Second Language Implementations in Businesses: Company and Employees’ Perspectives

Abstract

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This thesis examines the Language Management (LM) strategy of second language implementations in organisations, specifically aiming to understand this topic from the perspectives of companies implementing the change process and employees undergoing it. Due to the deep interest of the LM literature in already multicultural and multilingual organisational realities, and the rising importance of foreign languages in the labour market, this research aims to investigate this practice.Adopting a qualitative approach, this study identified two sets of participants, corresponding to two main research questions. Overall, a convenient and purposive sampling method was used, alongside a focus group interview in English, semi-structured interviews in English and Chinese, and a written questionnaire translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Thai. Data were coded using the software Atlas.ti 25, then themed and organised into different dimensions.The overall findings, in all their respective dimensions, allowed the recognition of five general recurring patterns: the central role played by employees, the importance of building a culture of leadership and organisation, the emphasis on evaluation and monitoring, the aspect of practical barriers to learning, and the value of learning. When considering both perspectives, it was also possible to pinpoint some interesting contradictions, such as how the expressed need for personalisation clashes with the practicality of pursuing it; how the expressed need for evaluation strategies collide with an equal desire for pursuing the psychological well-being of the employees; and how the strategic importance of knowing a second language may differ from the actual strategic interest of the organisation. Overall, all these findings create a synergic overview of second language implementations in organisations.Finally, all the findings reveal cohesion and create a panoramic picture of how these could be used in the future by organisations’ leaders, HR practitioners, and employees alike. Additionally, use these findings as a starting point to create guidelines or a checklist for future organisations with a deep interest in foreign languages implementation, or similar change processes could be considered.