• Overview
• Research Platforms
• Thematic Area A: Language, Identity and Culture
• Thematic Area B: Language Policy and Planning
• Thematic Area C: Multilingualism and Education
• Thematic Area D: Language and Economy
• WP 10a: Large Multinational companies: Linguistic diversity and communication in parent and daughter companies
• WP 11a: Multilingualism, transcultural capital and social exclusion amongst migrant minority populations
• WP 12a: Economic participation, language practices and collective identities in the multilingual city
• Communication, Management, Infrastructure, Training and Gender

WP 10a: Large Multinational companies: Linguistic diversity and communication in parent and daughter companies

Summary Results

Language Use in Companies: Common Sense, Not Strict Rules

Multinational companies do not insist on the use of a particular language, other than for the purposes of reporting. In general, the companies have a project-based and dynamic orientation towards the daughter companies.
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Rationale

Large multinational companies (multinationals) or corporations, including their subsidiaries, are often based on the territories of several countries and operate Europe-wide at least. Both linguistic diversity and linguistic, communicative and socio-cultural problems in multinationals are conditioned by this scope of operation. In particular, this WP deals with the relationships between the parent and the daughter company (companies). The focus is on the situation where the parent company is based in an old EU country and the daughter company in a new EU country. (In principle this enables the involvement of not only LINEE teams based in the new EU countries but also teams based in the old EU countries).

Objective

The following research questions will be addressed:

• How does communication between the representatives of the subsidiary and the parent company look?
• Are there communicative and socio-cultural problems?
• How do the employees manage such problems?
• Are there differences regarding this aspect between subsidiaries in the old and new EU members?
• How is the language policy of the parent company declared and put into practice?
• Is there an official corporate language?
• How does the national legal system promote or restrict linguistic diversity of multinationals?
• How does the parent company train its employees who will be send out to the subsidiary abroad?
• How does the knowledge-based economy manifest itself in the use of languages in multinationals?
• How can linguistic diversity of multinationals contribute to the promotion of the knowledge-based economy?

Overall research objective: To create a qualitative picture of what types of linguistic diversity in multinational companies exist given relationships between parent and daughter companies, how they came to exist, and how language issues within them are managed and negotiated in the light of the knowledge economy, particularly as concerns economic and other relationships between EU old- and new-member states.

Description of work

Proposed methodology: Ethnographic case studies of individual parent and daughter companies.

Kinds and sources of data: Documentation of particular interactions (such as conference calls) through participant observation, video and audio recording, focusing on communication between parent and daughter companies. The data of most interest will consist of documentation of visits of representatives of the parent company to the daughter company, and telephone and video-conferences between parent and daughter company. Semi-structured and interaction interviews with participants at various work sites in the parent and daughter companies. Creation of a shared digital database of video, audio materials and transcripts as well as photos documenting the semiotic appearance of the administrative and manufacture sections of the parent and daughter companies.

Planned work: Months 19-24: desk research, including a summary of the relevant ties between this project and WP 12 of months 1-18; Months 25-30: Collection of data in selected multinationals; Months 31-36: primary analysis of individual case studies.

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This Work Package Description as pdf

Contacts WP 10a