Abstract
Research has long pointed to the numerous difficulties associated with ensuring that workforce populations of diverse linguistic backgrounds are effectively integrated, functional and productive. Employees in multilingual environments often report experiencing stress, anxiety and fatigue associated with self-expression and understanding others, exclusions from and conflicts with social groups, prejudice associated with stereotypes and stigmatized speech, and limited opportunities for advancement. In turn, organizations can fail to capitalize on knowledge sharing and problem-solving, compromising efficiency and productivity, potentially damaging the quality of the products and services they deliver, their reputations, and the safety of both internal and external organizational stakeholders. An organization’s approach to managing the language(s) its employees use to communicate has been found to be consequential in provoking or mitigating these outcomes. This paper identifies four different strategies that organizations can adopt to manage language diversity. Enforced monolingualism, which limits communication in the workplace to a specific language, can be nativist or globalist. In contrast, an organization adopting a conditional monolingualism orientation, expects employees to speak an identified predominant language locally or functionally, but not always. Functional multilingualism, allows individuals and groups to self-regulate linguistically, considering it beneficial for employees to use whatever language is most functional or useful for their communication goals. Finally, organizations that subscribe to proactive multilingualism take leadership in facilitating the linguistic integration of their workforce (e.g., through HR planning and programming). Each of these approaches carries challenges, opportunities and best practices.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Language Diversity Workplace, Language Management in Organizations
