What is it about?
With multinational corporations increasingly adopting English as a corporate language, the issue of language management and the pros and cons of language standardization have been widely debated in the literature. Our 17-country study considers whether the use of English as a common corporate language causes difficulties. We empirically examine whether managerial reactions to specific leadership scenario-based situations change as a consequence of the language they use. Our results show that the choice of language (native or English) does not matter much for the studied leadership scenarios. Instead, leadership decisions and reactions depend more on cultural and situational context.
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Why is it important?
Taking into account cultural and situational contexts for management and leaders seem critical in order to make decisions that work, language does not matter as much for the examined leadership scenarios of the cross-country study.
Perspectives
Cultural and situational contexts seem to be the most important for leadership and management decisions, despite corporate culture trying to standardize process around the world.
Prof. Dr. Cordula BARZANTNY
Toulouse Business School
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Standardization and contextualization: A study of language and leadership across 17 countries, Journal of World Business, July 2011, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.jwb.2010.07.009.
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