Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Apr 21:13:879154.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.879154. eCollection 2022.

The Impact of Language Diversity on Knowledge Sharing Within International University Research Teams: Evidence From TED Project

Rossella Canestrino  1 , Pierpaolo Magliocca  2 , Yang Li  3
Affiliations

The Impact of Language Diversity on Knowledge Sharing Within International University Research Teams: Evidence From TED Project

Rossella Canestrino et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

In today's knowledge economy, knowledge and knowledge sharing are fundamental for organizations to achieve competitiveness and for individuals to strengthen their innovation capabilities. Knowledge sharing is a complex language-based activity; language affects how individuals communicate and relate. The growth in international collaborations and the increasing number of diverse teams affect knowledge sharing because individuals engage in daily knowledge activities in a language they are not native speakers. Understanding the challenges they face, and how they manage the emerging difficulties is the main aim of this manuscript. For this purpose, an explorative case study was conducted in an international university research project, namely the TED project. Both interviews and direct observations were employed to understand the phenomenon better and deliberately triangulate data and improve validity. Results show that non-native language use determines the emergence of different language proficiency, depending on the nature of the knowledge domain-job-related vs. non-job-related. Within non-job-related knowledge domains, the lack of linguistic abilities, summed to the perceived cultural diversities, mainly affects people's propensity to engage in personal and more intense social relationships. Under such circumstances, tacit knowledge sharing is reduced with negative consequences on the project's long-term innovative performance. Since the project is still running, detecting language challenges will allow the partners to design and apply effective measures to support cooperation with language and cultural barriers. Among them, code switching, adopted by "bridge" actors, already emerges as tool supporting communication and knowledge exchange.

Keywords: TED project; cultural diversity; knowledge sharing; language diversity; university research team.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The Obstacles to KS within Organizations. Source: Authors’ elaboration.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
TED project structure.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Code switching and bridge agents. Source: Authors’ elaboration.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Barriers to KS within TED. Source: Authors’ elaboration.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Abili K., Thani F. N., Mokhtarian F., Rashidi M. M. (2011). The role of effective factors on organizational knowledge sharing. Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci. 29 1701–1706. 10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.11.415 - DOI
    1. Abrams L. C., Cross R., Lesser E., Levin D. Z. (2003). Nurturing interpersonal trust in knowledge-sharing networks. Acad. Manage. Perspect. 17 64–77. 10.5465/ame.2003.11851845 - DOI
    1. Ahmad F. (2017). Knowledge-sharing networks: language diversity, its causes, and consequences. Knowl. Process Manage. 24 139–151. 10.1002/kpm.1539 - DOI
    1. Ahmad F. (2018). Knowledge sharing in a non-native language context: challenges and strategies. J. Inf. Sci. 44 248–264. 10.1177/0165551516683607 - DOI
    1. Ahmad F., Widén G. (2015). Language clustering and knowledge sharing in multilingual organizations: a social perspective on language. J. Inf. Sci. 41 430–443. 10.1177/0165551515581280 - DOI

LinkOut - more resources