Contemporary Business Communication In A Globalised World - Essay Example

Running Head: Contemporary Business Communication in a Globalised World Contemporary Business Communication in a Globalised World [Institute’s Name] Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 INTRODUCTION 3 DISCUSSION 5 Identity Crisis 5 Politeness Conflict 8 Cultural Diversity 9 Other Arguments 11 CONCLUSION 12 REFERENCES 14 INTRODUCTION For many centuries, humans have endeavored to evolve and progress in this world. From Stone Age to today’s technological era, one thing that helped human race the most in this process of evolution is the human use of language. Probably humans would not have been able to communicate and progress if there was no language around. Particularly, language provides every human an opportunity to communicate with each other and express regardless of race, culture, social status, etc. In the earlier days, humans began to communicate using sign language and as the societies and communities expanded, so the number of languages increased resulting in a huge diverse pool of languages that are now spoken in different parts of the globe. It has been an observation that communities or people living together usually speak in a common language that allows them to communicate with each other easily and run public, as well as personal affairs. As Bell (2011, p. 134) stated, “A shared common language is a prerequisite for our social, intellectual and economic lives” indicating the significance of language in the human society. In this regard, a single language in a particularly community was the norm few decades back and different communities used to have their own language, which is still the case. However, today, the world has turned into a small global village due to the factor of globalisation, and nowadays, people from different countries are living and working together. This has initiated a debate (Cotterill & Ife, 2005) regarding utilisation of one single language, especially in the corporate world in comparison to the notion of a bilingual or multilingual society. When it comes to the usage of a single language, English language is dominating worldwide due to various factors, most importantly, the historical reasons that includes colonisation of the United Kingdom in different parts of the world that brought English language to these nations (Fredriksson et al, 2006). Besides, the United States has dominated various countries with its power of dollar for many decades that resulted in inclination of these nations to learn English language and use it especially for business purposes, as Tietze (2004) argued that much of the professional management education originated from the USA and is mainly organized in English (Lockwood, 2012). In addition, as mentioned earlier, the globalisation also resulted in advancements in the field of information and technology that also became the reason of migration of English language in different parts of the globe through the tool of internet (Bell, 2011). As a result, today, huge number of companies and organisations prefer to use English as its official business language, especially the multinational companies that are operating their businesses in different parts of the world (Fredriksson et al, 2006). At the same time, various organisations and linguistics are arguing the fact that this policy of relying on one language is affecting the natural multilingual environment that brings in a number of advantages (Feely & Harzing, 2003). On the other hand, organisations in favor of one-language policy also argue indicating various advantages as well, such as improvement in workplace efficiency and collaboration where a single language is spoken (Bell, 2011; Feely & Harzing, 2003). In the year 2012, Neeley in his paper for the Harvard Review offered a similar argument stating, “Unrestricted bilingualism is inefficient and gets in the way of accomplishing business goals” (2012, p. 19). He advocated usage of English language as a global language, particularly in the corporate world that will enable multinational companies to achieve their business goals and targets more effectively. He argued that in today’s competitive world, one cannot survive without a global language while he also claimed that one-language policy would enable the companies to acquire competitive advantage in the market while giving examples of different companies, particularly, a Japanese multi-billion company Mikitani. At the same time, Neeley (2012) also indicated a few problems that may arise during implementation of single-language policy. Particularly, this paper is attempt to evaluate and analyse Neeley’s argument for single-language policy, which will include consideration of various issues that were overlooked by the author (Neeley, 2012), and which can create major issues for the companies in achieving business goals with a one-language policy. In this regard, from brief understanding of the issue under lens, the following section will include discussion of different issues, particularly, identity management, politeness conflict, and cultural diversity that will allow a critical and in-depth analysis of Neeley’s argument. DISCUSSION Identity Crisis A very important role that every language performs is provision of a particular identity to its speaker (McSweeney, 2002). Particularly, native speakers from a very early age start relating various aspects of their life, their existence, and their community/society with their language, which directly and indirectly constructs a relationship of their identity with the particular language. As one of the experts stated, “Language is the place where our sense of ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed” (Weedon, 1987, p. 21 as cited in Pennycook, 2007, p. 61), and as Fredriksson et al (2006) explained while describing the relationship of language with national identity that every language creates strong connections with the notion of nationalism emotionally. This evidently places counter argument in response to Neeley’s paper where he advocated single-language policy but completely overlooked the issue of national identity crisis in a restricted one-language workplace environment. At the same time, one cannot ignore the dominance and significance of English language in different parts of the world, especially due to the fact that major economic powers use English as their official language, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, etc (Graddol & Ulrike, 1999). As a result of such dominance, English language has gone through the process of indigenisation where non-native speakers are now taking English language and converting it into a local version. This indicates that even implementing a single-language policy or English-only policy will not ensure usage of a completely similar language since there will always be a difference between English language of a native speaker and a non-native speaker, which further complicates and questions validity of overall hypothesis of having a restricted single-language policy in organisations. From this perspective, in case of an English-only environment in an organisation, native speakers will always enjoy domination over non-native speakers and that will certainly be adverse for national identity of the workers (Graddol & Ulrike, 1999). In addition, this indigenisation of English language has occurred due to immigration of millions of native and non-native speakers, as well as especially through advancement in the form of internet. It has questioned relevance of single-language policy in the organisations since above analysis proves that even in case of such a policy, non-native speakers will still be bringing in their own rhetoric (Harris & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003) and localised syntax, vocabulary, and meanings that will further complicate national identities on individual level, as well as will be detrimental for the organisation. Detrimental in the sense that such diversity in language indicates more chances of misunderstandings and conflicts that may subsequently lead to an identity crisis, which will then reflect in organisational performance (Charles, 2007). In other words, implementing proposal of Neeley (2012), the organisation will indirectly be offering a new confused identity to its employees that will contradict with their earlier identities, as well as will be responsible for creating conflicts due to difference in global meaning of English language and the meanings constructed by non-native speakers socially (Harris & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003). Besides formal interaction in organisations, employees most of the times interact with one another informally (Moore & Rees, 2008) that results in creation of relationships that then helps them work in a cooperative environment. However, experts (Moore & Rees, 2008) have indicated that in an organisation where there is strict implementation of single-language policy, employees not confident in speaking English language or not able to learn English language mostly avoids getting involved in such informal interaction and avoid building relationships, which somehow causes an adverse impact on their self-confidence and consequently, their own identity. This happens with even best performing employees as in a single-language workplace environment, language becomes more important than the work, which makes things complicated and affects identity negatively (Charles, 2007). Further analysis shows that Anglo-Saxon perspective of effective communication also proposes a multicultural and intercultural communicative platform to ensure constructive communication (Harris & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003). In this regard, in environments where authorities and employers enforce a single-language policy, they disrupt effective communication, and subsequently, cause adverse effects on identity of the employees (Fredriksson et al, 2006). For instance, Lockwood’s study (2012) also indicated towards the same issue during his study where he found out in Philippines call centres that provision of scripted monologue to deal with customers was creating problems and challenges for the organisation. Despite of a similar script, different call centre agents faced problems due to their diverse interaction with English language, and therefore, single monologue resulted in lower work performance that confirms the above discussion regarding identity crisis due to single-language policy. Moreover, these call centre agents were expected to assume American identity to immerse in ‘English’ culture that somehow put them in the vacuum between their own identity and the expected identity from them. Politeness Conflict Besides identity crisis, analysis of Neeley’s paper (2012) identified another imperative aspect, which is the issue of politeness (Holmes & Stubbe, 2003). In addition to language, individuals use different tools to deliver a message, such as their behavior, facial expressions, respect, formality, informality, etiquette, etc (Haugh, 2007). It is very essential to understand that these intangible tools alter overall meaning of the communication if used improperly or understood differently by the receiver. It is essential to note that according to politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), every individual has two faces: positive and negative, and individuals use different faces in different contexts and situations. More importantly, every society has different norms resulting in diverse faces. For instance, hand shaking is considered essential as part of business etiquette in one country whereas it is considered disrespectful in another (Cotterill & Ife, 2005). Neeley (2012) completely overlooked this aspect of politeness, which will remain impactful even in single-language policy and will cause contradictory effects on the implementation at workplace. In a restricted single-language policy, there are greater chances of occurrence of politeness conflicts in the organisation. As Brown and Levinson (1987) indicated in their book through examples of different speakers where the politeness etiquettes differed of the different speakers since for some, direct requests are positive politeness and for the others, it is more inclined towards negative face. Neeley (2012) gave example of a company’s Paris headquarters where the instance of foreign employees resulted in realization of the need of one-language policy. Interestingly, this very example indicates that even in a single-language policy, there could have been cases of positive and negative impoliteness as local syntax and indigenisation could alter meanings even in usage of one language. In addition, analysis of Neeley (2012) paper even shows Mikitani’s order of single-language imposition as negative impoliteness that were overlooked by Neeley. As Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness (1987) indicates that everyone has a desire to be liked and not to be imposed upon, therefore, this policy of imposing a single corporate language seems surely to be negative impoliteness according to politeness theory that was missing in Neeley’s paper. Cultural Diversity The abovementioned analysis related to cultural norms and values brings this paper to another important aspect overlooked by Neeley (2012) that is cultural diversity. As discussed earlier, Neeley simply failed to recognise the diversity of languages and significance of pluralism of such diversity in organisational performance. More importantly, he also failed to recognise the interrelationship of this language diversity with that of different cultures (Harris & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003). It is very important for note that nowadays, multinational companies consist of people working from different parts of the globe. This workforce diversity was not the case few decades back; however, it has become a common practice (Moore & Rees, 2008). Although companies in recent years have begun to offer a holistic corporate policies to their employees in order to promote cohesion and collegiality; however, proposing the same in language can have serious detrimental issues. One of the major reasons of this probability in language case is contradiction of one-language policy with different and diverse cultural norms and values of employees that usually are not contradicted in single workplace policies. In this regard, overlooking the issue of cultural diversity was simply an evident mistake in Neeley’s paper. At the same time, this paper does not completely decline the possibility of an English-only policy as globalisation has made it essential for everyone, especially stakeholders in the global corporate world to learn and make use of English language for business purposes (Ghemawat, 2012). However, it is very important that policymakers may also understand significance of cultural issues, as overlooking them would result in further differences and divisions in the organisational ranks, and subsequently, will be harmful for the organisation. As Ghemawat (2012) argued in his article in Business Harvard Review that it is imperative for executives and decision makers in the organisations to understand similarities and differences between different cultures, norms and values, which belong to the workforce. Although one-language policy may reduce costs to some extent and ease up the process of communication but on a holistic level, this will weaken the long-term relationship of employees with one another and will affect factors, such as trust, respect, etc (Holmes & Stubbe, 2003). As discussed earlier in the politeness conflict section, every non-native speaker goes through the process of indigenisation when he/she learns a new language. This indigenisation process involves inclusion of own vocabulary and syntax based on cultural contextualization, which can become very disadvantageous in the implementation of a single-language policy without consideration of this notion of cultural contextualization. In this regard, this paper argues that Neeley (2012) somehow managed to simplify his proposition by not discussing the cultural issue that also saved him from providing its remedies. Other Arguments Another important flaw in Neeley’s argument was that he missed out the ground realities that have commonly been reported in various research articles (Fredriksson et al, 2006). It is common in organisations that people at top level introduce new policies whereas it takes a long time for that policy implementation to reach to the lowest level, particularly the people that are involved in day-to-day tasks (Tietze, 2004). Similar instance can occur in organisations trying to implement English-only policy, which will only keep this practice to the top level (Holmes & Stubbe, 2003) while people at the managerial or lower level will be involved in communication in their local language. This not only questions the efficacy of this policy but at the same time, questions the need of one. Important here to note is that Neeley (2012) pointed out important role of managers in monitoring the overall process of change but he did not talk about the complexity of manager-employee relationship (Feely & Harzing, 2003) that will be very critical in success or failure of the policy. Moreover, organisational culture whether autocratic or democratic will also act as an agent and might cause job dissatisfaction among the employees if implemented without understanding above-mentioned points. Undoubtedly, learning, writing, and speaking corporate language will surely be advantageous for the employees and will be helpful in their career as well. In his paper, Neeley (2012) smartly proposed two major strategies to bring in this linguistic alteration in the organisations, particularly ‘employee buy-in’ and ‘belief in capacity’, and he illustrated it with the help of an Ansoff matrix in his article. Although the proposed strategies may be very helpful for executives to encourage employees and promote a single corporate language but to do that, managers will surely be needing awareness and understanding of different cultures, norms and values, societal etiquettes, etc that were left out by the author. Experts (Charles, 2007) believe that organisations need to have awareness of communicative diversity in order to bring in a new language policy effectively. Making employees believe in their capacity sounds very intriguing but when it comes to implementation, various complex issues interplay in the change process and unawareness of such issues may cause contradictory outcomes. From this perspective, although Neeley (2012) proposed arrangement of training sessions for the employees but he did not go into detail and skipped ‘how’ part in that as well. For instance, difference exist between written and spoken language as various factors differ in both types, such as accent (Pennycook, 2008), vocabulary, etc that will matter significantly during the implementation process of such a policy. For instance, native speakers will always have a natural accent whereas non-native speakers will have a localised accent, which might cause lack of confidence in non-native speakers and give domination to the native speakers. However, announcing the policy does not seem an effective strategy, as this will require extensive planning, efforts to prepare employees for this change (Feely & Harzing, 2003), involving them in the decision rather than announcing the implementation as happened in the case study organisation in Neeley’s article. Despite of bringing organisational success, this may cause frustration (Feely & Harzing, 2003) among employees causing adverse performance in the company. CONCLUSION Conclusively, this paper analysed and evaluated Neeley’s argument where he stated that unrestricted bilingualism is inefficient and gets in the way of accomplishing business goals. However, discussion in this paper indicates that while making this statement, Neeley (2012) forgot or missed out various critical issues, such as identity crisis, politeness conflict, cultural diversity, organisational structure, leadership styles, manager-employee relationships, language diversity, and several other factors that are essential and may cause problems in successful implementation of a single-language policy in the organisations. In this regard, this policy may offer benefits to the employees, such as better career path, new language skills, exposure to the international world, etc. However, at the same time, inefficient and simplified implementation may also cause adverse effects, such as job dissatisfaction, demotivation, demotion, lack of confidence, cultural conflicts, and lack of cohesion, which can be damaging for the organisations in long run. Particularly, Neeley (2012) successfully indicated the importance and effectiveness of using English as a corporate language for organisations, particularly multinational companies to achieve competitive edge over its competitors. In addition, he also supported his argument by using the example of Japanese company that implemented this policy and acquired competitive advantages in the international market. Moreover, he proposed the policy with a framework to implement it but the only and the most important issue identified in his paper came out to be simplification of complex issues and avoidance of various factors that were in play during the implementation process for the sake of giving value to his proposition. Lastly, this paper was an attempt to analyse Neeley’s Harvard Review paper and it is anticipation that above discussion will be helpful for students and professionals in understanding different aspects of this subject area more critically and effectively. REFERENCES Bell, K. 2011. Politics and the English language in the 21st century. Harvard Business Review 89(9), pp. 134-135. Brown, P. and Levinson, C. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Charles, M. 2007. Language matters in global communication: Article based on ORA lecture October 2006. Journal of Business Communication 44(3), pp. 260-282. 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