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 (11) Track citations by RSS feed
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 ().