Researching Flexible Language Management in International Workforces: The Potential of Critical Realist Ontology

Employees often face multilingualism and organisational language policies when engaging in global work. Working in an organisation, which crosses linguistic borders through geographic dispersion and/or employing multilingual workforces, could entail encountering various forms of organisational language management. However, when multiple linguistic contexts are involved, multinational organisations may balance pressures for global standardisation and local adaptation through flexible language management. Here, flexible language management denotes organisational approaches to language, which, either officially or unofficially, apply a common language/s, but does not stipulate in which domains and forms employees should use it/them. While such policies may allow balancing conflicting pressures through the coexistence of common and local languages, their ambiguity has several implications. Leaving the organisational language and its qualities undefined leaves room for varying interpretations and expectations for language use, in turn influencing work collaboration and the careers of employees in an international workforce. By consolidating theoretical insights through a thematic literature review of language-sensitive business and management research, supplemented by sociolinguistic perspectives, this chapter provides a conceptual outline of flexible organisational language management. Furthermore, the chapter proposes critical realism as a suitable layered ontology for researching various facets of the phenomenon. Due to the multidimensional nature of language management as a social phenomenon, and flexible language management in particular, critical realist research strategies are here argued to provide the required contextual adaptation to study practices, norms, and ideology.