COMMUNICATION AND DIVERSITY

Communication and Diversity

Communication and Diversity

Introduction

In today's world of globalization, many firms operate internationally. When doing business across national borders, people are confronted with language and cultural differences. Language and culture are closely intertwined. Each language is a window into a specific view of life and a general frame of reference that is culturally bound to its speakers. Thus, learning a foreign language offers a way of understanding and appreciating a new culture. From a language perspective, there are homogeneous and heterogeneous nation states in the world with several official or major languages in use such as Belgium, Finland, or India. For speakers of minority languages such as Swedish-speaking Finns, for example, language tends to be the basis of personal identity. However, instead of analyzing language at the level of nations, this chapter examines this issue in the context of the multinational corporation.

Literature Review

Language Diversity in the Multinational Corporation

Being headquartered in one country and having foreign subsidiary operations in a number of other countries renders the multinational corporation multilingual almost by definition (Barner-Rasmussen & Björkman, 2007). From a language perspective, the multinational corporation is likely to have a parent country language, a common corporate language, and a range of host country languages used by foreign subsidiary staff. While for companies internationalizing from English-speaking countries the parent country language and the common corporate language tend to be the same, the situation for the German-based Siemens corporation is more complex. Siemens uses predominantly German and English in its corporate communication (Fredriksson, Barner-Rasmussen, & Piekkari, 2006). It is a globally operating electronics and electrical-engineering company with some 475,000 employees and a presence in over 190 countries. Siemens was ranked 28th on the Fortune Global 500 list in 2007 and 22nd in 2006 (“Fortune Global 500 in 2007”, 2007). Most of the employees are located in Germany (34%) and in the rest of Europe (27%). Top management in Siemens tends to have strong language skills in at least these two key languages. Thus, German as the parent country language of Siemens is an additional source of internal language diversity.

Furthermore, the internal communication in multinational corporations is colored by “company speak” and professional jargon (Welch, Welch, & Piekkari, 2005). “Company speak” refers to acronyms, special terms, and abbreviations that are specific to the company. For example, General Electric uses abbreviations such as N-1 and N-2 to indicate the person's status in the organizational hierarchy. Newly recruited staff may easily find themselves excluded from communication exchanges and social interaction Because they do not master this form of language. On the other hand, once a person learns to master the professional jargon associated with the job, it facilitates communication. For example, engineers, who have similar professional training worldwide and who therefore share a common terminology, belong to the same professional community. They all speak “the same language” when it comes to their jobs. Although these engineers may be located in different foreign subsidiaries of the multinational corporations and speak different mother tongues, they are still likely to ...