Coping on the Front-line: A Bottom-up Perspective on Corporate Language Management

This article investigates how front-line employees respond to English language policies implemented by the management of three multinational corporations (MNCs) headquartered in Scandinavia. Based on interview and document data the article examines the ways in which front-line employees cross language boundaries in their everyday work. Despite official English language policies in the three companies, our findings show that employees face a number of different language boundaries, and that ad hoc and informal solutions in many cases are vital for successful cross-language communication. Drawing on Lipsky’s (1980, 2010) work on street-level bureaucrats and the implementation of public policy, we discuss the role of individual agency in the implementation of language policy in the private sector, and argue that it is in fact front-line employees who are the ultimate language policy decision-makers.