Language in the critical realist discussion of structure and agency

Karhunen et al.’s (2018) recent literature review, as well as the literature review of this thesis, have demonstrated that the understanding of what language is, and which organisational roles it may occupy, may vary greatly between studies. Depending on the ontological stance and methodological approach, language has been conceptualised through structural, functional and social practice approaches.

Collectively, the papers in the current thesis demonstrate that each of these conceptualisations of language may suit a specific purpose in studying the multifaceted organisational role of languages. Karhunen et al. (ibid.) show the advantages of approaching language as a social practice in capturing the interactive, fluid and negotiated aspects of language use at the workplace. The authors also indicate the shortcomings of structural studies of language policy as a ‘top management problem’ and static variable-oriented studies of language as a personal trait. The current study demonstrates that the agent-centred and structural properties of organisational languages complement each other in a holistic explanation of how the organisational role of language bridges between structure and agency.

The answer to the first part of the overarching thesis research question –

“How is English maintained as an organisational language?”, is primarily constituted by the findings of the thesis on the individual level. On the individual level, agency and actor properties are a particular analytical strength of critical realism, where scholars have emphasised the individual role in enacting, producing, reproducing and maintaining social structures (Ackroyd, 2010; Archer, 2010). The present thesis demonstrates that individual, collective and organisational legitimation are key forms of agency which constitute the organisational role of English as a structural entity. In the interactive relationship between ideology and

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legitimation outlined in Paper 2, I demonstrate that the act of legitimating English is in itself a key form of agency which produces and reproduces ideological narratives, and thus maintains the organisational role of English. This theoretical insight contributes to language ideology theory, by positioning legitimation as a key form of agency in the structure of language ideology. While sociolinguistic research of language ideology has outlined the historical formation of ideological content (Kroskrity, 2004), or its presence in employee behaviour in multilingual workplaces (Lønsmann, 2015; Lønsmann and Mortensen, 2018), the present thesis provides insight into how different strategies in individual and organisational language legitimation discursively establish English as the organisational language.

Furthermore, the dissertation contributes to the further integration of organisation theory (see e.g. Piekkari and Westney, 2017) in the study of legitimation in language-sensitive business and management research. In demonstrating the role of language legitimation in upholding ideological structures, I strengthen the relevance of legitimacy as a concept (Dowling and Pfeffer; 1975; Kostova and Zaheer, 1999;

Vaara et al., 2006), which explains individual discursive behaviour in constructing the organisational role of English. Thus, the theoretical concept is applied in the study of language ideology in professional contexts.

Also in the actor dimension, Paper 3 demonstrates that a key facet of English as an organisational language depends on the ability of individuals to use English within and according to the socially and contextually accepted norms in the academic sector. Thus, the role of English can manifest itself as the evaluation of an individual characteristic, in the shape of language proficiency. Similarly in Paper 2, perceived high English language proficiency in the Danish organisational context is constructed as an exemplary precedent in normalising, rationalising and moralising legitimating strategies in support of English as the ‘corporate’ language.

These findings confirm and extend extant management research of language proficiency as an antecedent to desirable inter-employee outcomes (e.g. Selmer and

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Lauring, 2015; Peltokorpi, 2008 Peltokorpi and Yamao, 2017), and thus demonstrate the social value of proficiency in a key language as capital in positive collegial receptions. Furthermore, the agency in peer evaluations of English proficiency is highlighted as a key facet. While extant studies of language proficiency in organisational contexts have focused on the mere possession of such skills as an antecedent, Paper 3 finds an intrinsic moderation relationship, where English language proficiency may buffer the negative effects of low status on collaboration performance. This finding gives insight into how proficiency evaluations may both independently, but also as a facet of status perceptions, play a role in perceptions of professional abilities. However, the critical realist ontological stance requires the consideration of structure when evaluating agency or individual attributes. Therefore, this perspective positions language proficiency as an individual attribute in a relationship with structure, in order to explain the organisational role of English. In Paper 3, this is done by outlining the role of English in the Nordic academic sector, while Paper 2 considers the meso-level development of English in the post-merger context of the MNC.

In answering the second part of the overarching research question: “…what are the implications of this role (as an organisational language) for an international workforce?”, the present thesis outlines two main implications of English as an organisational language. The two empirical papers demonstrate that the position held by a language influences how employees think and reason about the legitimacy of language, but also that it influences how colleagues in an international workplace perceive each other. This contributes to language-sensitive international management and business research, which focuses on the implications and reception of language policy in a diverse workforce (e.g. Aichhorn and Puck, 2017; Bordia and Bordia, 2015; Lønsmann, 2017). Critical realism facilitates the construction of a unified theoretical argument including both the impact on perceptions of language legitimacy and peer abilities. A constructivist perspective would focus on how the

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ideas held by individual employees collectively construct the organisational role of language by “talking the phenomenon into being” (e.g. Schoeneborn, Kuhn and Kärreman, 2019). Since critical realism acknowledges the possibility of socially constructed entities, such as ideology, but attributes them generative powers in objectively real structures (Fairclough, 2005; Fleetwood, 2005), the present dissertation theorises the implications of the structural role of English as well. In addition to finding that this role is discursively constructed through legitimation, the role itself has structural generative potential in producing ideological content for employee and language policy discursive legitimation.

Paper 2 theorises the structural role of language policy as an instance of English language legitimation. Extant studies and theorisations of language policy have focused on how organisational characteristics influence language selection (e.g. Luo and Shenkar, 2006) or language management more broadly (Peltokorpi and Vaara, 2012; Van den Born and Peltokorpi, 2012). While the present qualitative case study has analysed language policy as a component in the discursive legitimation of English as the organisational language, the language policy document and the organisation’s pragmatic and flexible approach to internal language use are also structural elements, which, although loosely, frame individual employee action. Therefore, the study of language policy as a carrier of language ideology highlights the relevance of studying the structural relationship between policy and ideology. The thesis has thus demonstrated the theoretical strength of critical realist research in language-sensitive IB and management research, by focusing on the structural properties of language in organisations.

In outlining the influence of the organisational role of English on how we view the legitimacy of language/s and how ideological content constitutes legitimation strategies, Paper 2 also contributes and consolidates theory of discursive legitimation (Vaara et al., 2006) and language ideology (Kroskrity, 2004;

Woolard and Shieffelin, 1994). While analysing data from micro-discursive

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processes, the investigation demonstrates the influence of structural ideological elements on individual level action. Through a critical realist lens, which encourages the consideration of both structure and agency without conflating them (Fleetwood, 2005), this theoretical contribution advances the understanding of how individual attitudes to language use are formed by structural bodies of ideology within a given organisational context. Similarly, the findings of Paper 3, where perceptions of high English language proficiency have a positive relationship with performance evaluations, and may even buffer the negative effect of low status, position the role of English as a structural frame for high evaluations of English skills as a valuable resource in a Nordic academic context.

Furthermore, the empirical findings of the present thesis indicate that an organisational language status influences how we view others (e.g. Neeley and Dumas, 2016; Sliwa and Johansson, 2014; Zhang and Harzing, 2016; Zhang and Lauring, 2019) – in this case, how peers view and evaluate their colleagues in an international workplace. Both Paper 2 and 3 find that the degree to which individuals are able to demonstrate English proficiency has implications for how they will evaluate the abilities of other colleagues. Paper 2 found that the underlying taken for granted role of English as the corporate language automatically sets the expectation that employees in the newly merged Spanish organisation will improve their English proficiency, in order to match the perceived higher proficiency in the Germanic parts of the organisation. The inability to live up to this expectation was by some even portrayed as a breach of mutual expectations in a merger situation.

In parallel, the quantitative analysis of the moderating role of English language proficiency in Paper 3 demonstrates the relevance of studying peer perceptions of individual linguistic traits and what these evaluations reveal about the organisational linguistic context (Sliwa and Johansson, 2014). This contribution not only adds to expatriate research (Selmer and Lauring, 2015; Selmer, 2006), which has traditionally aimed to find the most important factors in expatriate

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success and performance (Mol, Born, Willemsen and Van Der Molen, 2005), but also to the wider language-sensitive literature. By finding that English language skills may moderate the relationship between status and collaboration performance, we also indicate the organisational status of English in the studied academic contexts and its implications for the assessment of performance among international employees. The results suggest that the linguistic capital, which proficient users of English carry in these organisations, may impact how beneficial or detrimental the assessments of other personal qualities (in this case individual status) may be for the evaluation of their professional competences. Thus, the qualities which proficient users of English are perceived to carry play a role in how individuals are assessed in the workplace and, in turn, the expectations towards the language competencies of employees.

The ideological structures, or in Bourdieu’s (1977) terms, value of English on the linguistic market, can be perceived as a frame for the relations between employees and how they assess each other’s capabilities. Although Bourdieusian theory is only applied in Paper 3, both empirical studies of the present thesis confirm and extend the theoretical relevance of Bourdieu’s concepts linguistic market and linguistic capital in explaining individual level relations in international workplaces. While extant studies have found evidence for the direct influence of individual language proficiency on various positive qualities and abilities (e.g.

Peltokorpi, 2008; Selmer and Lauring, 2015; Selmer, 2006), the critical realist approach in Papers 2 and 3 considers contextual characteristics as enabling factors in an interactive relationship between perceptions of proficiency and other individual qualities. A general finding both studies have in common is that English language skills are highly valued in two empirical settings where English functions as a key common language among predominantly non-native speaking employees.

However, Paper 2 also shows that through future predictions of increased proficiency among less proficient colleagues, employees legitimate the mismatch

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between current high expectations of high English proficiency and perceived shortcomings among certain groups of colleagues. Thus, expectations of high English proficiency in the linguistic market of the case MNC, imply negative evaluations of employees unable to match the expectations, unless they match the predicted linear future path of improvement. This finding specifies that in changing organisational environments, the expectations emanating from the value of proficiency may be moderated, so that they accommodate, but also push peers to follow the rules (Sliwa and Johansson, 2015) of the linguistic market.

Finally, the critical realist approach of the present thesis has demonstrated the strength of incorporating context in the theorisation of language-related phenomenon. Since contextualised explanation is a prime aim of research in this paradigm, theorising mechanisms analyse the conditions of the given case, while the transferability of the findings depends on the conditions of comparable cases (Gerring 2007; Vincent and Wapshott, 2014; Welch et al., 2011). Similarly, language use and ideas about language are highly context-dependent, as language norms are closely linked to the societal conditions which organisations operate within (Bourdieu 1991; Kroskrity, 2004). In both empirical papers, the local linguistic context of the empirical material, and the role of English on the societal level, are included in the analysis of enabling factors. In Paper 2, the legitimation of English in the Danish and German contexts is theorised to build on a perceived English-speaking Danish context as a reference point, while the German workforce is portrayed to be in the process of improvement, and the newly added Spanish organisation is predicted and expected to show improvement over time.

Furthermore, the internationalisation history of the MNC is included to propose which languages have traditionally existed in the MNC up until the merger. In Paper 3, the Nordic academic context, where English is an established working language (Hultgren et al., 2014; Simensen, 2010), is similarly theorised to facilitate peer expectations of high English proficiency. Surprisingly, here, although several major

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Nordic universities maintain the importance of the local languages in teaching and academic dissemination, we do not find a moderating role of local language proficiency. This suggests that, in our sample, the activities which are carried out in English, such as the majority of international publication and networking, are prioritised in collaboration performance evaluations.

The findings and their enabling conditions demonstrate how the specificity of conditions contribute to the functioning of the mechanisms behind English as an organisational language. However, as causality is conjunctional in critical realist terms, the same outcomes of the empirical studies may be observed in other cases, but caused by other mechanisms (Rihoux and Ragin, 2009; Welch et al., 2011).

Similarly, the same mechanism and similar enabling conditions may produce other outcomes in other cases. For instance, post-merger organisations based outside the Nordic countries may also use English as an organisational language, but supported by a different ideology. Furthermore, in a sample of only Norwegian universities, despite also hosting an English-speaking scholarly environment, peers may emphasise local language proficiency more in performance evaluations, due to the strong role of Norwegian in local education (Ljosland, 2014). Thus, the findings of this thesis are relevant beyond the context of the empirical material, but need to be adapted and contextualised according to the specific linguistic and institutional conditions.

8.2 Methodological contributions – Bridging qualitative and quantitative methods