Helene Tenzer

Language Barriers in Different Forms of International Assignments

International business activities are always accompanied by language-related barriers as companies are confronted with multiple local languages and a multinational workforce. To increase the efficiency of corporate communication, documentation and cross-national teamwork, an increasing number of companies have implemented common language policies in both their headquarters and their foreign subsidiaries and made English their official corporate language. However, introducing a common corporate language also creates friction among a multinational firm’s workforce and is fraught with challenges. To deepen our understanding of the language-related barriers that expatriates experience during international assignments, this study takes different tasks expatriates have to execute while being abroad into account and shows which types of international assignments are particularly vulnerable to the language effects. In particular, the study reveals that language causes negative emotional responses among employees of multinational corporations, restrains a common social identity, constitutes an obstacle to trust building and distorts organizational power relations. Finally, the study illustrates that not only a low absolute language proficiency of expatriates and local colleagues but also relative differences in proficiency levels among the multinational corporation’s workforce can hamper expatriate success.

A Multidimensional Approach to International Market Selection and Nation Branding in Sub-saharan Africa

Despite the strong economic growth of many African countries, foreign investors often overlook their potential. Nation branding can raise the awareness of foreign investors to the particular strengths of these countries. To identify the specific image attributes of a nation that nation branding campaigns could prioritize, 144 managers evaluated the importance of 22 market selection criteria. In this study, using the analytical hierarchy process, we weighed those dimensions, condensing multifaceted information into a framework to evaluate the attractiveness of African countries for foreign direct investment (FDI). We subsequently applied this framework to 46 sub-Saharan nations. The results highlight the diversity among these countries, provide guidance for nation branding and serve to alert investors to frequently overlooked target markets. Our study substantially contributes to international market selection research by introducing a new screening method for emerging markets.

Cultural and Institutional Sources of Conflict in Foreign Subsidiaries of Multinational Corporations

This paper investigates the importance of culturally and institutionally induced conflicts between home and host country nationals in foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs). our comprehensive investigation of 617 foreign subsidiaries of US, Japanese and german multinationals firstly demonstrates that subsidiary managers attribute such conflicts to both cultural and institutional sources. We also find that cultural sources have a higher conflict potential compared to institutional sources. Further, we demonstrate that with increasing cultural and institutional distances between home and host countries, culturally induced conflicts become relatively more important than institutionally induced conflicts. these results indicate that although institutional differences matter as sources of conflicts between home and host country nationals in foreign subsidiaries, cultural differences matter somewhat more. nevertheless, the paper stresses that both, cultural and institutional sources of conflicts should be considered in conjunction and in an integrative way.