Shared Language, shared Knowledge? Investigating barriers and facilitators to knowledge transfer in a common language context: the case of European Multinational Corporations

Abstract

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have over the past decades increasingly expanded to foreign markets, changing the international operating environment and requiring the MNCs to more efficiently transfer knowledge within and between functions in order to stay competitive. Language is a critical factor for knowledge transfer and many MNCs have adopted a common corporate language. It has however been debated to what extent a shared corporate language enables effective communication between various units. This study aims to understand if a shared language is adequate in helping overcome barriers for knowledge transfer and by extension identify and analyse other potential factors that can be barriers or facilitators for knowledge transfer in a setting of a common corporate language. The study has been based on 13 semi-structured interviews and five surveys with respondents within two different MNCs in Sweden and in Singapore. The data has been analysed by using a novel method applied to the field of international business (IB) studies, that of corpus linguistics and the use of a concordance software, AntConc. The use of the concordance software enables the findings of this qualitative study to be data driven. The results confirm that a shared language is not in itself enough to ensure successful knowledge transfer. The findings further show how several barriers and facilitators present in a multilingual setting remains in a monolingual setting. A shared language setting also appears to partially change the dynamics of barriers and facilitators for knowledge transfer as it sheds light on additional barriers and facilitators for knowledge transfer that the contemporary MNC faces.