The role of cultural distance in language management in multinational companies

As the geographical borders of multinational companies expand with globalization, their interaction with different languages and cultures also increases. Multinational companies need to realize the importance of language and cultural differences in their interactions with their subsidiaries and create a management system that is sensitive to language and culture. The aim of this study is to determine the language barriers of the Istanbul subsidiary of a multinational company which is headquartered in Italy and serving in insurance sector, to identify the language management strategies applied by the company to deal with language barriers, and to determine the effect of cultural distance on language management. Qualitative research method and single case study was adopted as the research design. Research data was obtained from mathematical calculations, semi-structured interviews and online documents. Maxqda 2020 program was used for the analysis of the obtained data, and the thematic analysis method was used with both inductive and deductive approaches. In the research findings, the cultural distance between Italy and Turkey was calculated using the cultural dimensions of Hofstede (1980, 2001) and the Kogut and Singh (1988) index. Then the point of view of the company and the participants about language and culture were evaluated by conducting a single case study. With the obtained data, language barriers in the subsidiary were determined. The identified language barriers are grouped under three main themes: competence-based, structure-based and relationship-based. In order to minimize cultural differences and overcome language barriers the multinational company implemented a total of seventeen language management strategies under two main themes: employee-oriented and environmentoriented strategies.