New research on corporate language, socialization, and the conditions under which knowledge actually transfers

Picture this: a U.S.-based subsidiary in Shanghai introduces “English-only Fridays” to encourage use of the corporate language. The result is not better communication. It is silence. Employees disengage, avoid conversations, and curtail the very knowledge-sharing the policy was designed to promote. Researchers have called this the “silence syndrome,” and it captures a problem that far too many multinationals encounter without fully understanding.

Our new study published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Management sets out to explain why corporate language mandates so often fail to deliver on their promise, and what organizations should do instead.

The policy versus the practice

The study draws on data from 132 subsidiaries of foreign MNEs operating in Jiangsu Province, China, representing parent firms from 22 countries across Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia. Its starting point is a distinction that sounds simple but has substantial implications: there is a meaningful difference between formally adopting a corporate language and actually using it. Most of the literature has treated these as the same thing. They are not.

The formal adoption of a corporate language, typically English, is a top-down directive. It specifies what language communication should happen in. What it does not do is ensure that the resulting communication is meaningful to those on the receiving end. Subsidiaries can comply with such policies on paper while the practical reality on the ground looks quite different, a phenomenon organizational scholars have called ceremonial adoption. Our data show that formal adoption is actually negatively associated with communication quality. The mandate, in other words, can make things worse before it makes them better.

The relevance problem

To make sense of this, the study applies relevance theory, drawn from linguistics, to the organizational context. The core insight is straightforward: for communication to be effective, recipients must perceive the information as relevant, which means it must be cognitively accessible and contextually meaningful, not merely linguistically comprehensible. A message delivered in a language you are uncomfortable with, about practices whose organizational rationale you do not fully grasp, does not transfer knowledge. It generates cognitive burden and communicative withdrawal.

This reframes the challenge for MNEs considerably. The question is not simply which language to use but whether the information being communicated lands as relevant to subsidiary employees. That depends on communication quality, on socialization, and on employees’ actual proficiency in the corporate language, and these three factors interact.

What the findings show

Three empirical findings stand out. First, while formal corporate language adoption does not directly improve communication quality, high-quality communication does significantly improve knowledge transfer. The practical implication is that MNEs need to invest in how information is conveyed, not just in which language it is delivered. Clarity, contextual fit, and directness matter. Expatriate managers in high-context environments like China need to tailor communication to local cognitive frameworks, not simply translate headquarters messages and transmit them downward.

Second, when host country nationals actually use the corporate language in their daily interactions, this generates higher levels of socialization, both formal and informal, which in turn drives knowledge transfer. The causal pathway matters: it is not language use per se that helps transfer knowledge, but the social interactions that language use opens up. Joint meetings, cross-national teams, shared training programs, socializing during and outside working hours are the mechanisms through which knowledge becomes meaningful and transferable. Importantly, socialization substitutes to some extent for high-quality formal communication. Subsidiaries with rich socialization depend less on the clarity of formal channels because informal interaction fills in the contextual gaps.

Third, and perhaps most counterintuitively, language proficiency moderates these processes in ways that complicate the standard managerial prescription. The socialization pathway is most important precisely in subsidiaries where proficiency is lower. Where employees struggle with the corporate language, face-to-face interaction and deliberate socialization become more, not less, critical. Waiting until proficiency improves before investing in socialization is the wrong sequence. The research also finds that a high level of proficiency is not a prerequisite for effective knowledge transfer; employees can engage productively through socialization even with imperfect command of the corporate language.

What this means in practice

For MNEs operating across significant linguistic and cultural distance, these findings reframe the managerial task. Language training remains valuable, but it should be designed around high-relevance, practically grounded skills rather than formal proficiency benchmarks. More importantly, organizations need to build the social infrastructure through which language becomes a vehicle for shared meaning rather than a barrier to it. In the Chinese context specifically, this means attending to guanxi, to the development of personal relationships between expatriates and host country nationals, and to the creation of deliberate opportunities for interaction that bridge the in-group/out-group dynamics that can otherwise shut down knowledge exchange.

The broader lesson is simple but easy to overlook. A language mandate tells employees what to speak. It cannot, on its own, ensure they are actually heard.

Read more: Mockaitis, A.I., Tan, J., Zhu, J., Zhu, C.J., & Chen, Z. (2026). Corporate language and knowledge transfer in MNE subsidiaries: A relevance lens. Asia Pacific Journal of Management. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-025-10063-z