals. Journal of Business Communication 47 (4), 380–407. Kankaanranta, A., Karhunen, P. and Louhiala-Salminen, L. (2018) ‘English as corporate language’ in the multilingual reality of multinational companies. Multilingua 37 (4), 331–351. Karhunen, P., Kankaanranta, A., Louhiala-Salminen, L. and Piekkari, R. (2018) Let’s talk about language: A review of language-sensitive research in international management. Journal of Management Studies 55 (6), 980–1013. Karra, N., Phillips, N. and Tracey, P. (2008) Building the born global fi rm: Developing entrepreneurial capabilities for international new venture success. Long Range Planning 41 (4), 440–458.

References

155

Kassis-Henderson, J. (2005) Language diversity in international management teams. International Studies of Management and Organization 35 (1), 68–82. Kieser, A. (1994) Why organization theory needs historical analyses – and how these should be performed. Organization Science 5, 608–620. Kiessling, T., Harvey, M. and Akdeniz, L. (2014) The evolving role of supply chain managers in global channels of distribution and logistics systems. International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management 44 (8/9), 671–688. Klitmøller, A. and Lauring, J. (2013) When global virtual teams share knowledge: Media richness, cultural difference and language commonality. Journal of World Business 48 (3), 398–406. Klitmøller, A., Schneider, S.C. and Jonsen, K. (2015) Speaking of global virtual teams: Language differences, social categorization and media choice. Personnel Review 44 (2), 270–285. Knowles, D., Mughan, T. and Lloyd-Reson, L. (2006) Foreign language use among decision-makers of successfully internationalised SMEs: Questioning the languagetraining paradigm. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development 13 (4), 620–641. Komori-Glatz, M. (2018) Conceptualising English as a business lingua franca. European Journal of International Management 12 (1/2), 46–61. Kontinen, T. and Ojala, A. (2011) International opportunity recognition among small and medium-sized family fi rms. Journal of Small Business Management 49 (3), 490–514. Koskinen, K. (2014) Translating Institutions: An Ethnographic Study of EU Translation. London: Routledge. Koveshnikov, A. (2015) Finns, Russians, and the smokescreen of ‘culture’: A micropolitical perspective on managerial struggles in multinationals. In N.J. Holden, S.  Michailova and S. Tietze (eds) The Routledge Companion to Cross-Cultural Management (pp. 409–419). Abingdon: Routledge. Kroon, D.P., Cornelissen, J.P. and Vaara, E. (2015) Explaining employees’ reactions towards a cross-border merger: The role of English language fluency. Management International Review 55 (6), 775–800. Ku, G., Wang, C.S. and Galinsky, A.D. (2015) The promise and perversity of perspectivetaking in organizations. Research in Organizational Behaviour 35, 79–102. LaFromboise, T., Coleman, H.L.K. and Gerton, J. (1993) Psychological impact of biculturalism: Evidence and theory. Psychological Bulletin 114 (3), 395–412. Landry, R. and Bourhis, R.Y. (1997) Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16 (1), 23–49. Lauring, J. (2007) Language and ethnicity in international management. Corporate Communications: An International Journal 12 (3), 255–266. Lauring, J. and Klitmøller, A. (2015) Corporate language-based communication avoidance in MNCs or a multi-sited ethnography approach. Journal of World Business 50 (1), 46–55. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, S., Adair, W.L. and Seo, S.-J. (2013) Cultural perspective taking in cross-cultural negotiation. Group Decision and Negotiation 22, 389–405. Lee, Y. (2010) Home versus host – identifying with either, both, or neither? The relationship between dual cultural identities and intercultural effectiveness. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 10 (1), 55–76. Lefsrud, L., Graves, H. and Phillips, N. (2020) ‘Giant toxic lakes you can see from space’: A theory of multimodal messages and emotion in legitimacy work. Organization Studies 41 (8), 1055–1078. Leonidou, L.C. (2004) An analysis of the barriers hindering small business export development. Journal of Small Business Management 42 (3), 279–302. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1974) The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

156 Language Management

Liu, M., Huang, W. and John, C.K. (2011) An exploration of foreign language anxiety and English learning motivation. Education Research International 12 (5), 1–8. Logemann, M. and Piekkari, R. (2015) Localize or local lies? The power of language and translation in the multinational corporation. Critical Perspectives on International Business 11 (1), 30–53. Lønsmann, D. (2015) Language ideologies in a Danish company with English as a corporate language: ‘It has to be English’. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 36 (4), 339–356. Lønsmann, D. and Kraft, K. (2018) Language policy and practice in multilingual production workplaces. Multilingua 37 (4), 403–427. López Duarte, C., Vidal Suárez, M.M. and González Díaz, B. (2015) International business and national culture: A literature review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews 18 (4), 397–416. Louhiala-Salminen, L. and Kankaanranta, A. (2012) Language as an issue in international internal communication: English or local language? If English, what English? Public Relations Review 38 (2), 262–269. Louhiala-Salminen, L., Charles, M. and Kankaanranta, A. (2005) English as a lingua franca in Nordic corporate mergers: Two case companies. English for Specific Purposes 24 (4), 401–421. Lowe, S., Ellis, N. and Purchase, S. (2008) Rethinking language in IMP research: Networking processes in other words. Scandinavian Journal of Management 24, 295–307. Luk, K.S., Xiao, W.S. and Cheung, H. (2012) Cultural effect on perspective taking in Chinese-English bilinguals. Cognition 124 (3), 350–355. Luo, Y. and Shenkar, O. (2006) The multinational corporation as a multilingual community: Language and organization in a global context. Journal of International Business Studies 37 (3), 321–339. Maclean, D. (2006) Beyond English: Transnational corporations and the strategic management of language in a complex multilingual business environment. Management Decision 44 (10), 1377–1390. Mac Sithigh, D. (2018) Official status of languages in the UK and Ireland. Common Law World Review 47 (1), 77–102. Mäkelä, K., Barner-Rasmussen, W., Ehrnrooth, M. and Koveshnikov, A. (2019) Potential and recognised boundary spanners in multinational corporations. Journal of World Business 54 (4), 335–349. Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2012) Disinventing multilingualism: From monological multilingualism to multilingual franca. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge and A.  Creese (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism (pp. 439–453). Abingdon: Routledge. Marschan, R., Welch, D.E and Welch, L.S. (1997) Language: The forgotten factor in multinational management. European Management Journal 15 (5), 591–598. Marschan-Piekkari, R., Welch, D.E. and Welch, L.S. (1999) In the shadow: The impact of language on structure, power and communication in the multinational. International Business Review 8 (4), 421–440. Matras, Y. (2019) Improving the census question on ‘language’ could help repair community relations and Britain’s international image post-Brexit. Policy@Manchester blog, 1 April. See http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/growth_inclusion/2019/04/ improving-the-census-question-on-language-could-help-repair-community-relationsand-britains-international-image-post-brexit/ Mellinger, C.D. (2018) Re-thinking translation quality: Revision in the digital age. Target 30 (2), 310–331. Méndez García, M.C. and Pérez Cañado, M.L. (2005) Language and power: Raising awareness of the role of language in multicultural teams. Language and Intercultural Communication 5 (1), 86–104.

References

157

Meyer, R.E., Jancsary, D., Höllerer, M.A. and Boxenbaum, E. (2018) The role of verbal and visual text in the process of institutionalization. Academy of Management Review 43 (3), 392–418. Mikitani, H. (2013) Marketplace 3.0: Rewriting the Rules of Borderless Business. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Mintzberg, H. and Waters, J.A. (1985) Of strategies, deliberate and emergent. Strategic Management Journal 6 (3), 257–272. Mor, S., Morris, M. and Joh, J. (2013) Identifying and training adaptive cross-cultural management skills: The crucial role of cultural metacognition. Academy of Management Learning and Education 12 (3), 453–475. Mughan, T. (2015) Introduction: Language and languages: Moving from the periphery to the core. In N. Holden, S. Michailova and S. Tietze (eds) The Routledge Companion to Cross-Cultural Management (pp. 79–84). Abingdon: Routledge. Mumby, D.K. (1997) The problem of hegemony: Rereading Gramsci for organizational communication studies. Western Journal of Communication 61 (4), 343–375. Munday, J. (2004) Advertising: Some challenges to translation theory. The Translator 10 (2), 199–219. Munday, J. (2016) Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications (4th edn). Abingdon: Routledge. Muñoz Gómez, E. (2020) Non-professional translation in an Irish business setting: Considerations for global theory and national policy. Translation Studies 13 (2), 197–215. Neeley, T. (2017) The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Neeley, T.B. and Dumas, T.L. (2016) Unearned status gain: Evidence from a global language mandate. Academy of Management Journal 59 (1), 14–43. Neeley, T.B., Hinds, P.J. and Durnell Cramton, C. (2012) The (un)hidden turmoil of language in global collaboration. Organization Dynamics 41 (3), 236–244. Nickerson, C. (2005) English as a lingua franca in international business contexts. English for Specifi c Purposes 24 (4), 367–380. Nord, C. (1997) Translating as Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome Press. Nunes Vieira, L. (2020) Automation anxiety and translators. Translation Studies 13 (1), 1–21. Office for National Statistics (2013) Language in England and Wales: 2011. See https:// www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/language/articles/ languageinenglandandwales/2013-03-04 O’Grady, S. and Lane, H.W. (1996) The psychic distance paradox. Journal of International Business Studies 27 (2), 309–333. Ooesterhuis, M., Molleman, E. and Van der Vaart, T. (2013) Differences in buyers’ and suppliers’ perceptions of supply chain attributes. International Journal of Production Economics 142 (1), 158–171. Ostler, N. (2011) The Last Lingua Franca: The Rise and Fall of World Languages. London: Penguin. Pachler, N. (2007) Choices in language education: Principles and policies. Cambridge Journal of Education 37 (1), 1–15. Palmatier, R., Dant, R. and Grewal, D. (2007) A comparative longitudinal analysis of theoretical perspectives of interorganizational relationship performance. Journal of Marketing 71 (3), 172–194. Park, H., Hwang, S.D. and Harrison, J.K. (1996) Sources and consequences of communication problems in foreign subsidiaries: The case of United States fi rms in South Korea. International Business Review 5 (1), 79–98. Park, K. and Mense-Petermann, U. (2014) Managing across borders: Global integration and knowledge exchange in MNCs. Competition and Change 18 (3), 265–279.

158

Language Management

Parker, M. (2003) Business, ethics and business ethics: Critical theory and negative dialectics. In M. Alvesson and H. Willmott (eds) Studying Management Critically (pp. 197–219). London: Sage. Patil, S. and Davies, P. (2014) Use of Google Translate in medical communication: Evaluation of accuracy. British Medical Journal 349: g7392. Pauwels, P. and Matthyssens, P. (2004) The architecture of multiple case study research in international business. In R. Marschan-Piekkari and C. Welch (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for International Business (pp. 125–144). Cheltenham: Edwin Elgar. Peltokorpi, V. (2007) Intercultural communication patterns and tactics: Nordic expatriates in Japan. International Business Review 16 (1), 68–82. Peltokorpi, V. and Froese, F.J. (2009) Organizational expatriates and self-initiated expatriates: Who adjusts better to work and life in Japan? International Journal of Human Resource Management 20 (5), 1096–1112. Peltokorpi, V. and Vaara, E. (2014) Knowledge transfer in multinational corporations: Productive and counterproductive effects of language-sensitive recruitment. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (5), 600–622. Peltokorpi, V., Sekiguchi, T. and Yamao, S. (2021) Expatriate justice and host country nationals’ work outcomes: Does host country nationals’ language proficiency matter? Journal of International Management 27 (1), 1–16. Pennycook, A. (1994) The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. Harlow: Longman. Pérez-González, L. and Susam-Saraeva, S. (2012) Non-professionals translating and interpreting participatory and engaged perspectives. The Translator 18 (2), 149–165. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. New York: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (2009) Linguistic Imperialism Continued. New York: Routledge. Piekkari, R., Vaara, E., Tienari, J. and Säntii, R. (2005) Integration or disintegration? Human resource implications of a common corporate language decision in a crossborder merger. International Journal of Human Resource Management 16 (3), 330–344. Piekkari, R., Welch, C. and Paavilainen, E. (2009) The case study as disciplinary convention: Evidence from international business journals. Organizational Research Methods 12 (3), 567–589. Piekkari, R., Welch, D.E., Welch, L.S., Peltonen, J.-P. and Vesa, T. (2013) Translation behaviour: An exploratory study with a service multinational. International Business Review 22 (5), 771–783. Piekkari, R., Welch, D.E. and Welch, L.S. (2014) Language in International Business: The Multilingual Reality of Global Business Expansion. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Piekkari, R., Oxelheim, L. and Randøy, T. (2015) The silent board: How language diversity may influence the work processes of corporate boards. Corporate Governance: An International Review 23 (1), 25–41. Piller, I. (2011) Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Piller, I. (2016) Monolingual ways of seeing multilingualism. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 11 (1), 25–33. PIMLICO Project (2011) Report on Language Management Strategies and Best Practice in European SMEs: The PIMLICO Project. See https://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/languages/policy/strategic-framework/documents/pimlico-full-report_en.pdf Polisca, E., Wright, V., Álvarez, I. and Montoro, C. (2019) Language Provision in UK MFL Departments 2019 Survey. Report No. 2, December. University Council of Modern Languages (UCML). Poncini, G. (2003) Multicultural business meetings and the role of languages other than English. Journal of Intercultural Studies 24 (1), 17–32.

References

159

Prajogo, D., Mena, C. and Chowdhury, M. (2021) The role of strategic collaborations and relational capital in enhancing product performance: A moderated-mediated model. International Journal of Operations and Production Management 41 (3), 206–226. Pullin, P. (2010) Small talk, rapport, and international communicative competence: Lessons to learn from BELF. Journal of Business Communication 47 (4), 455–476. Pym, A. (2014) Exploring Translation Theories (2nd edn). London: Routledge. Reiss, K. and Vermeer, H.J. (2013) Towards a General Theory of Translational Action (C. Nord, trans.). Abingdon: Routledge. Rettinger, S. (2011) Construction and display of competence and (professional) identity in coaching interactions. Journal of Business Communication 48 (4), 426–445. Revilla, E. and Knoppen, D. (2015) Building knowledge integration in buyer-supplier relationships: The critical role of strategic supply management and trust. International Journal of Operations and Production Management 35 (10), 1408–1436. Ribeiro, R. (2007) The language barrier as an aid to communication. Social Studies of Science 37 (4), 561–584. Ringberg, T.V., Luna, D., Reihlen, M. and Peracchio, L.A. (2010) Bicultural-bilinguals: The eff ect of cultural frame switching on translation equivalence. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 10 (1), 77–92. Rogerson-Revell, P. (2010) ‘Can you spell that for us nonnative speakers?’: Accommodation strategies in international business meetings. Journal of Business Communication 47 (4), 432–454. Rowlinson, M. and Procter, S. (1999) Organizational culture and business history. Organization Studies 20 (3), 369–396. San Antonio, P.M. (1987) Social mobility and language use in an American company in Japan. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 6 (3/4), 191–200. Sanden, G.R. (2016) Language strategies in multinational corporations: A cross-sector study of financial service companies and manufacturing companies. AIB Insights 16 (3), 18–21. Sanden, G.R. and Kankaanranta, A. (2018) ‘English is an unwritten rule here’: Nonformalised language policies in multinational corporations. Corporate Communications: An International Journal 23 (1), 544–566. Sanden, G.R. and Lønsmann, D. (2018) Discretionary power on the front line: A bottomup perspective on corporate language management. European Journal of International Management 12 (1/2) 111–137. Santacreu-Vasut, E., Shenkar, O. and Shoham, A. (2014) Linguistic gender-marking and its international business ramifications. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (2), 1170–1178. Saulière, J. (2014) Corporate language: The blind spot of language policy? Reflections on France’s Loi Toublon. Current Issues in Language Planning 15 (2), 220–235. Sebba, M. (2018) Awkward questions: Language issues in the 2011 census in England. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 39 (2), 181–193. Selmer, J. and Lauring, J. (2015) Host country language ability and expatriate adjustment: The moderating eff ect of language difficulty. International Journal of Human Resource Management 26 (3), 401–420. Shachaf, P. (2008) Cultural diversity and information and communication technology impacts on global virtual teams: An exploratory study. Information and Management 45 (2), 131–142. Shane, S. (2000) Prior knowledge and the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities. Organization Science 11 (4), 448–469. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1988) Multilingualism and the education of minority children. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas and J. Cummins (eds) Minority Education: From Shame to Struggle (pp. 9–44). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Śliwa, M. and Johansson, M. (2014) How non-native English-speaking staff are evaluated in linguistically diverse organizations: A sociolinguistic perspective. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (9), 1133–1151.

160 Language Management

Snell-Hornby, M. (1995) Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach (revised edn). Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Spivak, G.C. (2012) The politics of translation. In L. Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader (3rd edn) (pp. 312–330). Abingdon: Routledge. Spradley, J.P. (1980) Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Stahl, G. and Tung, R. (2015) Towards a more balanced treatment of culture in international business studies: The need for positive cross-cultural scholarship. Journal of International Business Studies 46 (4), 391–414. Steyaert, C., Ostendorp, A. and Gaibrois, C. (2011) Multilingual organizations as ‘linguascapes’: Negotiating the position of English through discursive practices. Journal of World Business 46 (3), 270–278. Steyaert, C. and Janssens, M. (2013) Multilingual scholarship and the paradox of translation and language in management and organisation studies. Organization 20 (1), 131–142 Stone, K.S. (2011) Integrating media synchronicity theory and global mindset to improve cross-cultural communication performance. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Maryland University College. Sui, S., Morgan, H.M. and Baum, M. (2015) Internationalization of immigrant-owned SMEs: The role of language. Journal of World Business 50 (4), 804–814. Suutari, V. and Brewster, C. (2000) Making their own way: International experience through self-initiated foreign assignments. Journal of World Business 35 (4), 417–436. Sweeney, E. and Hua, Z. (2010) Accommodating toward your audience: Do native speakers of English know how to accommodate their communication strategies toward nonnative speakers of English? Journal of Business Communication 47 (4), 477–504. Swift, J.S. (1993) Problems with learning foreign languages for international business. Journal of European Industrial Training 17 (10), 35–42. Swift, J. and Wallace, J.S. (2011) Using English as the common corporate language in a German multinational. Journal of European Industrial Training 35 (9), 892–913. Taira, B.R., Kreger, V., Orue, A. and Diamond, L.C. (2021) A pragmatic assessment of Google Translate for emergency department instructions. Journal of General Internal Medicine 36 (11), 3361–3365. doi:10.1007/s11606-021-06666-z Tajfel, H. and Turner, J.C. (1979) An integrative theory of intergroup confl ict. In W.G. Austin and S. Worchel (eds) The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Tange, H. and Lauring, J. (2009) Language management and social interaction within the multilingual workplace. Journal of Communication Management 13 (3), 218–232. Teimouri, Y., Goetze, J. and Plonsky, L. (2019) Second language anxiety and achievement: A meta-analysis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 41 (2), 363–387. Tenzer, H. and Pudelko, M. (2015) Leading across language barriers: Managing language induced emotions in multinational teams. The Leadership Quarterly 26 (4), 606–625. Tenzer, H. and Pudelko, M. (2016) Media choice in multilingual virtual teams. Journal of International Business Studies 47 (4), 427–452. Tenzer, H. and Pudelko, M. (2017) The influences of language differences on power dynamics in multinational teams. Journal of World Business 52 (1), 45–61. Tenzer, H., Pudelko, M. and Harzing, A.-W. (2014) The impact of language barriers on trust formation in multinational teams. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (5), 508–535. Tenzer, H., Terjesen, S. and Harzing, A.-W. (2017) Language in international business: A review and agenda for future research. Management International Review 57 (6), 815–854. Thorn, K. (2009) The relative importance of motives for international self-initiated mobility. Career Development International 14 (5), 441–464.

References

161

Tibrewal, A. (2021) LO-C 30 Report: Role of Languages in International Performance of UK SMEs. See https://atc.org.uk/research-and-initiatives/lo-c-30-report/ Tietze, S. (2004) Spreading the management gospel – in English. Language and Intercultural Communication 4 (3) 175–189. Tietze, S. (2008) International Management and Language. Abingdon: Routledge. Tietze, S. and Dick, P. (2013) The victorious English language: Hegemonic practices in the management academy. Journal of Management Inquiry 22 (1), 122–134. Tietze, S., Tansley, C. and Helienek, E. (2017) The translator as agent in management knowledge transfer. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 17 (1), 151–169. Tracy, S.J. (2010) Qualitative quality: Eight ‘big-tent’ criteria for excellent qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry 16 (10), 837–851. Tréguer-Felten, G. (2018) Langue Commune, Cultures Distinctes: Les Illusions du ‘Globish’. Quebec: Laval University Press. Trent, R.J. and Monczka, R.M. (2003) Understanding integrated global sourcing. International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management 33 (7), 607–629. Tsialikis, J., Ortiz-Buonafi na, M. and Latour, M.S. (1992) The role of accent on the credibility and effectiveness of the international business person: The case of Guatemala. International Marketing Review 9 (4), 57–72. Tsuda, Y. (2013) Speaking against the hegemony of English: Problems, ideologies and solutions. In T.K. Nakayama and R.T. Halualani (eds) The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (pp. 248–269). Chichester: Blackwell. Turnbull, P. and Cunningham, M.T. (eds) (1981) International Marketing and Purchasing: A Survey among Marketing and Purchasing Executives in Five European Countries. London: Macmillan. Turovsky, B. (2016) Found in translation: More accurate, fluent sentences in Google Translate. The Keyword blog, 15 November. See https://blog.google/products/translate/found-translation-more-accurate-fluent-sentences-google-translate/ Tyulenev, S. (2014) Translation and Society: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. Vaara, E., Tienari, J., Piekkari, R. and Säntii, R. (2005) Language and the circuits of power in a merging multinational corporation. Journal of Management Studies 42 (3) 595–623. van den Born, F. and Peltokorpi, V. (2010) Language policies and communication in multinational companies: Alignment with strategic orientation and human resource management practices. Journal of Business Communication 47 (2), 97–118. Van Laere, K. and Heene, A. (2003) Social networks as a source of competitive advantage for the fi rm. Journal of Workplace Learning 15 (6), 248–258. Veléz-Rendón, G. (2010) From social identity to professional identity: Issues of language and gender. Foreign Language Annals 43 (4), 635–649. Venuti, L. (1993) Translation as cultural politics: Regimes of domestication in English. Textual Practice 7 (2), 208–223. Venuti, L. (2008) The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (2nd edn). Abingdon: Routledge. Vermeer, H.J. (2012) Skopos and commission in translation theory. In L. Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader (3rd edn) (pp. 191–202). Abingdon: Routledge. Vertovec, S. (2007) Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6), 1024–1054. Vigier, M. and Spencer-Oatey, H. (2017) Code-switching in newly formed multinational project teams: Challenges, strategies and effects. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 17 (1), 23–37. Volk, S., Köhler, T. and Pudelko, M. (2014) Brain drain: The cognitive neuroscience of foreign language processing multinational corporations. Journal of International Business Studies 45 (7), 862–885.

162

Language Management

Vulchanov, I.O. (2020) An outline for an integrated language-sensitive approach to global work and mobility: Cross-fertilising expatriate and international business and management research. Journal of Global Mobility 8 (3/4), 325–351. Wang, C.S., Lee, M., Ku, G. and Leung, A. K.-Y. (2018) The cultural boundaries of perspective-raking: When and why perspective-taking reduces stereotyping. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 4 (6), 928–943. Wang, Q., Clegg, J., Gajewska-De Mattos, H. and Buckley, P. (2020) The role of emotions in intercultural business communication: Language standardization in the context of international knowledge transfer. Journal of World Business 55 (6), 100973. Wathne, K.H. and Heide, J.B. (2004) Relationship governance in a supply chain network. Journal of Marketing 68 (1), 73–89. Watson, T.J. (1994) Managing, crafting and researching: Words, skill and imagination in shaping management research. British Journal of Management 5, S77–S87. Webster, F.E. (1992) The changing role of marketing in the corporation. Journal of Marketing 56 (4) 1–17. Welch, C., Piekkari, R., Plakoyiannaki, E. and Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, E. (2011) Theorising from case studies: Towards a pluralist future for international business research. Journal of International Business Studies 42, 740–762. Welch, C., Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, E., Piekkari, R. and Plakoyiannaki, E. (2022) Reconciling theory and context: How the case study can set a new agenda for international business research. Journal of International Business Studies 53 (1), 4–26. Welch, D.E. and Welch, L.S. (2008) The importance of language in international knowledge transfer. Management International Review 48, 339–360. Welch, D.E., Welch, L.S., Wilkinson, I.F. and Young, L.C. (1996) Network analysis of a new export grouping scheme: The role of economic and non-economic relationships. International Journal of Research in Marketing 13 (5), 463–477. Welch, D.E., Welch, L.S. and Marschan-Piekkari, R. (2001) The persistent impact of language on global operations. Prometheus 19 (3), 193–209. Welch, D.E., Welch, L.S. and Piekkari, R. (2006) Shaken not stirred: Language, social capital and networks. Paper presented at the 32nd EIBA Conference, Fribourg, 7–9 December. Westwood, R. (2006) International business and management studies as an orientalist discourse: A postcolonial critique. Critical Perspectives on International Business 2 (2), 91–113. Whorf, B.L. (1956) Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, MA, New York and London: Technology Press and John Wiley. Williams, D.E. (2011) Modeling small locally-owned fi rms’ export behaviour: The role of language. Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal 17 (2), 19–36. Wilmot, N.V. (2017) Language and the faces of power: A theoretical approach. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 17 (1), 85–100. Wilmot, N.V. and Tietze, S. (2020) Englishization and the politics of translation. Critical Perspectives on International Business. doi:10.1108/cpoib-03-2020-0019 Wodak, R. (2012) Language, power and identity. Language Teaching 45 (2), 215–233. Wolgast, A., Tandler, N., Harrison, L. and Umlauft, S. (2020) Adults’ dispositional and situational perspective-taking: A systematic review. Educational Psychology Review 32, 353–389. Woo, D.J. and Giles, H. (2017) Language attitudes and intergroup dynamics in multilingual organisations. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 17 (1), 39–52. World Englishes (n.d.) Journal Overview. See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/ journal/1467971x/homepage/productinformation.html Woydack, J. (2019) Linguistic Ethnography of a Multilingual Call Center: London Calling. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature.

References

163

Wright, A. (2011) Watch what I do, not what I say: New questions for documents in international business case research. In R. Piekkari and C. Welch (eds) Rethinking the Case Study in International Business and Management Research (pp. 361–382). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Xian, H. (2008) Lost in translation? Language, culture and the roles of translator in crosscultural management research. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal 3 (3), 231–245. Yagi, N. and Kleinberg, J. (2011) Boundary work: An interpretive ethnographic perspective on negotiating and leveraging cross-cultural identity. Journal of International Business Studies 42 (5), 629–653. Yamao, S. and Sekiguchi, T. (2015) Employee commitment to corporate globalization: The role of English language proficiency and human resource practices. Journal of World Business 50 (1), 168–179. Yousfi , H. (2014) Rethinking hybridity in postcolonial contexts: What changes and what persists? The Tunisian case of Poulina’s managers. Organization Studies 35 (3) 393–421. Zahra, S.A, Korri, J.S. and Yu, J. (2005) Cognition and international entrepreneurship: Implications for research on international opportunity recognition and exploitation. International Business Review 14 (2), 129–146. Zhang, L.E. and Harzing, A.-W. (2016) From dilemmatic struggle to legitimized indifference: Expatriates’ host country language learning and its impact on the expatriateHCE relationship. Journal of World Business 51 (5), 774–786. Zhang, L.E. and Peltokorpi, V. (2016) Multifaceted effects of host country language profi ciency in expatriate cross-cultural adjustments: A qualitative study in China. International Journal of Human Resource Management 27 (13), 1448–1469. Zhong, W. and Chin, T. (2015) The role of translation in cross-cultural knowledge transfer within an MNE’s business networks: A 3D hierarchical model in China. Chinese Management Studies 9 (4), 589–610. Zhu, Y. and Bargiela-Chiappini, F. (2013) Balancing emic and etic: Situated learning and ethnography of communication in cross-cultural management education. Academy of Management Learning and Education 12 (3), 380–395.

Index

Accent 106, 109, 112 Back translation 28 Barner-Rasmussen, W. 1, 7, 8, 12, 20, 26, 57, 59, 65, 69, 71, 80, 81, 100, 102, 106, 127, 129, 130, 140 Biculturals 22–23, 66 Bilinguals 23, 116 Body language 42–43, 95, 137 Boundary spanners 20–24, 39, 45–46, 54, 61–82, 106, 129, 130, 139 attitudes to language work 120 attitudes to translation 84, 101 Bricolage 80–81, 99, 127, 129, 131, 132, 139 Burnout 69, 70, 129 Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF) 14–16, 38, 41–42, 48–49, 54–55, 57–58, 104, 108, 112, 120, 126, 136, 137, 139 Career paths 67, 71, 81, 126 Circles of English 104–105, 122–123 Code-switching 48, 97–98 Cognitive load 17 Commoditisation of language 82, 89, 91 Common corporate language 2, 14 Communication avoidance 16, 18, 68, 108–109 Communication competence (see also language-general competences) 54, 76, 103, 114, 123 Community of practice 91 Convergent communication strategies 54, 76, 113, 115, 136, 137 Creative practices 100–101, 120–121, 127, 139 Cultural awareness 63–64, 65–66, 67 Cultural politics 28–29

Distribution channels 34–35, 94 Distributors 79 Divergent communicative strategies 113, 115 Domesticating 26, 28 Domination 108, 135–136 Email 78, 115 Employee recruitment 23, 37, 62–63, 133 Employee selection 39, 62, 63 Epistemic authority 105, 110, 122, 136 Expatriates 21, 61 Export barriers 31, 79, 80, 109 effect of language on 31, 73, 77, 80, 120–121 Sales teams 37, 44, 63, 66, 71 Fleming, P., and Spicer, A. 12, 103, 107, 108–109, 135 Foreign Language Anxiety 17–18, 68 Foreign language learning 24, 108, 126, 128 Foreignising 26, 29 Frame-switching 23 France 64, 111–112 Gaibrois, C. 81, 88, 104, 110, 117, 131, 135 Global mobility 67, 75 Google Translate (see also Machine Translation) 19, 40, 41, 49–50, 53–54, 57, 75, 86–87, 138 Governmental export assistance 59, 79, 138 Harzing, A.-W. 1, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26, 59, 61, 69, 75, 86, 95, 101, 109, 129 Hegemony 107, 108, 110, 116, 122, 136

164

Index

Historical influences 111 Hybridity 88, 110, 123, 131, 135

165

Janssens, M. 5, 8, 9, 26, 28, 32, 57, 88, 99, 104, 105, 115, 126, 131, 134

Machine translation (see also Google Translate) 18–20, 86, 88–89, 101 Manipulation 107, 135 Market-based governance 93, 110 Marschan-Piekkari, R. 1, 11, 21, 24, 25, 31, 70, 119, 134, 140 Media choice 16–18, 53–54, 137 lean 39–40, 46–47, 55, 78, 115 rich 40, 46–47, 77 richness theory 17 synchronicity theory 17 Munday, J. 26, 85, 91, 97, 99

Kachru, B. 104–105, 107, 119, 122–123 Kankaanranta, A. 14, 16, 76, 104, 109, 131 Klitmøller, A. 16, 17, 18, 40, 68, 72, 77, 115

Neeley, T. 3, 5, 14, 18, 24, 68, 103, 108, 116, 124, 126, 136 Non-Professional translators (see also paraprofessional translator) 20, 21, 26, 41, 89–91

Language skills in the UK 29–31, 62 Language skills and effect on exports 31–32 Language skills of entrepreneurs and decision makers 6, 132 Language-general competences (see also communication competence) 120, 123 Language audit 138 barriers 42, 47, 78, 90, 91, 115, 121, 138 capital 25, 75, 82, 90, 127, 128–129 competence 73–74 hierarchies 81, 104, 107 intermediaries 47–48, 51–52, 79 nature of 4–6 nodes (see also boundary spanners) 20, 21, 26, 68 training 24–25 Language diversity benefits of 119 Lauring, J. 16, 17, 18, 21, 40, 68, 72, 77, 115, 118 Lingua Franca 14–16, 76, 139 Linguicism (see also linguistic discrimination) 106–107 Linguistic discrimination (see also linguicism) 123 Linguistic landscape 118 Linguistic perspective taking 115–117, 118

Opportunity recognition 132

Identity linguistic 72, 114–115, 118 professional 65, 68–69, 72–73, 81, 115, 120 social 72, 118 Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group 70, 134

Paraprofessional translators (see also Non-Professional translators) 21, 26, 27, 99, 130 Passive multilingualism 49, 76, 139 Personal networks 42, 48, 49, 52, 75, 89–90, 130, 137 Pictorial communication 56, 93, 96, 137 Piekkari, R. 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 20, 21, 27, 42, 49, 61, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76, 82, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 102, 105, 117, 121, 127, 128, 130, 132, 140 Procurement (see also sourcing) 78, 132 Professional translation services 20, 51–52, 57, 85, 95, 101, 133, 138 Postcolonial approaches 32, 106, 111 Pym, A. 28, 86, 99, 100 Refusal (see also communication avoidance) 109, 135 Relationships downstream 55, 78, 81, 133 interorganisational 2, 4, 6–7 70, 94, 125, 132–133 upstream 47, 50, 78, 133 maintenance 133 specific investments 7, 78, 81, 133 trust in 6–7, 77, 79, 93–94, 134 typology 34–35, 36, 81, 93, 110, 133 Resistance 108–110, 135

166

Language Management

Salary expectations 62 Self-Initiated Expatriates (SIEs) 21–22, 63–66, 75 Self-Initiated Repatriates (SIRs) 23–24, 67 Skopos theory 26–27, 85, 99, 131 Small-and-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) 31–32 definition 36 internationalisation 6, 43, 44, 50, 55, 80, 111, 120, 121, 130 language active 31–32 Sourcing (see also procurement) 81, 132, 133 Steyaert, C. 1, 5, 14, 88, 104, 105, 110, 131, 134, 135 Standardised scripts 42, 53, 137 Strategic agility 120, 129 Subjectification 108–109, 135–136 Switching costs 110, 133 Telephone enquiries 47, 53, 56, 68, 79, 94, 109 Terminology management 99 Thin communication 77 Translation cost of 41, 92–93, 100, 131

equivalence 27–29 intersemiotic 96–97, 101 maintenance of 93 quality 52, 90–91, 97–100 as social process 87–88, 91, 99 timeliness of 49, 52, 84 Translator agency 28, 97, 131 Translatorial action 83–84 Tenzer, H. 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 31, 69, 73, 77, 94, 97, 120, 122, 125, 140 Tietze, S. 4–5, 8, 9, 16, 28, 59, 73, 77, 83, 102, 106, 117 Unrecognised privilege 103 Unearned status gain 116, 124 University language resources 51–52, 58, 90–91, 138 Vaara, E. 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 16, 18, 28, 68, 69, 89, 109, 120, 126, 135 Venuti, L. 8, 9, 26, 27, 28, 102, 130 Vermeer, H.J. 8, 12, 26, 27, 84, 99, 100, 126 Welch, D.E., and Welch, L.S. 6, 122, 134, 140