Abstract:

The challenges that multinational corporations (MNCs) face in addressing the universal challenge of managing language across the globe differ substantially from country to country. As a consequence, the policies and practices companies have to choose as solutions to respond to these problems also vary. The focus of organizations on developing business communication skills is justified because they are vital not only in team operations but also in relationships with business partners, suppliers or customers. Facilitating communication in multi-lingual teams stimulates the innovation process, which is an essential competitive advantage for organizations. From an almost non-existent market in the early 1990s, in Romania, language learning has developed together with businesses that needed trained employees. In addition, since 2001, legislation has helped to that end. Thus, if at first English was the most sought-after language, for it is well-known the language of the international business, in the meantime there has been increasing demand for exotic languages. That does not mean that English is no longer in the top. English has remained the working language of many companies with foreign capital and, moreover, the jargon of the company, be it banking, retail or especially IT, abounds in English terms. With English "by default," the second foreign language is gaining momentum, and the highest demand is for German and French. Again, the parallelism between language learning and foreign investment in Romania must be pursued. In the top 10 of the latter, the Netherlands has been the first place, followed by Germany, Austria and France. Thus, English remains the umbrella language for companies with foreign capital, but the existence of companies with Austrian, German or French capital stimulates the demand for German and French language courses. Also, the Romanian labor market requires Nordic languages (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish) or regional languages (Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian), which seems to bring 10-20% to the salary. Therefore, this paper seeks to explore the use of common corporate language(s) in multinational corporations (usually multilingual and characterized by high language diversity) in Romania and, implicitly, the advantages the employees of these companies have in terms of personal development and increased chances of promotion.