Suchergebnisse

In a globalized business environment, interaction across linguistic boundaries is becoming a normal part of everyday life. In these encounters language differences may affect the formation of social identities among organization members. While studies based on Social Identity Theory perceive the link between identity and language to be linear, this article takes a different approach. By drawing on anthropological theories on ethnic identity it is argued that the relation between language and social identity is negotiated in interaction. In the empirical analysis the article focuses on the encounter between expatriates and local employees of a Danish subsidiary in England. The findings show that identity making may be actualized by competition for resources and recognition. This can be done by investing certain objects such as the symbolic application of language with certain identifications. It is finally argued that the processes by which identifications develop can cause both polarization and accommodation in the relation between groups and individuals.

Cultural diversity has often been described as yielding competitive advantages like, for example, innovation resulting from the combination of different cultural perspectives. However, there are also substantial organizational problems related to managing cultural diversity, which need to be overcome in order for diversity to be a useful asset. Based on an empirical study of Danish multicultural companies, this article argues that the understanding of communication processes may reveal important aspects about the obstacles of managing cultural diversity. The main argument is that language-use is linked to social processes that can create boundary creation or social fragmentation within multicultural organizations.

Few studies have dealt with inclusive language use in multicultural organizations. This is unfortunate because it has been hypothesized that such organizations will be more creative and will perform better than mono-cultural organizations if communication issues are dealt with correctly by managers. In this study, we test the general hypothesis that inclusive language use by managers and employees in formal and informal situations will increase the creativity and performance in multicultural organizations. By use of responses from 676 individuals employed in privately owned multicultural companies, we found that management common language communication was strongly associated with performance but not with creativity. Openness to language diversity among employees, however, had strong relations with both creativity and performance. This indicates that management communication may provide information and a shared identity that can increase the performance of an organization. Yet in order to increase creativity, there is a need to also facilitate inclusive group processes. The findings provide new insights into the theoretical idea that diversity leads to creativity and performance if communication is managed correctly.

Intro -- Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Language, Learning and Ethnicity -- Intercultural Learning Processes -- Ethnic Groups and Boundaries -- in Social Anthropology -- Language and Ethnic Identity -- Methodology -- Two Cases -- Case One - England: "What Is Unknown, We Fear" - Language and Suspicion -- Case Two - Saudi Arabia: Language as a Powerful Segregation Tool -- Discussion and Implications -- References -- Index

While engagement seems to have promising prospects for predicting organizational behavior in domestic organizations, few scholars have included this in cross-cultural management research. We use survey results from 640 self-initiated expatriate academics in Greater China to study the relation between work engagement and intercultural adjustment. We focus on expatriates in Greater China because in terms of economy, this is a fast-growing area and because, with regard to language and culture, this region deviates substantially from the Western countries that most expatriates there come from. This is not least in relation to age perceptions. Contrary to the dominating theoretical position, we found that the different dimensions of work engagement, namely, vigor, dedication, and absorption, have different effects on intercultural adjustment. Moreover, we found that the effect of job dedication on reducing time to proficiency was stronger for older expatriates.

Purpose
– As it has been suggested that adult third-culture kids may be more culturally adaptable than others, they have been labelled "the ideal" expatriates. The purpose of this paper is to explore the adjustment of self-initiated expatriate academics in Hong Kong, comparing adult third-culture kids with adult mono-culture kids.


Design/methodology/approach
– The authors use survey results from 267 self-initiated expatriate academics in Hong Kong.


Findings
– Exploratory results show that adult third-culture kids had a higher extent of general adjustment. No significant results were found in relation to interaction adjustment and job adjustment. The authors also found that recent expatriate experiences generally had a positive association with the adjustment of adult mono-culture kids, but this association only existed in terms of general adjustment for adult third-culture kids.


Originality/value
– Once corroborated by further studies, this exploratory research project may contribute to the understanding of the adjustment of adult third-culture kids as well as the role of experience and multicultural abilities. Few, if any, prior studies, have examined adjustment of this group of self-initiated expatriates.

Despite the apparent increasing internationalization of the academic world, research on expatriate academics has remained negligible compared to the literature on business expatriates, which has increased rapidly in recent years. This is regrettable, since it is not obvious to what extent research findings regarding business expatriates also are applicable to expatriate academics. To examine cognitive and affective reasons to expatriate and work adjustment, a questionnaire was directed electronically towards expatriate academics from 60 countries employed in 35 universities in 5 northern European countries. Results indicated that one of the affective reasons to expatriate, refugee reasons (life change/escape), has a clear negative influence on both job adjustment and time to proficiency. However, none of the other studied reasons for expatriate academics to go abroad had any association with their subsequent adjustment to work. Hence, explorer reasons (adventure/travel), architect reasons (careers) or mercenary reasons (financial incentives) do not seem to have any effect on how well expatriate academics adjust to their work abroad. Implications of these findings are discussed in detail.