This book sets new trajectories for language-sensitive business and management research and pedagogy. The existence of language plurality characterises these. Empirical studies have been established as important and relevant for contemporary research. It has shifted language-sensitive research from the periphery to the centre of international management research. However, this field is rapidly changing, and new thematic approaches have begun to emerge. By addressing this, the book offers genuine and more nuanced insights into existing themes and comes with applications of emergent conceptual developments in different settings. The second part of the book covers methodologies and gives examples and cutting-edge insights into the role of translation in the execution of empirical research and theorising arising from it. Finally, the book draws together innovative ways of how to address the challenges of a multilingual teaching classroom and how to innovate in order to incorporate such diversity through pedagogic practice. This book provides a source that unites insights from multilingual empirical research, methodological considerations and pedagogic practice in order to advance knowledge and debate. It will be a ‘handy source’ of information that offers direct access to the latest guidance on language-sensitive management challenges. It will, therefore, appeal to an internationally-minded and mobile audience, including scholars, students and decision-makers.

This volume focuses on work situations in Europe, North America and South-Africa, such as academic, medical and public sector, or business settings, in which participants have to make constant use of more than one language to cooperate with partners, clients, or colleagues. Central questions are how the social and linguistic organization of work is adapted to the necessity of using different languages and how multilingualism impinges on the communicative outcome of different types of discourse or genres. Thus, the authors are all interested in multilingual practices 'at work', which is to say how different forms of multilingual communication are managed, flexibly adjusted to, acquired, and/or improved in a given workplace setting that often calls for particular implicit or explicit language policies. Thus, this volume contributes to the study of workplace communication in a globalized world by drawing on different types of authentic data.

The contributions in this volume stem from different lines of research and represent both a continuation and an advancement of the European DYLAN project. The book addresses the meanings and implications of multilingualism and plurilingual repertoires as well as the ways in which cultural diversity is managed in companies and institutions in Switzerland. Characterised by official quadrilingualism, but also by new dimensions of multilingualism resulting from massive immigration, important workforce mobility and increasing globalisation, Switzerland offers an ideal laboratory for studying phenomena linked to multilingualism and cultural diversity. On the one hand, a special focus is put on the best practices of diversity management and language regimes with particular attention paid to the interplay between official languages and English, and to ways of leveraging diversity awareness, fostering cultural inclusiveness and enhancing intercultural learning in vocational education and training. On the other hand, the chapters examine at close range the way actors' plurilingual repertoires are developed and how their use is adapted to particular objectives and specific conditions. Being observed in several types of multilingual professional settings, the plurilingual strategies, including English as lingua franca, are particularly examined in terms of power relations and processes of inclusion or exclusion.

This book proposes a path-breaking study of the economics of multilingualism at work, proposing a systematic approach to the identification and measurement of the ways in which language skills and economic performance are related. Using the instruments of economic investigation, but also explicitly relating the analysis to the approaches to multilingualism at work developed in the language sciences, this interdisciplinary book proposes a systematic, step-by-step exploration of the issue. Starting from a general identification of the linkages between multilingualism and processes of value creation, it reviews the contributions of linguistics and economics before developing a new economic model of production in which language is taken into account. Testing of the model using data from two countries provides quantitative estimations of the influence of multilingualism on economic processes, showing that foreign language skills can make a considerable contribution to a country’s GDP. These findings have significant implications for language policy and suggest strategies helping language planners to harness market forces for increased effectiveness. A technical appendix shows how the novel technical and statistical procedures developed in this study can be generalized, and applied wherever researchers or decision makers need to identify and measure the value of multilingualism.

From language classrooms to outdoor markets, the workplace is fundamental to socialisation. It is not only a site of employment where money is made and institutional roles are enacted through various forms of discourse; it is also a location where people engage in social actions and practices. The workplace is an interesting research site because of advances in communication technology, cheaper and greater options for travel, and global migration and immigration. Work now requires people to travel over great geographical distances, communicate with cultural ‘others’ located in different time zones, relocate to different regions or countries, and conduct business in online settings. The workplace is thus changing and evolving, creating new and emerging communicative contexts. This volume provides a greater understanding of workplace cultures, particularly the ways in which working in highly interconnected and multicultural societies shape language and intercultural communication. The chapters focus on critical approaches to theory and practice, in particular how practice is used to shape theory. They also question the validity and universality of existing models. Some of the predominant models in intercultural communication have been criticised for being Eurocentric or Anglocentric, and this volume proposes alternative frameworks for analysing intercultural communication in the workplace. This book was originally published as a special issue of Language and Intercultural Communication.

This book was the first book to present a specific theory of language management.

This book provides readers with the latest research on the dynamics of language and language diversity in professional contexts. Bringing together novel findings from a range of disciplines, it challenges practitioners and management scholars to question the conventional understanding of language as words with stable meanings, an assumption which treats language as a tool that can be managed by language policies that ‘standardize’ language. Each of the contributions is designed to recognize the strides that have been made in the past two decades in research on language and languages in organizational settings while addressing remaining blind spots and emerging issues. Particular attention is given to multilingualism, sociolinguistic approaches to language in the workplace, migration challenges, critical perspectives on the power of language use and the management of organizations as dialogical, discursive spaces.