Multilingual mediators in the shadows: a case study of a Japanese multinational corporation

Abstract

This paper aims to extend the understanding of how so-called bridge individuals in multinational corporations (MNCs) engage multiple languages to mediate the transfer of human resource management (HRM) practices between headquarters and subsidiaries. Adopting a case study of foreign subsidiaries of a single Japanese MNC (in Thailand, Belgium and the US), the findings identify three main kinds of multilingual mediators: enabler, blocker and selector individuals. While enablers utilize multiple languages as a tool kit to support home country-based HRM practices, blockers leverage language disparities to hinder those practices, bringing about, what this paper refers to as a curtain effect. Selectors, meanwhile, utilize the corporate language, English, as a lingua franca to partially enable those practices, as well as occasionally to block them. Understanding how language integrates with these mediation functions serves to illustrate the complexity of bridge individuals and boundary spanners. Furthermore, the findings reveal the close association between these mediating functions and multilingual mediators’ perceptions and understandings of the institutional cultural contexts in the subsidiary, something that has so far rarely been discussed in the literature. Moreover, the findings reiterate the importance of local contextual influences on how language acts as a source of power in foreign subsidiaries.

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