Presentation of the paper entitled 'Expat-local communication: Preliminary findings from a bibliometric literature review' as a part of the Communication Research Seminar series.
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Meeting ID: 690 2636 0911
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Multinational corporations (MNCs) are often made up of diverse and geographically dispersed subsidiaries, in addition to their corporate headquarters (HQ). Previous empirical studies have shown how expats – i.e. individuals who move to another country while changing the dominant place of residence to execute legal work abroad (Andersen et al., 2014, p. 2308) – play a key role in managing multilingual communication in MNCs. For this reason, expatriation is commonly referred to as a “language barrier solution” (Feely & Harzing, 2003; Harzing et al., 2011), i.e. one of the ways in which the company’s leadership can facilitate and enhance communication between employees with different language backgrounds.
However, as noted by Peltokorpi (2022), even though most of the staff in foreign subsidiaries are locally employed, the importance of foreign language skills for local staff is largely unexplored in the existing literature. The present paper systematically reviews empirical research on expat-local communication interaction in order to examine the effects of expats’ language and communication on local staff. In this presentation, we share preliminary findings from our bibliometric analysis of 200 articles published between 1989 and 2022.
Andresen, M., Bergdolt, F., Margenfeld, J., & Dickmann, M. (2014). Addressing international mobility confusion–developing definitions and differentiations for self-initiated and assigned expatriates as well as migrants. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(16), 2295-2318.
Feely, A. J., & Harzing, A. W. (2003). Language management in multinational companies. Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, 10(2), 37-52.
Harzing, A. W., Köster, K., & Magner, U. (2011). Babel in business: The language barrier and its solutions in the HQ-subsidiary relationship. Journal of World Business, 46(3), 279-287.
Peltokorpi, V. (2022). The “language” of career success: The effects of English language competence on local employees’ career outcomes in foreign subsidiaries. Journal of International Business Studies, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-022-00544-4