Standardization and contextualization: A study of language and leadership across 17 countries

Lena Zander, Audra Mockaitis () and Anne-Wil Harzing

Journal of World Business, 2011, vol. 46, issue 3, 296-304

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Language; Leadership; Context; Culture; Multinational; company; Cultural; accommodation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090951610000489
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:worbus:v:46:y:2011:i:3:p:296-304

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/620401/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 620401/bibliographic

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of World Business is currently edited by David Collings and Jonathan Doh

More articles in Journal of World Business from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().