Multilingual decision makers: How does their language biography impact on language awareness among employees and knowledge sharing in multilingual organisations?

Beschreibung

Managers and employees in companies – like all other persons as well – dispose not only over diverse linguistic competences, but also over different stories where, how, when and why they acquired these competencies. Processes of individual language acquisition and other linguistic experiences in private and professional life, which have been emerging in linguistic contact situations, shape language biographies. The latter find expression in individual conceptions of identity and language awareness, i.e. knowledge about languages and language learning, which is prone to influence decision processes in companies. For instance, one can assume that recruiters notice applicants with comparable linguistic backgrounds more easily than those with other backgrounds and identify the respective candidates as similar to themselves. This paper tries to unveil, to which extent language-related decisions in organisations are influenced by the linguistic autobiographies of decision makers. First results show language aware managers and recruiters are influenced by their own language biography with regard to their attitude towards (new) employees with diverse linguistic backgrounds and with regard to the future implementation of measures raising language awareness among employees. The impact on the actual decision making behaviour seems to be less clear, as other factors than language (e.g. the job requirements on expertise) often have a greater relevance.

Zeitraum	22 Mai 2018 → 23 Mai 2018
Ereignistitel	12th International GEM&L Conference
Veranstaltungstyp	Keine Angaben
Bekanntheitsgrad	International