eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

A comparative study of language strategies in international organizations

Objectives of the study The study focuses on language strategies and their existence among international organizations. The goal is to find out if organizations have a written language strategy at all and if they do, what the language strategy contains. Also, in case a language strategy does not exist, the language practices are researched. After that the strategies and practices are compared. The main research questions is: Do international organizations have written language strategies?

Summary International communication brings many challenges to organizations. In order to manage language diversity, the organizations can create language strategies. These language strategies are formed from different components including language choice, translation and human resource management aspects such as language training and recruitment. The literature review presents these components and that way creates a shape of a language strategy. Empirical data was collected through qualitative research and for the empirical part 77 organizations were contacted by e-mail. In Findings part the language strategies and practices of 41 international organizations are presented.

Findings and conclusions The findings show that written language strategies are rare among international organizations. Instead, most of the organizations have established language practices. These practices are very similar between different organizations whereas the language strategy documents vary a lot. Since the practices are established and they answer to the same questions as language strategies, they could be considered as one type of language strategy.

Keywords International business communication, Language, Language strategy, Language diversity, Translation, Language competence, Corporate languages, International organization, Role of language