4th EUNoM Symposium. “Multilingualism in the Knowledge Economy: Labour Markets Revisited, and Corporate Social Responsibility”
Belfast, Northern Ireland, 14-15 November 2011

Production in the industrial society relied on Taylorism and kept workers separate from one another, but the knowledge economy (KE) is structured round the centrality of communication, thanks to which knowledge is generated. Consequently, this topic will focus on the key relationship between learning and the demands of an economy in which language is a central feature. The KE rests firmly on the development of communities of practice, in which shared meaning is central to knowledge generation.
It can also be argued that working across languages and cultures is conducive to the promotion of reflexive learning associated with integrating symbolic features of linguistic diversity and that it relates to shared meaning. 
The role of the universities in the operationalisation of Triple Helix-type partnerships in the emerging economy will be discussed, given the varied experiences brought together.

Contents

•	Monday morning
Glyn Williams (Centre for European Research) FULL PAPER
Sarah Cartwright (CILT, the National Centre for Languages)
Finbarr Bradley [Fionnbarra Ó Brolcháin] (Smurfit Graduate Business School, University College Dublin) DRAFT PAPER
David Johnston (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)
•	Monday afternoon
Thomas Vogel (Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt, Oder) PRELIMINARY PAPER
Claudia Böttger (Europäische Fernhochschule Hamburg / University of Applied Sciences) FULL PAPER
Karl Gudauner (Arbeitsförderungsinstitut - Istituto per la Promozione dei Lavoratori, Bozen/Bolzano, IT (AFI-IPL), Bozen/Bolzano, IT) FULL PAPER
David Gibson (Queen's University Belfast, UK)
Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl (Dublin City University) FULL PAPER
Josep Maria Canyelles (Responsabilitat Global, think tank on CSR)
•	Tuesday morning
François Grin (Université de Genève, CH)
Miquel Strubell (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, CAT, ES) FULL PAPER
René Jorna (Frisian Academy and University of Groningen) FULL PAPER
Teresa Tinsley (independent consultant) PRELIMINARY PAPER
Peeter Müürsepp (Tallinn University of Technology, EE) OUTLINE
Sonja Novak (Institute of Ethnic Studies, University of Ljubljana)

Glyn Williams (Centre for European Research)
Language and work in the knowledge economy
Abstract
Unlike the industrial economy, work in the knowledge economy is premised on team working and communication. This brings language directly into the production process. This paper considers how working through the medium of more than one language contributes to innovation.
Introduction
This paper is less about economics than about work, the sociology of work and the place of language within it. Sociologists rarely incorporate language in their theories, its role being restricted to a transparent means of accessing the social. I hope that this paper begins to redress this deficiency.
It is commonplace to discuss work within the industrial economy of modernity by reference to Fordism or Taylorism. This was a work regime within which the worker was essentially mute, operating as an individual within a distinctive assembly line. Of late there have been so many changes in society, political organisation and economics that we are obliged to reconsider the nature of work and how it is currently being organised. This is not to imply that the industrial economy has disappeared, but that now it coexists with a new form of economy, the knowledge economy.
The knowledge economy rests on the claim that knowledge plays a central role in economic growth and social change. Production increasingly relies on the creation of knowledge. This is not to suggest that somehow knowledge has been absent in the industrial economy, nor that there has been a shift away from the capitalist economy. The claim revolves around the intensification of knowledge within production, and the appearance of knowledge-intensive economic sectors.
A second development focuses upon the new technology. It has allowed a recontextualisation of the time-space dimension, allowing materials and transactions to cross vast space in little time. Together with deregulation it has allowed the elaboration of extended value chains that encompass a range of languages and cultures while tending to use specific languages as lingue franche. It has reconfigured some economic activities such as broadcasting which has been radically transformed through the convergence of the web and the more orthodox channels. This obliges the merging of hitherto separate activities and the forging of new partnerships.

Third, we confront the issue of globalisation and the myriad of implications for politics, economic organisation and society, let alone for language. The deregulation of the economy is claimed to break the relationship between the nation state and ‘it economy’, that is, how regulation involves exerting spatial, organisational and operational boundaries around the economy of the state. This resulted in a focus on a single economy for each state and a single labour market. Evidently this did not preclude interrelationships, nor did it imply an exclusivity. Nonetheless, it did allow the nation state to focus on ‘its economy’ as the basis for satisfying the material needs and aspirations of its citizenry. It is this that hitherto consolidated the relationship between economy and society such that sociologists referred to the state as containing and managing a single economy and a single society. The implications of deregulation on the very principles of sociology should be evident. The shift in economic control from the nation state whose government was answerable to its citizenry, to MNCs who are answerable to their shareholders has resulted in a distinct loss of sovereignty on the part of the nation state.
These developments are not isolated, but overlap. Thus, for example, there is a distinctive relationship between how the new economy involves extended value chains that transcend space, mainly as a consequence of deregulation and the advantages of the new technology. As a consequence Manuel Castells (2000, 2001) refers to the new economy as a network economy that relates to a network society. The focus here is on structure. Others argue that there has been a shift in the very nature of society, involving a heightened degree of individualism, of reflexivity and an enhanced focus on human rights.
It should be fairly evident that it is these changes that contextualise the series of seminars with which we have engaged. There is little doubt that the old world of modernity is subject to profound changes that involve fundamental institutions such as the University, as well as how subjects relate to these changes, partly through an engagement with these institutions, and partly through changes in the social construction of the self. The relevance for language as an object and for language as a practice is profound and far-reaching.
Boltanski & Chiapello (1999) have argued that capitalism has persistently integrated critiques of its practices into its development. This perspective opens new views in the exploration of public democratic space, leading in turn to the transformation of political systems and both to transformations in the relations of production, being reactive to its critics while being proactive in the elaboration of new organisational forms or techniques of production. It also allows us to elaborate a different understanding of globalisation in how it separates the place of production from the place of the formation of the beneficiaries (especially the banks) making capitalisation dependent on the interests of the shareholders.
Work in the Knowledge Economy
Innovation and creativity lie at the heart of thinking about the knowledge economy. However, these processes do not focus on the enterprising individual, but involve how the interactive process generates innovation. Here we need to distinguish between product innovation and process innovation. There is no escaping how the knowledge economy is constantly associated with the search for novel products that can be brought to market as soon as possible. However, the new technology opens the possibility that certain markets are structured by language. The pronounced increase in the mobility of labour means that the link between markets, space and language is disrupted. Speakers of many languages can be found distributed all over the world in significant numbers. The new technology makes them instantly accessible through the medium of whichever language is relevant. 
Furthermore, changes in the cultural economy allow many products to be assembled locally while drawing upon global resources. Their distribution is also quick and simple. Payment is also easy and rapid.
However, my main concern is less with product innovation than with process innovation. This involves moving away from the Fordist production process and stressing new ways of working that emphasise the social factors conducive to innovation and knowledge production and management. That is, innovation is now a central feature of the production process, and the focus is centrally on work processes and workflows.
The central ingredient of the work process is team working within what are termed communities of practice. It involves collaboration, mutual trust and, of course, language. That is, language is a crucial feature of the entire production process. This does not preclude the construction of languages as specific objects, but perhaps more important is the understanding of language as social practice, a social practice that depends upon the social construction of meaning, and the relationship of meaning to innovation. Productive labour becomes simultaneously ‘a production of sociality’ (Balibar, 2004: 175).
Inherent in the notion of a community of practice is an awareness that much, perhaps most, of knowledge is tacit in nature and that there is a distinction to be made between information and knowledge. Both Marx and Wittgenstein argued that knowledge is rooted in social relations and social practice, both of which involve a tacit component that relies on cultural and personal knowledge.
The relationship between information and knowledge rests on the difference between ‘knowing how’ rather than ‘knowing that’ (Polyani, 1967). Whereas information can be exchanged, knowledge cannot. Knowledge is also practice-specific. That is, it is something that is contextualised by reference to specific social practices. However, it also pertains to much broader contexts, be they historical, social or institutional. Learning on the other hand is understood as the process whereby something becomes known. It is something that reconstitutes the individual, modifying the relationship between the individual as subject and other subjects and objects. This is the idea behind ‘lifelong learning’. As a constant process it implies the existence of a vast repository of knowledge that is not known to the individual. That is, we learn mainly through social practice, and we engage with knowledge as social practice. In other words, we understand social practice as behaviour that we practise without reflection, the automatic features of practice. However, all knowledge is capable of being shared with others. It is this that constitutes the potent nature of knowledge generation by reference to the knowledge economy. The focus is now firmly set on the intensification of knowledge, on knowledge intensive industries and knowledge-based organisations. Learning plays a central role, and the development of organisational structures that accommodate learning are paramount. The focus is on learning rather than on education, a learning that does not necessarily involve an awareness on the part of the individual that she is learning.
Communities of practice are one form of such structures that bring together the preceding constructions. They involve teams of workers in face to face interaction who learn from one another through involvement in work practice – learning by doing. What is learnt is tacit, and not easily expressed, it remains crucial for the creation of new knowledge. Indeed, the sharing of practices across the team is such that there is an enhanced sense of shared meaning that feeds into the sharing of meaning as it relates to new knowledge. This must mean that tacit knowledge is largely social. This is consistent with how the social construction of knowledge refers to both local and specifically constructed realities.
What is involved is a new form of working that changes the relations of production. Business processes within the industrial economy were based on division of labour concepts. They now give way to team working. Given that firms increasingly rely on ICT to develop and deliver products and services, it is increasingly difficult for companies to compete simply on the basis of efficiency. They must become more effective. This is claimed to occur through collecting, sharing, disseminating and enhancing corporate knowledge that leads to better products and services, and customer-centric business processes.
Language, communities of practice and shared meaning
Mainstream Sociology has argued that rules of behaviour are a central characteristic of social behaviour. Indeed, classical sociology considered that conduct was determined by rules. In contrast Wittgenstein, poststructuralists and ethnomethodologists prefer to focus attention on how the rules are invoked or manifested as resources for constituting behaviour. The focus on rules (values, norms etc) is therefore not separate from the focus on the behaviour that they make observable to the subject. The emphasis here is on how meaning is understood as intersubjective. As such it relates to rules governing natural language use, rules that define how expressions or statements are used.
In that our access to the social order is always relayed through discourse, whether it involves an event or an institution, it opens the door to how society is organised. A social order is not a social order in the eyes of the members of a collectivity unless there is a reconciliation between what is said of that order, and how it is proved in experience. It is this task that lies at the heart of the mastering of routines. What counts as ‘punctual’, ‘exact’ or ‘good service’ within a given milieu involves cultural definitions. The tools used in the analysis do not involve any model of ‘reality’, but serve as the basis for discovering the model that is used within the discursive practice that we choose to study. 
At the heart of the notion of communities of practice is an understanding that the interface between tacit knowledge and the community involves a constant process of negotiating meaning, to the extent that it becomes a shared meaning. This is not a rational process, but a feature of interaction that is constantly drawing upon tacit knowledge in developing new knowledge. Learning now becomes a collective process. This can now be linked with the minutiae of Foucault’s notion of disciplinarity as the core of self-discipline. That is, each individual brings a history of disciplinary activity into the mix, and draws upon it in adjusting the self to the demands of the ‘community’. 
The question we need to ask ourselves is how does language operate in this respect, and what role can it play in the creative process. If we can reach an understanding of how language operates in the construction and constitution of shared meaning, we can begin to consider whether multilingualism can be considered as a productive force within the knowledge economy. At the heart of the answer I propose is how Foucault’s claim that social relations are brought into being in and through discourse shares with Wittgenstein the notion of discourse as ‘strategic games’ played within social practice.
In addressing these two questions I draw upon enonciative linguistics. It is a sociological perspective in the sense that it allows the study of discourse by reference to social relations while analysing the social categories occupied by individuals as subjects of discourse, and how these categories are used in understanding discourse as social practice. It assumes that the social world has a meaning for the subjects, a meaning that is constituted and produced such that it becomes possible to render it explicit, and to analyse that ‘meaning for the subject’. Any analysis rests on ordinary language as opposed to the formal language of Linguistics, and on how ordinary language is involved in producing descriptions or accounts of the social world that are intelligible to the subjects. It is an approach that places the focus firmly on the order of the social, and not on the order of language.
Whereas orthodox sociology understood the human subject as essentially rational, fully in charge of her destiny, more recent approaches have decentred the subject. Enonciative linguistics rejects the equation of the enonciateur/enonciataire with locuteur/locutaire (speaker/hearer). This allows the problem of the centred subject to be avoided. Language displaces these relationships, and expresses interaction as a feature constructed into language rather than in an innate, preformed, way. This refutation of the rational subject involves how the infinite possibilities of language are transposed into meaning as the effects of discourse. The focus is on the social construction of meaning without recourse to the centred subject in the explanation of that construction. As the act of stating an enonce, enonciation is an event that is constructed in terms of time and space. This serves to create a sense of stability for the content of the enonce. Whatever the occurrence of an enonce, it does not have an existence independent of its enonciation. One is not simply concerned with that which is stated, but also with the act of saying it, that is, with the enonciation, and it is this that is reflected in the enonce. One cannot understand the meaning of an enonce without reference to the context of the enonciation, that is, by integrating certain aspects of its enonciative context.
I am not concerned here with the analysis facilitated by enonciative linguistics, but with how this particular perspective on language allows us to come to terms with how natural language operates. The central focus for the moment is on how shared meaning is achieved. The social itself is constructed through shared meaning. It involves taking in charge, interpolation and the transformation of the individual into the subject.
The individual believes that s/he speaks, that speech crosses the individual. This is the central feature of Foucault's concept of episteme. That is, the knowledge on which the individual operates is extremely constrained, both in terms of the effects of prior knowledges that the individual cannot be aware of, and in terms of the constraints that are placed on what can be said from a given place. Furthermore, the constant shifting between form and meaning has its effect, such that meaning is never truly fixed. That is, meaning is not a thing but a process, while the properties of objects are not those of the object itself but of our reading of it. Thus social practice is constantly modifying the meaning of objects that are constructed and reconstructed. This is a central concern of enonciative linguistics and relates to the constitution of the subject.
The individual is constituted as the subject of discourse through the relationship between interpolation, signification and taking in charge. It implies an overlap between a language act that is supported by the construction of meaning, and the enonciateur who takes the discourse in charge. Signification in itself is not akin to meaning, but must be accompanied by the effects of discourse. Thus the act and the event involve the relationship between signification and the real effect, involving how the enonciateur is transformed into the locuteur occupying a real social place. The formal apparatus of enonciation operates when locuteurs are taken in charge, implying a social interaction premised upon shared meaning and the implications of a relationship between the enonce and the situation. The individual becomes the subject of discourse. 
Taking in charge involves how the subject of an enonciation is ‘…supposed to take responsibility for the contents posed’, or becomes ‘...the subject who takes up a position’ (Pecheux, 1982:156). The subject place opens up for the individual to take in charge, or to refuse to take in charge. This relationship between the enonciateur (formal) and the locuteur (real social place) involves the unwinding of the enonciation internal to discourse, and to social actions of which discourse is the support. These social actions are either carried by the enonce or can run aground when taking in charge does not occur. If the statement ‘Hey, Taff’ is made and I respond to that statement, I take in charge the subject place associated with ‘Taff’.
As implied in the preceding statement by Pechuex, in taking in charge a preconstructed the individuals who are interpolated as subjects accept, either partially or totally, both the social places which relevant linguistic marks construct, and the point of departure that they presuppose. Any social actor can render account of his/her behaviour, and such accounts can be formulated by reference to presuppositions and implicits that delimit that which is thinkable, and thereby the space of choice. Nonetheless, between the linguistic level and the reasoning of the rational individual, there are other kinds of presuppositions which interject, and which constitute the discursive organisation. That is, there exists a materiality that is imposed on the locuteur, and on the interpretative apparatus that organises the effects of position and disposition. This is a reflection of Foucault’s insistence that ‘… people know what they do, they frequently know why they do what they do, but what they don’t know is what they does.’ (1982:187).
When the individual takes in charge the discourse, that individual is interpolated as the subject of that discourse. In assuming the subject place she is located within an enonciative space defined by a referential network. This referential network involves intersubjective coordinates, a referential space and localisable linguistic objects. This subject is related to other subjects and various objects in such a way that it conditions what can and must be said from the subject place. The discursive activity puts the conventions that regulate the relations between subjects to work, attributing a status to each one. The enonciateur is obliged to suppose that the co-enonciateur shares all the presuppositions with her, in a kind of tacit contract. This notion of place implies that in taking in charge, the individual assumes a subject place, the place of enonciation, but simultaneously assigns a complementary place to the ‘other’ or the co-enonciateur. These places support the discourse. Foucault (1969:126) expressed this as: 
‘To describe a formulation while the enonce does not consist of analysing the relations between the author and that which he has said (or wanted to say, or said without wanting to); but to determine what is the position which all individuals can and should occupy in being the subject.’ 
The taking in charge of discourse not only transforms the individual into the subject of discourse, but also anchors the subject in relationship to other subjects, and to a range of objects within the discourse. This has profound implications for what can be said as well as for the legitimacy of what is said. It involves Foucault’s notion of enonciative modalities as a type of discursive activity that carries its own subject position. In relating enonciative modalities to how statements are made, he was emphasising how discourse is a practice. Language practices as social practice are multi-dimensional. 
Speakers achieve different varieties of positioning which result in negotiating an interactional space within a pre-given situation. Social practice is conceived of in terms of discourse relations. The normative now becomes the modality of the object that affords truth value to particular objects.
So much for the construction and constitution of shared meaning. I don’t wish to say more about this. Rather, I will proceed to consider how this perspective relates to the relationship between multilingualism and creativity. While the above has stressed shared meaning and how it is achieved, any discussion of creativity involves a focus on meanings that are not shared, at least not in the same way. The focus shifts from meaning to difference and to understanding. That is, our concern is with how new knowledge breaks with the commonality of shared meaning.
Language and creativity
Since globalisation increasingly implies that the worksite is transnational in structure, involving on-line operations on resources that are capable of instant relocation and assembly, the work process itself becomes transnational, transcultural and multilingual. Furthermore, labour within the knowledge economy demands specific operations that involve open presentation of the self to others, the management of degrees of unpredictability, the ability to begin new projects and the ability to negotiate alternative possibilities. The focus is increasingly on reflexivity, understood as begging the question, ‘why are things done the way they are, and what alternative ways are possible?’
While the preceding denies a determinant role for rationalism this does not mean that the individual is relegated to some kind of automaton. Emphasising an active conception of knowledge leads to rational behaviour or judgements of truth involving the results of reflexive work on a prior base (Achard, 1994). 
Within any statement there is a need to distinguish between an assertion, or the act of pronouncement, and its modalisation – the semantic operators that allocate a status to it, and the linguistic marks of these operations. Truth is treated as a constructed modalisation that assumes that a discursive environment exists that can accept that such a ‘truth’ makes sense. There is no guarantee that the conditions which permit a proposition to function in terms of the modalities of truth for a locuteur, are also in force for the interlocuteur. The rationality of a behaviour implies a reflexive activity. There is no suggestion that the social actors are in control and determine the thread of discourse in its entirety.
Questions of reflexivity are raised once the relationship between language and the world is not simply one of direct representation. Also, reflexivity as a form of self-awareness is problematised once one maintains that the individual only becomes a subject in and through discourse. These two observations condition how reflexivity is reassessed in relation to tacit knowledge. Creativity rests on reflexive practice. If an individual cannot be fully in charge of any discourse, rationality is not only limited, but is also reflexive. When we consider reflexivity as the interpretive capacity of the producers of meaning we acknowledge the ability to create distinctive forms of meaning for language objects. The essential ambiguity of meaning, and how meaning is manifested in the discursive formation and the materiality of language, is the key to reflexivity. 
The question to hand involves how the role of reflexivity in the intersubjective process influences meaning construction. There are two forms of reflexivity, that of rational reflection, and what might be termed reaction, a practice that does not rely on the centrality of reason. The essential point is that we are unable to reflect on every word that we state. Consequently, reflexivity is restricted to something beyond the form elaborated in formal Linguistics. The foreign language learner suspends any reference to theory in accessing conceptions related to the acquisitions of the mother tongue. 
Rather she draws on what Culioli refers to as ‘epilinguistic activity’ or non-conscious linguistic activity, involving an implicit theorisation of natural language that is quite different from the theorisation of formal linguistics. We are aware neither of the tools that we use, nor of the processes within which these tools operate. Furthermore, the elaboration of shared meaning involves operations that vary across language and offer clues about the potential creativity of working multilingually.
This understanding of how shared meaning operates brings up a number of points. First, the importance of both cultural variation, and normative practice. By reference to working within communities of practice it would appear that participants take in charge the discourse tacitly, opening up specific relations with the other members of the ‘community’ as subjects, and the various objects that are constructed in and through discourse. In this respect learning by doing is very much a tacit process. That is, the reference to reflexivity involves reflex rather than reflection.
When we consider a community of practice that operates across languages and culture the reflexive process is different, if only because the operations vary from one language to another. If we follow Culioli in accepting that the socio-cultural is an essential part of how meaning is constituted in and through interaction, we also recognise the existence of distinctive reflexive processes for each language object. Also, when we consider how taking in charge transforms the individual into the subject of discourse that links with other subjects, we recognise it as a tacit process that involves reflex rather than reflection.
The situation is somewhat different by reference to translation. Within multilingual interaction there is a constant process of informal translation and interpretation that interrupts the flow of language use as social practice. The reflex nature of reflexivity that is characteristic of language use as social practice is suspended. There is a search for shared meaning within a conscious and unconscious reflexivity. The individual is not merely translating language, but also discourse, in the sense that she is comparing the constitutions of meanings in the respective languages. Wittgenstein (1986:125) cites ‘translating one language into another’ as a language game, understood as where each game has its own meaning-constituting rules, and it is the nature of the game that changes through translation. 
Of course I am not referring to formal translation, but to the kind that occurs when we talk with ourselves in striving to achieve meaning, this in itself involving a language play within which the actor is both ‘speaker’ and ‘listener’. There is a double play of language involved. This self-reflection involves questioning the self and the assumptions associated with how the self constructs meaning. This is a discursive process. Since the socio-cultural is an essential feature of how meaning is constituted, it seems clear that there is a complexity of reflexive practices involved. I need hardly emphasise to an audience such as this of the importance of how the symbolic aspect of object construction the extremely rich informal languages and figures of speech, including similes and metaphors vary from one language to another.
Translation, even when done informally, does what writing does, it provides the basis for symbolically mastering that which is mastered practically outside of it – language, space and time. In this respect it breaks with the logical practice of the effectuation of practices in the evidence of things to do, it breaks with the logic of a meaning of practice put to work in the practical urgency of action. In a sense translation has a gaze on the future and in this respect it furnishes a reflexive return on practice and a reflexive preparation on practice. It involves providing oneself with an account of the conceptual categories of others within one’s own cultural context.
What is happening here is that there is a constant shift between reflexivity as reflex to reflexivity as reflection. It provides the basis whereby the taken for granted of social practice is considered and all the alternatives quickly weighed up. This is the essence of reflexivity – why are things done the way they are and what alternative ways are there of doing them?
Risager (2006:123) uses the concept languaculture to convey the overlap between language and culture. 
‘…when a language is used in a lingua franca situation i.e. typically in a situation where it is used as a foreign language by all participants because they do not have any other common language it is used with contributions form all these participants’ languacultures. This produces a considerable elasticity in the language’s semantics and pragmatics, but it also leads to a potentially lesser degree of precision…. It is therefore often the intersection of the various languacultures that is made use of… words with a more situation-determined meaning.’
The subject’s reflection on her own language varies by culture, and involves differences conditioned by language so that reflexive activity varies across languages and cultures (Culioli, 1990). This process of reflexivity within language is enhanced when the interaction involves more than one language. If the socio-cultural is an essential feature of how meaning is constituted in and through interaction, we also recognise the existence of distinctive reflexive processes for each language. Herein lies the value of linguistic diversity for the generation of knowledge. The reflexivity partly relates to the relation between language components and signification, something that is subject to considerable variation. This involves an awareness of how translating language is relatively easy, whereas the translation of meaning is of quite a different order. Meaning must be constantly contextualised, and when this occurs across languages, the nature of reflexivity is intensified.
Conclusion
The knowledge economy demands, not merely highly educated personnel, but people who have been educated in a particular way that focuses upon the importance of reflexivity. This leads to a new debate about the nature of skills, and about the associated metrics. It emphasises organisational learning, involving group or systems-related working, learning and participation within 'new production concepts'. This leads to the argument that enhancing the competence basis of individual learners links with promoting organisational learning cultures or sub-cultures, and with improving collective work performance and the collective mastery of the production processes. The learning organisation is a key concept here. New learning partnerships that focus upon work processes, and new modes of network-based co-operation, can provide new possibilities for developing the didactic space for broader contextual issues. The centrality of this argument for Universities is that, as most of us know, Universities are far from being learning organisations.
The new pedagogies aim to assist learners in the construction of their own meaning maps, while providing them with the experience and skills to manage their own learning. This is evident in the concept of the 'reflexive practitioner', and in how skills and knowledge are developed among and through 'communities of practitioners' (Lave and Wenger, 1997), and how knowledge is shared in organisations (Nonaka and Konno, 1998), or practice based distributed networks (Brown and Duguid, 1999). Reflexivity involves constantly questioning why things are done the way they are and seeking alternative ways of operating. This is similar to how Foucault refers to thought as ‘…that which allows us to step back from this or that way of acting or reacting, to present it as an object of thought and question it as to its meaning, its condition, its goals.’ (Rabinow, 1984: 378-9). These orientations emphasise work as social practice rather than the abstract representations associated with education and training paradigms. Transfer models are rejected in favour of learning as closely linked to the social construction of meaning, and ultimately, they tend to link learning with the resolution of multiple meanings associated with the essential ambiguity of language and how it relates to innovation. The essential thing about learning involves becoming a practitioner within a community with specific interpretive conventions that link to discursive practice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Achard, P. (1994). Sociologie du langage et analyse d’enquêtes: de l’hypothèse de la rationalité de réponses. Sociétés Contemporaines. No. 18/19, pp. 67-100. http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/socco_1150-1944_1994_num_18_1_1165 
Balibar, E. (2004). We The People of Europe. Princeton, Princeton UP.
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Brown, J.S. and P. Duguid (1999). The Social Life of Information. Boston, Harvard Business School Press.
Castells, M. (2000). The Rise of the Network Society, Second Edition. U.S.: Blackwell Publishing.
Castells, M. (2001). The Internet Galaxy. U.K.: Oxford University Press.
 Culioli, A. (1990). Pour une Linguistique de l’énonciation: Operations et représentations. Tome 1. Paris, Ophrys.
Foucault, M. (1969). L’Archéologie du Savoir. Paris, Gallimard.
Foucault, M. (1982). On the genealogy of ethics: A Work in Progress. In H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. 
Lave, J. and E. Wenger (1997). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, Cambridge U.P.
Nonaka, I. and N. Konno (1998). The Concept of "Ba": Building a Foundation for Knowledge Creation. California Management Review, 40/3 (Spring 1998): 40-54. 
Pecheux, M. (1982). Language, semantics and ideology. London, Macmillan.
Polyani, K. (1967). The Tacit Dimension. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Rabinow, P. (1984). The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Risager, K. (2006). Language and Culture: Global Flows and Local Complexity. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge, CUP.
Williams, G (1999). French Discourse Analysis: The Method of Post-structuralism. London, Routledge.
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CV:
Education: University of Wales and University of California, Berkeley.
Employment: University of San Francisco, University of Wales, University Ramon Llull Barcelona.
Publications: 14 books and >100 papers.
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Sarah Cartwright (Education consultant, UK)
“From ivory towers to the workplace: new paradigms confronting old prejudice”
Abstract
This talk will examine the current position of “community” languages in higher education in the UK, questioning the persistence of this nomenclature and challenging the assumptions behind the concept of “languages for work”. It will argue for recognition of the power of intrinsic motivation over extrinsic drivers, placing the new profiles of language learners at the centre of the debate. The reality of multilingualism has the potential to transform language learning and teaching across Europe, but educational structures are resistant to change, especially in a difficult economic climate. Indeed in the UK the “back to basics” discourse paints a future rooted in the past rather than a vision of a different, global tomorrow.
CV
Sarah Cartwright is a freelance teacher educator who was Course Lead for the PGCE in Modern Languages at London Metropolitan University 2001-2006. Her interest in plurilingualism stems from her recent responsibility for the Our Languages project – a DCSF initiative linking mainstream with supplementary schools.
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Finbarr Bradley [Fionnbarra Ó Brolcháin] (Smurfit Graduate Business School, University College Dublin)
Nurturing innovation: Language diversity as advantage
Abstract
Intangible assets such as cultural identity and sense of community are especially valuable in a globalised world. As the significance of material resources diminish, emotions and feelings, the heart rather than rational mind, are becoming crucial. The key resource is imagination which is founded on meaning, experience and identity. To nurture creativity and innovation, conversation, reflection, shared meaning and networks of human interaction are critical. A core argument is that transformative learning and innovative practices have most potential to flourish in a multilingual environment. A radical rethink of university education is necessary for the emerging conceptual age. Issues involved in implementing programmes founded on integrating linguistic diversity with innovative practices will also be explored. 
DRAFT 1 (28 October 2011)
Introduction
A sense of place represents a deeply emotional attachment to a particular geographical and cultural space. It encompasses a shared experience of history and community, a connection embedded in social networks and rich in tacit knowledge. It informs people’s sense of who they are, where they are, where they have come from and where they are trying to go. 
However, a sense of place is not generally viewed as crucial to the innovation process in today’s globalised world. Indeed, the opposite appears often to hold: its erosion is cited as an indicator of embeddedness in the global scientific and technological research community leading to innovation. Yet an emerging paradox is that in a world of global markets, rapid transportation and high-speed communications, culture, language and place are becoming more, not less important. Advantage lies in difference captured by special places and shared values. 
Sustainable competitive advantage emerges from resources unique and difficult to imitate. While some resources are interchangeable between locations, those least susceptible to imitation, and hence most valuable and sustainable, remain rooted in the social and economic fabric of local relationships. Tangible resources (such as money and technology) are necessary but not sufficient. Intangibles such as human, cultural and social resources, founded on capabilities and relationships, are essential. Imagination, intuition, inspiration, ingenuity, sense-of-self, self-assurance, self-confidence and self-knowledge are crucial. Being distinctive, thinking differently and having different information enable a community to be creative and innovative. As Harvard’s Michael Porter argues, enduring competitive advantage lies increasingly in the local. The more complex and dynamic the global economy becomes, the more this is likely to hold true. 
Researchers on urban and regional growth such as the late Jane Jacobs point to the special role of place, community and diversity as the incubator of creativity, innovation and new industries. Uniformity of culture is not good for creativity and it is diversity in languages and ideas that bring about intellectual vitality. The quality, uniqueness, integrity, authenticity, diversity and nature of a place are what make it attractive to creative individuals. Place is becoming the central organising unit for the new economy. Unlike the past where reducing the cost of business or grouping companies in industrial estates was seen as the way to stimulate regional development, attraction of human capital to special places can now ensure competiveness. Creative people are attracted by the qualities of a region or community, its diversity and lifestyle, while this in turn attracts enterprise, the reverse of the traditional direction. The implication is clear: places that reach out to, attract and keep the most creative people and organisations will have the highest quality of life. The future lies in generating creative self-help ventures within such diverse creative, transformative, sustainable and multilingual communities committed to place, what some have called “dynamic rootedness”. 
Glyn Williams in his background document to the EUNoM Project 2009-2012 points out that a major emphasis of this series of symposia is that language education be decompartmentalised and non-language disciplines engage with the relevance of language for their practices. Within the knowledge economy work is organised around team working and learning by doing. Language plays a formidable role in the working process since interaction within a community of practice comes to the fore. With reflexive or late modernity, ‘detraditionalisation’ is accompanied by a surge of individualism and fragmentation of cultural identity. Here, a clear distinction might be necessary between global and local enterprises. For the later, in particular, language can play a crucial role if a dynamic learning community is founded on interaction in both a global and local language. 
This paper discusses how a university programme founded on the above might work in practice. It argues that creativity and innovation have the greatest potential to flourish if a learning environment fosters a strong sense of place. This is illustrated using English and Irish as the languages but its implications are wider. The paper is also relevant in attempting to answer an intriguing question: perhaps it is cultural identity, rooted in place, not science or technology, that is key to Ireland and other small countries’ attempts to become creative ‘knowledge’ economies? 
Emerging Emotional Economy
To explore this issue, a good starting point is to look at a world undergoing a fundamental shift from the industrial or manufacturing age of physical goods to a network age dominated by intangible services and experiences. The industrial enterprise is wedded to rationality and control rather than emotions, empathy and relationships, characteristics of the network organisation. 
Nurturing meaning by delivering experiences replicate the role that selling goods or delivering services played in the past. An experience occurs when a company uses its services as a stage and its goods as props, to engage its customers in a memorable event. Experiences are inherently personal, and exist only in the mind of an individual engaged on an emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual level. Like any play, no two people have the same experience, because this derives from the relationship between the staged event and the audience member’s response to it. 
Many businesses now realise that the only way to differentiate their goods and services is to infuse them with emotion and artistry. Corporate value is increasingly tied up, not in physical or tangible assets like manufacturing facilities, buildings and telecommunications infrastructure, but in intangible assets like customer relationships and brands. More than ever, strong personal feelings and an ability to foster relationships are critical. Nurturing meaning, delivering experiences and stimulating identity replicate the role that selling goods played in the past. The Internet has amplified this trend, ensuring intangibles are more mobile and tradable. In the e-world, competing involves a completely new way of thinking. For many companies, since it is intangibles that are their great untapped source of competitive advantage, a different mindset is needed on how to create value. 
In the network economy, value rises as meaning deepens, as knowledge moves from information to understanding and wisdom, illustrated in digital media by content, originality in crafts and local expertise in food recipes. The quality of knowledge depends on a point-of-view or cultural perspective, and is now more important than ever. IT companies often spend more on symbolic or design-driven aspects of products than technical development. In innovation, while scientific research or information mediated by computers does matter, what is more crucial is to create conditions where meanings, experiences, identities and resourcefulness prosper. Hence, distinct cultural resources are potentially an enormous competitive advantage. 
As the significance of the material diminishes and capacities of the mind become more and more crucial, human attitudes and meaning, which are heavily influenced by community, society and tradition, become key resources. Such resources are rooted in individuals, communities, places and in the dynamic of culture that constitutes a shared identity. Cultural identity contributes to integrity, civic responsibility, aesthetic sensibility and ecological stewardship. Individuals with meaning in their lives, and with a sense of continuity between past and present, build more trusting and caring communities.
Imagination, the most valuable resource of all, is driven primarily by emotions and feelings, the heart rather than rational mind, and nurtured through drama, poetry, literature, music and art. It is founded on inspiration, identity, empathy, memory, tradition, belonging and trust and rooted in the social and economic fabric of local relationships. 
Meaning is central to the generation of tacit knowledge, and this in turn is a major driver of innovation. Language is a practical and explicit manifestation of cultural and social context, and plays an especially vital role in the construction, interpretation and sharing of meaning. Since ambiguity of meaning features strongly as a driver of creativity, as Glyn Williams illustrates, dynamic multilingual communities, especially at the interfaces of languages, may be more likely to stimulate innovation than monolingual ones. Such communities offer individuals an opportunity to reflect on their place in the world, helping them better manage uncertainty about the future. This harnesses a spirit of self-discovery and an innovative mind-frame. 
The concept of innovation, introduced by Schumpeter in the early part of 20th century, is largely disregarded in mainstream economics because it implies change, disequilibrium, complexity and continuous adjustment, hard to do if one possesses a general theory. Analytical models, featuring socially isolated and rational individuals, only allow marginal changes, not the more complicated properties of dynamic economic systems, peopled by individuals driven by such emotional and psychological needs. Proponents of science often hold that innovation rests on rational discovery of ‘new’ knowledge waiting to be discovered and applied. They tend to slight ‘traditional’, ‘old‘or ‘ordinary’ knowledge, depreciating the capacities and interests of the non-expert and amateur and are often antagonistic to common sense and practical knowledge mediated through everyday experience.
The correct framework to examine innovation is not traditional equilibrium analysis favoured by economists but a qualitative learning organisation or learning region approach. Senge points out that this is founded on the concept of generative learning, a systemic way of thinking, more about creating than controlling, based on cultivating the natural curiosity and impulse to learn of individuals rather than rewarding them for performing for the sake of others. 
Similarly, within the university, the orthodox model of innovation is a linear one comprising basic research leading to commercialisation through technology transfer. However, the innovative idea and its development have many inputs of which scientific research may be just one of many. Again, the appropriate innovation model is a learning organisation one where university research acts as a window on the world, with researchers identifying and acquiring knowledge from elsewhere as well as internally. 
Language and Innovation
The Irish language is a valuable resource for achieving an innovation or learning society. More than a century ago, the central insight of Douglas Hyde and the Gaelic League was that the Irish would never develop to their potential until the people learned a sense of self-confidence and self-respect. Restoring the Irish language was central to that vision. Yet, while the Gaelic League was a key element in sparking creativity, it failed to explain precisely how the language, as the central component of cultural identity, actually affected the development process. John Walsh suggests there is a similar conceptual weakness today. The theory of a national system of innovation is a key element in the government development strategy but Walsh maintains, however, that this also fails to identify what role ‘national culture’ plays in innovation.  
Michael Cronin argues that because of the language’s enormous cognitive and aesthetic potential, it would be tantamount to political, economic and cultural suicide for the country to relinquish such extensive and distinctive resources. He says to jettison two millennia of resources when the country has in its possession precisely those factors central to value creation in a learning society, would be absurd:
For even the most aggressively philistine pragmatist, such abandonment would represent a serious narrowing of the basis for any future knowledge society that might be constructed on the island.
Cronin points out that the Irish language has a special role to play in a renewed sense of identity, in nurturing the aesthetic in enterprise and in re-appropriating the places in which people live. Through the close fit between linguistic knowledge and economic influence, the past can be seen as a strength, not a handicap. Cronin maintains that contemporary concern with interlingual difference could undermine the strong case that exists for safeguarding and promoting the language. He argues that to rely on Irish as an autonomous and self-sufficient marker of identity is flawed. A more convincing argument can be made on an intercultural basis, focused more upon interdependence than independence and in appreciation of how the language shaped as well as was shaped by other cultures. Therefore, the crucial aspect of Irish today is not the formal structures of the language itself but rather the language embedded in its historical and cultural context that offers an alternative view of present reality. This hinges on the language’s role in creating meaning, with clear and positive implications for creativity and innovation. This language as resource role fits in with Zimmermann’s oft quoted phrase, ‘resources are not, they become’. 
As Breándán Ó Doibhlin argues, a good reason English is not adequate as the sole language of everyday life in Ireland is that it is not specific to the country. As a small country, Ireland cannot ever make English its private language – one that will provide a bulwark against forces frustrating its attempts to determine its individual expression. While English has largely been the vehicle for Irish cultural survival since the mid-nineteenth century, the long-term effect of committing exclusively to it has consequences for the impoverishment of creative energies. Of course, English is a highly-developed and versatile language and now virtually the universal mode of communication. Yet, its exclusive use leaves Irish people, as Breándán Ó Doibhlin puts it, ‘heirs to the parochial belief that English is in fact universally known’. This has turned the Irish into a monoglot culture; one he holds is better afforded by richer and more powerful states. 
The dominance of one perspective or point of view, through exclusive use of a world language like English, and practical obliteration of a local one which resonates strongly with a sense of place, is unlikely to lead to an innovative and globally competitive enterprise sector, whether in software, services, digital media, or the like. The dominance of English as the language of Ireland has led to a restricted and shallow world-view stripped of tradition. The country has the tendency to absorb second-hand ideas, values, and concepts developed elsewhere (and often discarded there) without making adjustments essential in a genuinely innovative culture.
Ireland’s creative potential will fully emerge if it fosters fertile interaction between different language and cultural traditions. This is also the ideal way for immigrants to make a major contribution. The potential for new immigrants to negotiate meaning and contribute to innovation is enormous. This can only happen, however, if people’s different cultural and linguistic perspectives can be encouraged through a strong commitment to a shared sense of place. This is also how the Irish language could become a medium to help root resources in place, a source for emotions that help people discover and explore their complex identities. Integrating the language within a sustainability ethic additionally offer the kind of resistance to globalisation that can itself be a powerful source of innovation. Such a potent mixture of Irish, English and other languages could foster a unique creative ethos and is where the country’s opportunity lies in the global age. 
Reimagining University Education
As illustrated earlier, we are entering an economic era of patterns, context and the symbolic. Strong personal feelings, the ability to foster relationships, metaphor, conversation, reflection, development of character and an ethic of quality are especially valuable. Stories create a rich visual imagery through conversation, reflection and shared meaning. Far from being dead artifacts that are anti-modern and non-economic, Ireland’s oral tradition represents a significant asset that fosters innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship and meaning. 
The country’s innovative potential will only be fully realised if the artistic is combined with the scientific, interpreted through the prism of culture and tradition. However, current policy focuses largely on scientific research based on objectivity, denying the legitimacy of the subjective world of feeling, sense of connection and the imagination. The scientific mind simplifies and narrows experiences into manageable principles whereas literature and the arts emphasise complexity, crucial if imagination and innovation is to flourish. While scientific research is certainly important, breakthrough ideas require intelligence of the heart and hand, not just intelligence of the head. Combining the scientific mind of separability and rationality with say Irish mythology, which is not linear but has a meandering interconnectedness, is ideal for an emerging sustainable age where conversation, empathy, meaning and relationships are critical.
Young people should be helped to think globally but feel rooted in Ireland, so learning must emphasise a sense of place and shared meaning nurtured by experience. This is another reason why the arts, in particular, grounded in the imagination are so valuable. The arts engage the young person in transformative learning which includes the heart as well as the mind, balances intuition with analysis, and cultivates wisdom rather than mere accumulation of facts. 
The more practice and experience students have of contacting and exploring this inner emotional world the more confidently they can creatively deal with change and be open to new possibilities. The arts helps them to think holistically and work in multidisciplinary groups. At present, they often fail to see connections and patterns whereas in a sustainable or ecological view of the world, the emphasis is on relationships. Thinking is systemic rather than linear, integrative rather than fragmentary, concerned with process, emphasising dynamics rather than cause-effect and pattern rather than detail. 
A radical redesign in university education is needed to nurture innovation. Interdisciplinary studies are crucial but because of the academic structuring of knowledge into the separate disciplines, integrated programmes that draw on the arts, humanities, science and technology are especially difficult to develop. Breaking down these barriers between specialisations can foster academic diversity and thereby individual creativity. 
For wholeness, it is crucial that cultural diversity and sustainability become central elements in learning. A key challenge is to help young people change their thinking from individual rights to collective responsibilities, independence to interdependence, luxuries to necessities, short-term to long-term thinking, and growth that benefits a few to development and vitality that benefits all. This implies a culture founded on the realisation of human potential and the interdependence of social, economic, and ecological well-being.
Education should mean more than simply preparing students for a job or cultivating the intellect. Even though access to information is now widespread on the Internet, traditional lecturing, sometimes to classes of hundreds of students, is still the norm. What is learned can often not be carried beyond the classroom, so even students with highly developed knowledge of a subject find it difficult to put that to use except in the artificial world of university examinations. Students often lack a coherent body of knowledge, fail to see connections, and possess no clear sense of how one course is related to another. Learning should be based on cultivating the natural curiosity and impulse to learn of individuals rather than rewarding them for performing for the sake of others. This means learning in order to attain one’s own goals, guided by one’s own values, not the approval of an outsider such as a lecturer or teacher.
Students thrive in an atmosphere that nurtures creativity, imagination, intuition, personal development and mutual respect. They must have practice and experience in exploring their inner emotional world. This is best done within the supportive environment of a learning community. Exploration through engaged learning should be at the heart of the student experience to enhance individual and community well-being. Exposure to such self-discovery means students are likely to emerge as engaged, responsible and creative citizens. An education environment must be created in which students do practical work, make decisions, work as members of teams and both compete and cooperate. This would stimulate an international alongside strong local cultural identity, develop an independent attitude along with responsibility to the community and foster self-confidence and ethics.
Practical Multilingual Innovation
So how in practice might university programmes embodying the above ideas foster innovation through multilingual learning communities? The most important element would be to make the creation of value a guiding principle. Helping students understand how all sources of capital, whether financial, human, social, cultural, technological or financial, create value through the innovation process is the best foundation will build potent multilingual learning communities. This is achieved by fostering rootedness as a unique cultural or social milieu, transforming individuals, sustaining individual difference while enhancing a sense of belonging. It means going from learning-about to learning-to-be by generating dynamic and vibrant multilingual learning environments which emphasise identity, experience and meaning driven by self-discovery and exploration.
Learning takes place through a combination of lectures, interactive workshops and practical projects. Emphasis is on the application of knowledge, both codified and tacit, teamwork and practical learning. This fosters a potent culture where quality, integrity, initiative, skills, a risk taking attitude and eagerness for self-development become a feature of their lives. Programmes are built around the identification, initiation and management of innovative ventures within students own area of expertise or specialisation. Participantsillustrate through developing an innovative team project how they propose to create value. They collaboratively research, write up and present this. Their overall learning is integrated by introducing them to the initiation, valuation, management and practical implementation of sustainable innovation projects. This way, participants gain an understanding of how value, both market and non-market, in the short as well as long-term, is analysed and created.
Reflective practice workshops help provide a mutually supportive environment and form a consistent theme running through the programme. These assist students pay attention to what they learn, how they learn and the manner in which they will integrate both the process of learning and learning itself into their careers. The workshops provide a guiding forum for discussion and analysis in English and Irish but the same approach is feasible even if several languages are used. The community of practice discusses, debates and reflects on the individual learning and shared or negotiated meaning. Working on a group project also helps participants improve their ability to argue and defend positions and communicate their results to fellow students and others in the different languages. On-going presentations of each project’s progress feature prominently in these workshops and help develop multilingual communication skills.
A radical change is necessary to assess student performance for such transformative learning. Primary use is made of innovative assessment methods based on subjective or qualitative criteria rather than traditional testing by means of examinations. In the case say of a project involving a local community, quantitative criteria such as economic return but also qualitative criteria such as the social and environmental contribution to long-term sustainability, is used.
It is intriguing to consider what might be the impact on young people, many of whom suffer from alienation and a weak sense of place, should a concerted effort be made using this approach to foster a strong sense of identity and community. The loss of Irish has undoubtedly resulted in reduced creativity from the consequent erosion of national and personal identity. If invigorating and creative policies were used effectively, integrating Irish and English in a learning community would promote a renewed sense of place. Such multilingual programmes have the potential to be powerful sources of creativity, innovation and renewal, enabling a powerful local response to the challenges of globalisation.
Conclusion
The idea that a strong cultural identity is opposed to materialism, the profit motive, technological innovation and modernism, reflects an unfortunate legacy of the elites who governed the Irish state over its first decades. In the space of eighty odd years, the country has moved from one extreme to another: from a place where its own culture and language featured prominently in the national vision to its opposite, where science, rationality and markets dominate. It should instead harness the positive elements of both, taking advantage of the country’s distinct characteristics. 
Much can be learned from a resurgent cultural self-confidence of the late 1950s to mid 1960s when outstanding figures of that era such as Seán Lemass and Seán Ó Riada possessed a sophisticated regard for tradition. As US best-selling US author Thomas Friedman argues, countries like Ireland need to develop sufficiently strong cultural and environmental filters to operate successfully in today’s world. It needs to embrace its unique imaginative tradition which is fostered by belonging, purpose and idealism. Blessed with an abundance of renewable resources, and the intellectual and human capital to harness it, the country is well placed to play a leading role as a sustainable innovative economy. Its heritage of early nature poetry, with its distinct love of place and lamentation of exile from a cherished territory, occupies a unique position in the literature of the world. As famed Celtic scholar Kuno Meyer wrote, ‘To seek out and love nature, in its tiniest phenomena as in its grandest, was given to no people so early and so fully as the Celts’. It is a tragedy such an inheritance is largely forgotten. Yet Ireland has an opportunity to position itself at the vanguard of the sustainable innovation movement, whose emotional well-spring can be derived from its imaginative tradition. It has, so far, and despite its many natural advantages, clearly been a laggard in this regard; its past and present performance has been less than stellar.
In an innovation age, a sense of place must be central to learning and development, contributing to wholeness, integrity, civic responsibility, aesthetic sensibility and ecological concern. Pride in place, which emerges from thinking globally but feeling rooted locally, should form the bedrock for a successful and sustainable learning society. The university has a special role in helping achieve this by developing radical programmes drawing on the wonderful linguistic capabilities at its disposal. 
CV
Finbarr Bradley teaches part-time at the UCD Smurfit Business School. He was a professor of finance at DCU where he also set up the Irish-medium centre Fiontar and a degree in finance, computing and languages. He was a professor in the Economics Department at the NUI Maynooth and a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Fordham University and the Helsinki School of Economics. He has published in journals such as the Journal of Portfolio Management, Irish Banking Review, Studies, Administration, The Irish Review, Banking Ireland, Comhar, Feasta, Youth Drama Ireland, Irish Educational Studies and Sustainable Development. He is author of Meon Gaelach, Aigne Nuálaíoch [Coiscéim, forthcoming], co-authored with James Kennelly, Capitalising on Culture, Competing on Difference [Blackhall, 2008] and co-edited with Joe Mulholland a book of essays on Ireland’s economic crisis from the 2009 MacGill Summer School. He has an engineering degree from UCC and a PhD in international finance from the Stern School of Business, New York University (NYU). 
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David Johnston (Queen’s University Belfast, UK) 
Translation, Mobility and Public Policy
Abstract
This paper will look at the ways in which the theories and practices of translation may feed into public policy. Translation as an ethical practice potentially invites to the sort of exogamy that is implicit in the notion of journey, to the gazing outwards from the homelands of the cultural matrix.  It animates towards the establishment of complex relationships between self and other, and there are all sorts of reasons arising from the politics of the last seventy-five years in particular why this should be important. And all sorts of reasons, of course, why such understanding should not be open to being categorized or seen in terms of any given model or be subject to any simple essentialism. In societies and activities increasingly defined by multi-ethnicity, there is a growing need not just to develop sophisticated intercultural standards of working, but also to begin to recognize cosmopolitanism as a key value of citizenship.
CV
David Johnston is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Queen’s University, where he co-directs the Research Forum in Translation and Cultural Encounter. He is also the joint author of the Northern Ireland Languages Strategy, which is due to be published in the near future.
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Thomas Vogel (Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt, Oder)
Universities as Laboratories for Societal Multilingualism: Crossing Borders for a Global Future
Abstract
The talk will focus on the new role that universities will have to play in further education and training. Institutions of higher education in Europe are no longer only academic research and training institutions for students but they also have to play an active supporting role in change management in society. The global economy calls for citizens, who can communicate beyond the borders of their native language and culture. EU research has repeatedly shown, how even SMEs can benefit financially if their staff is multilingual and multiculturally sensitive. The talk will draw on experiences within of the Language Centre at the European University Viadrina and the public-private company viadrina sprachen, in crossing national as well as institutional borders in many different ways in order to equip not only the students of the university, but also the society at large with the linguistic and intercultural means to face the global future. The talk will end with an outline of future research issues and challenges in programme implementation.
Preliminary paper
My paper is a laboratory report on experiments and projects with multilingualism and plurilingualism in the German-Polish border region. The experiments and projects were and still are designed and carried out by the Language Centre of the European University Viadrina in cooperation with its spin-off limited company viadrina sprachen. The projects cover a wide range of contexts, in which multilingualism and plurilingualism are an important factor for either the forming of individual identities, for transcultural cooperation or simply for success in business. The languages involved are German, English, French, Finnish, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Italian and Turkish.
The European University Viadrina was founded as a state university in 1991 with the mission to act as a bridge between national and academic cultures and disciplines. The university wants to provide students with the opportunity to experience cooperation and communication across cultural boundaries. Currently, 6.400 students are enrolled. More than 30% of them are international students. The university offers courses in law, business and economics and cultural and social sciences. Languages are an integral part of the curriculum in all disciplines, i.e. language learning is an obligatory part of the degree (B.A. and M.A.) for all students.
From the very beginning, the activities of the Language Centre went beyond the institutional walls of the university. It became a driving force for multilingualism in the German-Polish border region. 
The following projects form the empirical basis of the hypotheses put forward in this paper and the suggestions for future research.
1.	Integrating language learning into the university curriculum
In most study programmes of the Viadrina students are required to reach the B2/C1 level of the CEFR in two languages by the end of their study. Some students voluntarily learn more than two languages. All languages are equally accepted, i.e. languages, which are not offered by the Language Centre, can be accredited, if sufficient evidence of language proficiency is provided. The focus of the Viadrina language education is on academic communication skills which are transferable to the professional context, in which students will operate after their studies. On a meta-level, the language programme also emphasizes language awareness and intercultural sensitivity. Both are an integral part of our teaching. Given the wide and heterogeneous range of language competences with which students enter university, creating and maintaining a successful language programme presents a major challenge. In recent years, plurilingualism and biculturalism has increased among students of all nationalities. The reasons for this development are migration, bilingual education and student mobility already at school level. Mobility continues at university level. The majority of students spend at least half a year abroad either as students or working in internships. One of the major objectives of the Language Centre is to prepare students for mobility and to re-integrate students into the language programme on their return.
From the very beginning, the university and more specifically the Language Centre has accepted its responsibility as an institution for the promotion of change through education outside the walls of the university. The German-Polish border region is characterized by a largely monolingual population on both sides and very visible cultural differences. To overcome language barriers and to promote intercultural understanding are prerequisites for economic development. The Language Centre is engaged in the following projects, which promote multilingualism and intercultural understanding in the area. They provide short-term solutions to problems that are currently relevant but also aim at long-term effects on the development towards a multilingual society.
2.	German-Polish immersion in kindergartens with the integration of bilingual children
The Language Centre assists a local kindergarten in its change from a purely monolingual institution into a bilingual early learning environment for German children learning Polish through language immersion and for bilingual children, who experience Polish as a language that is institutionally accepted outside the family. The programme contributes to the formation of a bilingual and a bicultural identity. Staff training and working with parents is an essential part of the programme. Evaluative research accompanies the project. 
3.	Organizing tandem language teaching for cross-border police operations and the emergency services
Germany and Poland are Schengen countries. Open borders in a situation where people on both sides still have not found ways of direct communication with their neighbours usually lead to an overemphasis on security. Stakeholders in the German and the Polish police force have reacted to this increasing need for security by enhancing cross-border cooperation. The Language Centre has designed a tailor-made programme in which policewomen and –men of all ranks receive intensive language and intercultural training for police operations across the border. Teaching and learning is done largely in mixed German-Polish groups through tandem work.
Recently, this project has been extended to German and Polish paramedics.
4.	Organizing language training for the solar industry
After a long period of economic decline, the border area is slowly recovering, mainly thanks to the investments from major international players in the solar industry. International investors coming to the area find a well-trained and highly specialized workforce, whose major deficit is that they can only communicate in one language. The Language Centre is engaged in tailor-made language training for the solar industry.
5.	Training community translators
Cooperation and communication between institutions or business in the border region depends very much on the skills of mostly untrained translators and interpreters. The Centre has designed a training workshop for people who occasionally work as translators, simply because they speak the neighbours’ language.
Conclusions, experiences and hypotheses
1.	Multilingualism is a reality in Germany. It is, however, usually considered rather an obstacle to communication than an asset. Linguistic research has done little to destroy the underlying folk myths about language and communication, which are behind that negative attitude. So far outcomes of linguistic research had little or no impact on the public discourse and the public perception of multilingualism. Even stakeholders in educational institutions and language teachers hold on to stereotypes about language learning and language teaching. It is one of the major responsibilities of the language experts to show where and how multilingualism can lead to a more educated and informed society. Researchers and language experts have to find a way of entering the public discourse on languages. Natural scientists seem to have fewer problems in inspiring and leading public debates on issues relevant for society, e.g. genetic engineering, climate change etc. The language issue is no less relevant for the future of our societies.
2.	National language policies which promote language learning for political goals (to improve relations with neighbouring countries) have little or no impact on individual decisions on whether to learn languages or to encourage children to learn language. 
3.	Attitudes to languages, cultures, language learning and multilingual communication are formed very early in life. It is the parents who decide whether their children will be successful multilinguals and are able and motivated to communicate cross-culturally. Parents usually base their decisions either on their own experience with language learning or on the quality and the attractiveness of language teaching provisions. 
4.	It is unclear who decides on the linguistics needs of individuals in a society. In each educational context there is a whole range of decision makers with conflicting interest, e.g. politicians, university professors, teachers, business managers. It should be part of the agenda of language experts to mediate between the interests and to help individuals to come to an informed decision.
5.	For most people in Germany and in Central and Eastern Europe the knowledge of foreign languages is still an academic skill rather than something that is an essential ingredient in general education. This is a rather typical attitude in countries with a monolingual or semi-bilingual majority. Attitudinal change is a major objective on the route to a multilingual society. Languages have to be brought “onto the streets”.
6.	Language teachers have to be trained to respond individual needs, cultures, goals and attitudes to language learning. Teachers should be informed about the factors that determine success in language learning.
7.	European universities are becoming more and more multilingual as student mobility increases and the number of children from migrant families entering higher education rises. Universities should seize this opportunity and become laboratories for multilingualism and multiculturalism. Language experts should work on models for the enhancement of future global communication. In order to achieve this goal, it will be necessary that language researchers and language practitioners find new ways and platforms for cooperation.

Curriculum Vitae
1981 M.A. in English Linguistics (Q.U.B, Northern Ireland)
1987 PhD in English Linguistics (Universität Kiel, Germany)
Since 2002 Partner in viadrina sprachen, a public-private language company
Since 1992 Director of the Language Centre, Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany
1998-2008 Chairman of the German Association of University Language Centres (AKS e.V.)
Founder of the European Wulkow Network for quality in language teaching in higher education
Project experience: Tempus, Leonardo, Lingua, Interreg, VW-Foundation
Trainer for language teachers in higher education in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation
Research interests: language acquisition, multilingualism, early learning, intercultural communication, language learning in higher education
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Claudia Böttger (Europäische Fernhochschule Hamburg / University of Applied Sciences) Claudia.boettger@euro-fh.de 
Knowledge Transfer and Multilingual Business Communication 
Abstract
In a recent large scale survey the opportunities and challenges for institutions of higher education in Germany within Quarternary Education were assessed (Deutscher Stifterverband 2008). Quarternary Education defines a period of formal learning after an initial phase of academic or professional training has been completed. The overall results of the survey show that SMEs are increasingly turning to universities to devise more targeted modules based on the specific learning needs of their employees. Furthermore, they indicate that particularly in times of globalisation, companies turn to universities to provide research-based foreign language learning modules to sensitize their employees for the increasingly complex communicative interactions in multilingual work groups. 
The presentation will explore some of the issues related to knowledge transfer between university and industry, looking particularly at the challenges faced by universities to devise modules for young professionals who want to improve their foreign language skills to be able to deal effectively in multilingual business communication. Special attention will be given to some of the implications of preparing for a lingua franca communication in multilingual business contexts. 
Paper
1. Background
A confluence of socio-demographic developments and changes in education and industry in Germany, such as its ageing population, skill shortage, and the low level of academic qualification are posing complex challenges for its institutes of higher education. Institutes like these are increasingly confronted with organising and providing needs-based and practice-oriented educational offers within the perspective of lifelong education that are both accessible to all sectors of society and flexible enough to answer the needs of industry for a highly trained work force.
Against this background, a survey was carried out by the German Stifterverband (2008) to identify areas in which German industry is looking at institutes of higher education to provide research-based training offers suitable for employees continuing to pursue their career. 
In contrast to other European countries where this type of education is referred to as tertiary education (cf. OECD), it is viewed as quarternary education in Germany. Quarternary education differs from tertiary education in that it refers to an educational training which is taken up by an individual who is in pat-time or full-time employment and who has already completed academic or professional training. It is seen as differing from other educational offers in that its primary focus is on the individual learner and his or her educational process and learner needs (Stifterverband 2008: 113). 
The survey by the Stifterverband was based on interviews with 107 companies across different sectors of industry as well as chambers of commerce, business associations and public institutions in Germany. Recommendations based on the findings were grouped according to four areas:  1.) General situation of SME 2.) Strategy and company orientation, 3.) Structure and organisation of quarternary education 4.) Management and marketing of quarternary education. Findings suggest that the quarternary education market in Germany will continue to grow. They also suggest that industry particularly needs research-based input from the liberal arts in times of globalized and highly competitive markets as companies seek to employ highly qualified young professionals to communicate with multilingual and cross-cultural partners in lingua franca English (ELF). 
2.   Challenges of English as a lingua franca in multilingual business communication
Despite widespread criticism of the dominance of English as a threat to multilingualism (e.g. House 2003), it is generally acknowledged that English has an integrative function in that it enables people to connect across languages and communities. The integrating function of English is a concomitant of the growing varieties of roles and communicative functions it fulfils in multilingual interactions. 
Broadly, we can distinguish between the following communicative functions that English has in Continental Europe either as 
a.	A first language in non-English speaking countries
b.	A medium of communication which can be characterized as striving for native speaker competence and closeness to Anglo-American culture(s) 
c.	A medium of communication with the goal of successful international communication, which does not privilege English native speaker’s language and cultures per se, but does accept that, linguistically, English as the yardstick
d.	A medium of communication, which is in a process of changing its norms as it, is appropriated by an increasing number of NNS. (Seidlhofer, Breiteneder & Pitzl 2006: 8)
From this it emerges that there are two forces at work which are at present affecting English (Seidlhofer 2006, 9-11): 
•	One force (cf. a and b above) perpetuates and reinforces established linguistic conventions. It aims for a standardized English (SE).  
•	The other force (cf. c and d above) impacts on existing linguistic norms and is therefore often referred to as developing norm. It has lead to the emergence of new variations of English, often referred to as new Englishes (e.g. Graddol 2006, Crystal 2010 etc.). 
These two forces have wider implications for all those who are involved in teaching, assessing and learning English, these being issues such as the relevance of grammatical correctness vs. communicative competence and the establishment of a “common core” (Elder & Davies 2006, Seidlhofer, Breiteneder & Pitzl 2006). A critical issue is how to prepare for communicating effectively with culturally determined varieties NNS English: How can empirically based educational offers on different pragmatic usages of English in NNS-NNS interaction best be provided?   
As the survey of the Stifterverband (2008) suggests, answers to these and other complex communicative challenges can be provided by research-based and practice-oriented education offers tailored by knowledge transfer teams made up out of university-industry partnerships to qualify employees to interact more effectively in LFE business interactions. 
One example of such a knowledge transfer is the first ever business-university partnership in liberal arts funded by the German Research Foundation at the Collaborative Research Centre on Multilingualism at Hamburg University. Its focus is on a pragmatic approach to culturally determined differences in varieties of English as in ELF.
 3. Knowledge transfer: English as a lingua franca in multilingual business communication
3.1 Ground research on Multilingualism 
The overall aim of the Collaborative Research Centre on Multilingualism (1999-2011) was to document, analyse, and describe language(s) in the context of multilingualism. The Centre consisted of a network of 14 research projects, each working within a specific research paradigm and with its own theoretical approach, but all of them collaborating as interdisciplinary networked research partners. Based on the understanding that human language capacity is inherently geared towards multilingualism and that multilingualism has been the rule rather than the exception throughout human history both on a societal and an individual level, the Centre pursued three focal areas of ground research: 
•	Development of multilingualism on the individual level, i.e. the acquisition of more than one language (and, in particular, more than one grammatical system) by individual speaker 
•	Use and development of multilingualism in institutional settings 
•	Processes of language change under conditions of multilingualism and language contact, as well as linguistic variation as a cause or an effect of language change through contact.
Five projects were chosen amongst the 14 research projects to launch a piloted Transfer Project funded by the German Research Foundation for a three-year period (2007-2010). The overall goal of these projects was to test the applicability of ground research on multilingualism by devising educational offers in close partnerships with external partners. The training modules were then implemented and evaluated at various institutions such as kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, hospitals and medium-sized companies. The five transfer projects were: 
•	Multilingualism for Educators:  Qualification module for language, language development, developmental speech disorder and multilingualism for early childhood educators
•	Bilingual Education: Spanish-German research-based support of the complementary Spanish school in Germany
•	English for Teachers: The fascinating world of varieties of English in the EFL classroom
•	Interpreting in Hospitals: Training modules for bilingual hospital staff
•	Multilingualism for Companies: Optimising ELF texts in multilingual business communication
To give an example of a knowledge transfer on ELF in multilingual business communication in a university-industry partnership, I will focus on the last of these five transfer projects in which I collaborated as a researcher.   
3.2   Knowledge transfer on multilingualism: A university-industry partnership 
The overall aim of the transfer project “Multilingualism for Companies: Optimising ELF texts in multilingual business communication“ was to devise, implement and evaluate further training modules to qualify employees and young professionals for ELF communication at the workplace. 
To devise the training modules, we as researchers cooperated closely with expert partners from industry and business consultancies based in Hamburg. Together we applied the methodology and empirical findings on the role of English as a lingua franca in business communication from the research project “Covert Translation” (Principal Investigator:  Prof. Juliane House), at the Collaborative Research Centre on Multilingualism. The transfer project consisted of three phases:
•	Project phase I (March 2007 - February 2008) saw the design of the research-based modules and evaluation instruments for a linguistic auditing (Reeves & Wright 1996). It consisted of questionnaires and pre- and post language tests. The questionnaires were distributed to the learners to identify their language biography, their assessment of their present language needs in ELF business communication, their present language skills, and the types of texts they write. They also provided background information on the ELF competence of their business partners so that we could explore the emergence of cross-cultural misunderstandings in NNS-NNS discourse. 
Based on these data, we devised pre-tests and post-tests to assess the participants’ progress in acquiring ELF communicative competence. The writing tests on business communication enabled us to triangulate the learners’ own assessment with an objective assessment of their communicative competence to give a clear indication of how effective the course had been.  It also helped identify areas in our training material needing revision. 
The results from the pre-tests and post-tests were triangulated with the findings from a corpus-based analysis of over 350 English emails. These emails had been written by employees at their workplace and covered the period before, during and after the language training. The emails were then fed into a database to do a computer-based analysis of the students’ language progression, paying particular emphasis on the use of ELF from the perspective of contrastive pragmatics.
•	Project phase II (March 2008 - February 2009) focused on the implementation of the language modules. The language modules were designed for the specific communicative needs of 35 employees in a medium-sized textile company based in Hamburg. The employees worked in departments such as Customer Relations, Production and Sales and participated in the weekly courses, which were offered at three different levels of proficiency for a period of 11 months.  One focus was on cross-cultural variations across ELF regarding the use of business genre conventions, text and discourse forms, speech acts, and the use of “corporate rhetoric” (Hyland 1998) etc.
To validate the findings, the modules were tested during a special topic seminar organised in collaboration with the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Kiel (North Germany).  The workshop was attended by 15 employees from different departments from different medium sized companies took part. 
•	Project phase III (March 2009 – April 2010) marked the final phase of the linguistic auditing during which the language modules were evaluated and reworked. To do so, the questionnaires were evaluated and triangulated with the pre- and post tests on business writing. These findings were further validated with the corpus-based data analysis of the ELF business texts that the participants had written at their workplace both before and during the training.  
3.3 Evaluation outcome
The evaluation clearly showed that the modules helped participants to improve their written ELF communicative competence in the following aspects:
•	To reduce misunderstandings in ELF communication 
•	To lower the number of clarifying questions in ELF emails
•	To increase their self confidence when communicating in ELF 
•	To heighten their sensitivity to cross-cultural differences 
•	To raise their level of language awareness
•	To spend less time on writing ELF emails and other business texts.   
The academic-corporate partnership therefore not only helped to enhance the company’s cost effectiveness but also added value to organisations by qualifying their employees so that they can communicate more effectively in ELF in multilingual business contexts. 
4.  Institutionalising the transfer project as quarternary education offer 
Currently the modules are being redesigned to answer the language needs of students who a are in full-time employment and who are studying at the Distance University Europäische Fernhochschule for different business-centred degrees (4 B.A., 3 M.A. and 1 M.B.A. Our greatest challenge is to tailor business language courses in English - and later also in business French and business Spanish as linguae francae courses by providing needs-based ELF language courses to a highly heterogeneous group of learners - heterogeneous in terms of learning objectives, communicative competence, degrees of motivation, learning styles, language backgrounds etc. who represent a cross-section of all employer groups in Germany. 
Building on our experiences in the piloted transfer project, our first step will be to carry out a linguistic auditing as a form of needs analysis to have an understanding of the discourse world the students move in their day-to-day business life. What is the nature of their social interaction? What types of texts do they write and receive? Where do misunderstandings occur? Where do they see their own greatest challenges?  What types of mistakes do they make on the grammatical, lexical syntactic, semantic or pragmatic level? How can we make students more aware of the communicative processes they participate in and how can they use that knowledge to shape their own communication? 
A second step will be to collect data from a set of representative companies in which most of our students are working. Our empirical data-base will include different types of texts from internal and external communication across all company departments written in English:  new reports, corporate websites, marketing texts, ads, CSR Reports and annual reports, customer relations texts, orders, offers etc.  The data would also include the material the students write in English, for example their email correspondence.  To maintain confidentiality, the material would be rendered anonymous.  The aim is to feed this data into a larger data basis to develop training concepts and materials that are as close to the students’ present language needs as possible. To set up this database, we will closely cooperate with colleagues from a university-based centre for multilingual corpus data. 
And a third step we are taking to provide tailored language courses that are both practice-oriented and research-based, is establishing a knowledge-transfer group. This group will consist of an interdisciplinary work team of applied linguists and educational psychologists with expertise in the area of distance learning   and as our partners in this university-industry partnership we will cooperate closely with experts from Hamburg industry. 
By forging a university-industry partnership, we hope to contribute to making distance ELF learning feel less distant. 
References: 
Crystal, David (2010): Evolving English: one language, many voices. An illustrated history of the English language. London: British Library.
Elder, Catherine & Alan Davies (2006): Assessing English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. 26 /1, 282-301.
Graddol, David (2006): English Next. London: British Council.
House, Juliane (2003): English as a lingua franca: A threat to Multilingualism? Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7/4, 556-578. 
Hyland, Ken (1998): Exploring Corporate Rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO's Letter Journal of Business Communication. 35 /1, 224-244.
Reeves, Nigel & Colin Wright (1996): Linguistic auditing: a guide to identifying foreign language communication needs in corporations. Cleveland, Philadelphia, Adelaide: Multilingual Matters.
Seidlhofer, Barbara; Breiteneder, Angelika & Marie-Luise Pitzl (2006): English as a Lingua Franca in Europe: Challenges for applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 26,1, 3-34. 
Stifterverband der deutschen Wirtschaft (2008): Quartäre Bildung. Chancen der Hochschulen für die Weiterbildungsnachfrage von Unternehmen. Quarternary education. Essen: Stifterverband.  
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Karl Gudauner (Arbeitsförderungsinstitut - Istituto per la Promozione dei Lavoratori, Bozen/Bolzano, IT (AFI-IPL), Bozen/Bolzano, IT)  
The effects of language skills on the job market and on firms in South Tyrol
Abstract
The research: “The effects of language skills on the job market and on firms in South Tyrol” confirms an increase in the value placed on language skills in the workplace and in general, for employability both during the early inclusion stage and at later stages of a career. Suitable knowledge at least of the second language (German or Italian), is essential for daily management of local business contacts as well as for national and German-speaking markets, while English is the go-to language for companies dealing in exports. Those in company positions involving frequent contact with colleagues, suppliers and customers need sufficient language skills to deal with this, which is something that applies to management and staff alike. Bilingualism and multilingualism, concepts that are often discussed in this border area, are a competitive advantage that can boost a company’s expansion strategies. 
This qualitative study, commissioned by the Ripartizione Lavoro della Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano [Work Allocation Entity for the Autonomous Province of Bolzano], based on the available literature and on case studies, has involved some 80 businesses and 400 employees in business, manufacturing and tourism. Answering a questionnaire sent to them by post, they have provided an informative picture that, by using a special grid of interpretation filters, has made it possible to identify significant trends. The keys used to interpret the information involved grouping answers together according to native tongue, priority language used within the company, employees’ municipality of residence, and the municipality in which the company is located. We also looked at each business’ position on the market and used questions aiming to check the importance of the human capital theory approach. 
Using the framework, the study was able to point to a growing permeation of language skills in the local job market, although there are still monolingual pockets to be found. The attention of businesses to language skills is growing in line with entrepreneurial energy and with the implementation of strategies for expansion into new markets. Therefore, it is the market that acts as an incentive towards multilingualism, without any political agenda. Staff recruitment practices show that knowledge of a second language is now essential for those hoping to find work in a multilingual area. We have noted a good deal of awareness amongst those in employment of the importance of language skills for their own employability and potential for advancement. English has now become a part of a bi- and trilingual local context, a new aim to aspire to if companies are to establish themselves on international markets. However, this may also play a part in weakening Italian-German bilingualism. Within working environments, “Hochdeutsch” for communication amongst people in different language environments hasn’t got the necessary attention: it is easier to learn Italian than German in the workplace. Promoting informal language learning within companies may stimulate capitalising better on existing multilingual contexts. Businesses, above all smaller sized concerns, only invest on language training for employees to meet specific requirements and, in any case, they tend to externalize the cost of formal training. Therefore, in the first place it is the task of the public stakeholder to educate and develop language skills. From this viewpoint, it is advisable to reconsider and extend teaching concepts and to support means of taking on board personal growth as an aim, as well as the specific needs of the business world. 
Confirming the existence of cultural stopgaps, which come from a particular and suffered historical experience, centering for generations on different groups in opposition to one another, with this survey we have also ascertained the continued existence of language segmentation, even in free time, with a lack of opportunities and willingness to spend time on the people or culture of the other language. Aware of the fact that multilingualism is now a European standard, new goals need to be sought beyond the barriers of autoreferentiality, in the creation of a system of inter-cultural cooperation. From this viewpoint, South Tyrol, with all of its contradictions and efforts to re-establish competitive trends, is a good base on which to forge “Euroskills”.
Paper
CONTENTS
1.	Introduction on the situation in South Tyrol
2.	The framework of standards for language learning
3.	Customer’s objectives
4.	Design and method of the survey
5.	Results
•	Communication within the company
•	Market orientation
•	Language skills as a factor of competitiveness
•	Assessment of the importance of language skills
6.	Scientific evaluation
7.	Assessment of utility in policy terms
8.	Excursus: comparison with the Eurac survey on the language skills of students in secondary education
1.	Introduction on the situation in South Tyrol
A brief overview of the characteristics of South Tyrol (officially known as Alto Adige-Südtirol since 2001), which is my home region, is essential in order to understand the study I am going to present. Alto Adige-Südtirol, in administrative parlance, the Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano/Autonome Provinz Bozen/Provinzia Autonòma di Balsan – the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen – is a multilingual area in the far north of Italy and therefore, a place with linguistic minorities who enrich the cultural and ethnic composition of the area and are protected by the Constitution. Multilingualism has deep roots in South Tyrol, dating back to the period of the Roman empire, when one section of the native people in the area, the “Rhaetians” resisted all attempts at domination or assimilation, simply by retreating into secondary valleys and cultivating their own language, which also incorporated new words from Latin: the so-called Romansh or Ladin, as it is known, taking its name from the valleys of origin. Today, the Ladin people number some 25,000 from the Ladin valleys, spread between South Tyrol, the Province of Trento and the Veneto Region, as well as clusters of different ethnic origin but with shared linguistic roots in the region of Friuli-Venezia-Giulia and the canton of Grigioni in neighbouring Switzerland. Most of the population (69,38%) speaks German, 26,30% speak Italian, while the number of inhabitants from outside Europe has continued to increase since the 1990s, reaching about 40.000 resident people at the end of 2010. As a border area and main route between the north and south, South Tyrol has been exposed to the influences of different cultures and different political rule. For hundreds of years (1363-1919), the area belonged to the Habsburgs and was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, characterized by administrative rule that took specific local aspects into account. It was under the influence of Bavaria in the period 1805-1813 and, in part (from Bolzano and southwards), of the kingdom of Italy, from 1809 – 1813. Post-war treaties meant it has been part of Italy since 1919, suffering the discriminatory policies of the Fascist period and seeing itself reduced to mere political merchandise with the intention of ethnic cleansing that characterised the South Tyrol Option Agreement of 1939 be-tween Hitler and Mussolini. Hopes for autonomy and respect for cultural charac-teristics, uselessly advanced after the First World War and not sufficiently satisfied with the first statute for the region’s autonomy immediately after the Second World War, were only achieved with a new statute of autonomy in 1972 before the UN, the result of intensive diplomatic negotiations, propitiated by the Gruber-Degasperi Agreement of 1946. While the Habsburg period had been characterised by good administrative practices that took language minorities into account, in the Fascist period, the concept of cuius regio eius lingua, source of the most disparate initiatives for cultural tyranny gained ground, with infiltration and marginalisation of German and Ladin speakers. The fact that this attitude, characteristic of national states in the 19th century continued to influence the immediate post-war period, can be seen by an objective indicator, such as the way in which the population was made up, according to language background. While the number of Ladin speakers remained almost unchanged between 1880 and 1921, Italian speakers increased in number between 1910 and 1921: from between 2.9% to 10.6%, with a further increase to 23.7% until 1961. In spite of an explicit constitutional ruling, the prolonged situation of cultural and territorial dispute made it extremely difficult for concepts such as the respect for language minorities and their specific cultural characteristics to become established. This meant that even in the period after the war and for almost another thirty years, there was no truly modern concept of governance in place, such as the legislative and financial autonomy finally achieved in 1972 and now almost at its fortieth anniversary as an international model of how to settle ethnic and political conflict. 
It is possible to imagine how these events heavily influenced the identity of the generations involved as well as reciprocal attitudes in terms of faith. This distortion in the region’s social and cultural evolution is still a widespread element of daily life. Local legislation and administrative practices record it; there is a tendency towards profound cultural and political defensiveness that can easily be evoked by political speculation, and to reinforce an underlying identity of mistrust which is, in any case, already a characteristic of Alpine people. 
The multilingual and multicultural situation that results from this historical process is in itself a favourable and enriching context, but it has been and still is so emotionally charged that the defence of respective identities often contrasts with the (desirable) opening up of public debate and implementation of initiatives to bring different languages and cultures together. This in turn accentuates the political connotations of choices when it comes to training and education. This means that in South Tyrol, language learning and teaching, monolingualism and bilingualism are not just an opportunity for structural and teaching interventions in training and educational policies, but every time, they take on a notable political significance.
2. The framework of standards for language learning
The Statute of Autonomy from 1972 (Art. 19) and the respective standards for its implementation (D.P.R. no. 89 of 10 February 1983) form the reference base for the definition of language teaching in pre-school institutions and schools, according to which teaching is carried out in the children’s mother tongue and setting out that teaching the second language is obligatory from year two of elementary school. Since the 1990s, increasing attention has been directed towards the acquisition – within school education and continued training – of further language skills compared to the native tongue. For example, as part of experiments carried out in the Italian language schools, the teaching of German was introduced in year one of elementary school in the late 1980s and since 1994, it has been an official part of school curricula (6 hours per week). In 1997, guidelines were published for teaching/learning German as a second language in Italian schools at all levels. In 2001, the three school boards (German, Italian and Ladin) collaborated to introduce the possibility for students of high schools to spend their penultimate year in a school of a different language group. This project continues to be a great success. English teaching at elementary and middle schools was introduced on a trial basis, in Italian language schools in the academic year 2003/2004 and then permanently in 2005/2006. In German-speaking schools, Italian has been taught from the first year of elementary school since the 2003/2004 academic year (1-2 hours per week), while English has been taught from the fourth year of elementary school since the academic year 2005/2006. To this we can add the fact that individual Italian and German schools have shifted their attention to language disciplines, giving them a higher profile that takes the growing demand for language skills into account. As far as the German-speaking pre-school institutions and schools in South Tyrol are concerned, the guidelines first published in 2003 and revised in 2007 set out the principles of language learning. A further factor contributing to language learning has been an increase in language teaching with school reforms at a national level, as introduced by then Minister for Education, Letizia Moratti, whose name they bear.
Curricula concerning the teaching of Italian and German in professional German-speaking schools were revised in the early 1990s. As far as concerns professional Italian schools, innovative elements such as co-teaching in laboratories and workshops and internships in Germany have been introduced, together with the effort to create new meeting opportunities and immerse themselves in another language and culture. The regulation in the Statute of Autonomy which includes separate curricula according to mother tongue has, over the years and with growing focus on the importance of being able to speak both main languages of South Tyrol, been seen in part as a limitation to innovative initiatives in schools. Using the autonomy of the respective Boards, since 1993 experimental methods have been put in place, including, for example, the teaching of some subjects in the other language. The debate that hinges around these innovations has always been very lively. In the last few years, the idea has also been launched to set up “European schools” according to the now consolidated and widespread model in use in many EU countries. This idea too has been strongly rejected at political levels by the German-speaking population’s party, the SVP, on account of a fear that this openness will nullify the founding concept of safeguarding language groups, i.e. the right to an education in one’s own native tongue.
Outside the school environment, a particularly important part of promoting multilingualism has been the introduction, throughout the province – via Provincial Law no. 5 of 13 March 1987 – of specific incentives for learning a second and even other languages, as well as for other initiatives connected to this (events, publications, finance for training bodies). The decision to found the trilingual Bolzano Free University has been a far-sighted one, as was the multilingual division of courses at the Sanità Claudiana provincial high school. The regular firing up of the debate on teaching a second language and on models for multilingual schools (European) demonstrates the lively interest that continues to revolve around language learning and also shows that the job market has a certain need for this type of qualification.
This also concerns the normatives introduced in South Tyrol with DPR 752 of 26 July 1976 for the purpose of better protecting the German and Ladin minority languages with reference to employment in the public sector. The obligation to issue a declaration of belonging to a language group, brought in to protect minorities, and the introduction of the requirement of a qualification of bilingualism in order to work in the public sector, based on the division of jobs proportionately to the composition of the periodically realized census, has strongly influenced the attitude of the population concerning language learning and since its introduction, has constantly been a motive for conflict at political level. Even within public sector employment, human resources management has strongly been affected by the political accent placed on language skills and in this area, subterfuge to get around this normative (declaring oneself part of a language group based on the advantages to be gained from a larger number of available positions) and inconsistencies (the possibility to take part in competitions in a language other than the one declared) have contributed to flaring up opposition. 
It is no wonder then that on both social and political levels, there has been too little success in presenting and promoting language learning as a means of personal enrichment and intercultural dialogue and as a centrally important way to improve chances on the job market, to the local population. In this context, it is surprising (but perhaps not that much), that the problem of language skills has never been a central part of human resource management or recruitment in the private sector, nor has it affected work policy, continued training or been the subject of scientific analysis.
3.	Customer’s objectives
This research, focusing on the private sector employment market and on the needs of the manufacturing industry, purposefully concentrates on the practical elements of language learning. Well aware of the contradiction that language skills represent in this area, where many parties see them as a bureaucratic imposition, strongly characterised by ideological prejudice, while it is also diffused as a specific characteristic and economic and cultural opportunity in the area, the Work Allocation entity, Ripartizione Lavoro has promoted a survey in the private sector to find out the importance of language skills as perceived by businesses and their staff. The survey looked at the language make up within businesses, the language used to communicate in house and the true value of plurilingualism in the business world, where the job market has specific niches but which, on the other hand, is increasingly affected by international competition. The survey was carried out by the Institute for the Promotion of Workers (AFI-IPL) in conjunction with a group of experts, comprised of AFI-IPL collaborators as well as from social research institute, apollis (first of all Helmuth Pörnbacher as senior researcher) and the language training institute, alpha beta piccadilly. The director of this latter, Aldo Mazza, together with linguist Siegfried Baur and expert in the economics of education, Massimo Loi, was given the task of commenting on the results from various scientific angles and in terms of input for strategies and programmes to support multilingualism.
4.	Survey design and method
Having to deal with a new theme, one that is highly divided in many aspects, as well as being a somewhat politically sensitive subject, a good deal of care has gone into the construction of the survey’s design. Based on a study of literature centring on feedback from the theory of human capital, the work group looked at the different aspects that can be classified either as descriptive characteristics or as factors of the complex social, business and cultural scenarios in South Tyrol, which affect language learning in the world of employment in this province. It became evident that this survey on the importance of language skills for workers and businesses touches on both individual and structural aspects, which on several levels go to form the pattern that shapes reality. Individual imprinting is also influenced by educational baggage and professional qualifications, motivation and natural talent for communication, school and out-of-school experience as part of learning and also placement in the world of work. The normatives and structures of learning and the equipment used to support continued training, the sector, the company’s activities and culture, management and its strategic orientation may all take on the form of structural conditioning. The survey looks at this kaleidoscopic flow of situations at a given movement and therefore, it needs to be set out well in order to capture the salient characteristics of the businesses and their employees as well as to distinguish causes and effects, and the things that drive and slow down the configuration found.
The first theory for the research questions was checked using case studies from several businesses selected in the manufacturing industry, in commerce and tourism, according to the area of enquiry circumscribed by the customer. Interviews with management representatives and collaborators of four businesses provided precious indications for designing the questionnaires to be submitted to a sample of companies and their employees. The questions particularly concerned the range of communication methods used within the businesses as a result of company history and its being part of a specific production, market and geographical area; the assessment of language training for young people by companies and their willingness to invest in improving the skills required within a business context; management and employees’ consideration of language skills as a factor of individual and business competitiveness and their willingness to invest in this direction. 
To guarantee a good level of reliability for the results of this survey, it was decided to examine a broader sample of companies to reflect the different sizes, chosen production sectors or services, their location throughout the area and the “language environment” of the businesses themselves. The grid of questions in the standardised questionnaires, one for management and one for the employees of the same company, was developed in parallel to guarantee, where possible, a certain comparability, because it was thought useful to be able to compare the opinions expressed on some points by management and workers alike. The focus was placed on the following themes: language skills present in the company, market outlets and market orientation of the company, language learning in house, the need to improve language skills and willingness to invest in this direction, staff recruitment strategies, perception of the importance of language skills in current jobs or in case of the need for a new professional opportunity. Individual companies to which the questionnaire could be submitted were chosen by taking a sample from the Business Register of the local Chamber of Commerce. The choice of people to whom to submit the questionnaire was made on the basis of the number of employees and the profiles characterising each single company set-up, taking into account the factors of age, sex and language composition. The questionnaires were completed by management representatives from some 80 businesses with up to 400 employees. 
When setting out the subject clusters for the questions, a system of filters was used to check a whole range of possible influencing factors such as employees’ native tongue, the language mainly spoken within the company, the use of a second language and other European languages, the company’s location in the area, its size and its business sector. The sampling plan also took into account Ladin speakers who, as other surveys have shown, form a specific situation in South Tyrol, in terms of language learning strategies.
5.	Results
Analysis of the answers to the two questionnaires made it possible to provide a picture of the importance of languages in the current situation for businesses in the tourism and services, manufacturing and commerce sectors. Since these are not representative findings from a quantity viewpoint, the focus when showing the results should be placed on identifying situations that feature largely in the company makeup of these sectors as far as the problems being examined are concerned. The following description shows results grouped into four areas: communication within the company, market orientation, language skills as a factor of competitiveness and finally, company and employee opinions on the importance of language skills.
I. Communication within the company
The answer to the first question, communication inside the company, was awaited with some trepidation by the research group. In fact, it was the first empirical research on the subject in the private sector at local level and so the result in itself was already useful information on the development of the use of Italian and German as well as - with a more predictable outcome – of Ladin, over the last 10-20 years. This in a situation that might be multilingual but which, since the end of the last century, has been heavily characterised by language niches caused by certain self-selection in social and working groups as well as in the professional and location choices of businesses. Even if daily perception suggested that there was now a certain language permeation in businesses, there was a little surprise when it was found that in the majority of companies interviewed, in-house communication occurs in several languages (see graph 1). However, it was seen that in quite a number of companies, there is still a predominance of single-language communication. The survey involved companies with at least x employees. If one takes into account that approximately 90% of companies in South Tyrol are micro-businesses with a maximum of two or three employees, it is to be expected that a representative result would show a consistent number of monolingual businesses. 
Graph 1. Statement from human resources management on the percentage division of in-house communication amongst the different languages.

Note: The answers were grouped together based on strict criteria for the attribution of a single language (over 95% of in-house communication must take place in one language). 
Moreover, a particular factor emerged, a question that, as we will see, also has effects on learning opportunities and abilities: where communication within the company occurs almost exclusively in German, usually a single dialectical inflexion in German is used, which is not very accessible to those who learned the language of Goethe as a second language. Since German speakers have historically populated the rural areas and Italian speakers (and subsequent arrivals) are mainly found in the towns and cities along the main communication routes as well as those with peripheral state and army offices – a distribution that is now also experiencing significant outflows due to cuts in administration and the military - the identification of the prevalent language for a business’ in-house communication often corresponds to the division of language groups within the municipal area in which the business itself is located. A close link has been found between the language (mainly) used in the company and the native tongue of its employees. The businesses whose in-house communication is in German are mainly located in rural municipalities where German is almost exclusively spoken, while the businesses where Italian is mainly spoken are situated in those municipal areas where Italian is the main mother tongue. The more varied the linguistic situation in the municipality in which a company is located, the higher the chance of finding companies in which different languages are used in house. While enquiring into the language mostly used for in-house communication, the intrinsic factor of companies with strong links to their owner was also assessed.
Graph 2 Main communications languages within the company, divided according to company size.

II. Companies’ market orientation
Starting with the assumption that a company’s market orientation has a strong influence on development strategies, a further important variable needs to be taken into account when looking at attitudes to language skills, current markets on which the companies move and prospective orientation. This factor needs to be configured as extrinsic to the companies, although strongly linked to the owner who decides the market strategy to be adopted. This information was collected by looking at turnover shares in the main markets: local, national, the German-speaking area, the rest of Europe and outside Europe. It emerged that about a quarter of companies asked obtained more than 90% of turnover in South Tyrol and the rest of Italy, while 15% worked exclusively with South Tyrol. Diversification, compared to market outlets in the majority of businesses asked, has reached a point where most of them are obliged to use different languages. 
Graph 3 Businesses grouped together according to main market of reference.

Note: Companies were placed in groups if more than 90% of turnover was obtained in that respective market.
Clearly there is a relationship between market outlets and the in-house communication language: the businesses in which in-house communication takes place in a single language mainly operate on linguistically similar markets. The turnover for companies where German is mainly spoken generally comes from local sources or from German-speaking areas, while that of companies where Italian is the main language for communication, work above all at national level and their access to the German-speaking market is very limited. It is necessary to stress that the size of a company is a large influence on its market positioning strategies: in larger companies, communication is usually in more than one language, due to the language diversification within the company and on the market. 
Graph 4 Companies grouped together according to main reference market. Companies are placed in a group when more than 90% of turnover comes from the respective market.

II.I Investment in language skills
Once hired by a company, an employee mainly has two opportunities for language learning: formally, through specific courses, paid for by themselves or their employer, or informally, through experience in the workplace with colleagues and superiors, suppliers and customers. The companies asked have put in place solid interventions to support language learning, above all if they are larger, and for the most part, they pay for specific courses, which are very rarely organised in house. Company initiatives to improve employees’ language skills are above all to the advantage of those who, corresponding to the theory of human capital, are in managerial posts or in any case, have roles that are strategic to administration, in offices, at the reception, in marketing, sales or customer assistance. 
Informal occasions for learning professional skills are currently an important theme when putting in place training strategies to involve specific targets with little propensity for formalised initiatives. If it is a matter of learning languages, on the other hand, having the possibility of a full immersion in real daily life situations is an almost ideal learning situation. In a multilingual area, it is the daily dealing with another language that should be an important if not strategic boost to increasing language skills. As part of the survey, employees were interviewed to check, if they had had occasion to do so, through in-house communication or contact with clients and suppliers. In fact, many stated that they had above all improved their German skills (including the dialect version) and/or Italian and more rarely, English. The fact that a large number of them stated that they had not improved their language skills at all, above all with regard to the second language, leads to the supposition that there is a shortage of awareness of this opportunity or that people are not prepared to take it, since both an aware attitude to learning and the creation of favourable conditions as part of production routines are lacking. 
As illustrated in graph 5, where employees’ answers on the improvement of language skills are divided according to the native tongue of those interviewed, some details become evident regarding ease of learning: one is that employees whose mother tongue is neither German nor Italian nor Ladin, declare much more often that they have learned Italian in the workplace (and not German). The other is that comparing progress in taking on a second language among people whose mother tongue is German and those whose native language is Italian, it has been noted that native German speakers are more successful in learning Italian than Italians are at learning German. Of the latter, less than half state that they learned German in the work place, while almost two thirds of native German speakers state that they improved their Italian at work. 
One block to learning German was surely the widespread use of a dialect version in companies, right up to higher management and even the owner. Italian-speaking employees are very aware of the role of dialect in the workplace, as it is qualified as a requirement for career progress, but they encounter, it seems, objective difficulties in capturing the meaning of words in dialect and they are not able to find their own successive upgrading path, juggling between dialect and standard language.
The different attitudes to learning a second language are confirmed in the next question about success in approaching the Italian market and the German-speaking one: companies with in-house communication that is mainly in Italian encounter many more problems in establishing themselves on German-speaking markets than those which communicate mainly in German in establishing relations with Italian companies. 
Graph 5 Language learning in the workplace. The percentage of workers interviewed who declare that they have learned one of the three languages stated “well” or “quite well”

Note: The answers were divided according to employees’ mother-tongue.
Of course, those working inside monolingual company situations are at a disadvantage when it comes to informal learning because they are not in a context that offers this possibility. If this reduced opportunity for growth is accompanied by a monolingual place of residence and a social integration in monolingual contexts, instead of having several positive impulses for learning a second language, then the context is one of stagnation. It is no surprise that those working in a monolingual company are more optimistic about their language tools if they needed to face the challenge of finding a new job compared to those working in a more differentiated language context. Here too, the confidence of native German speakers is more marked. 
III. Language skills as a factor of competitiveness 
The majority of companies consider the position of South Tyrol to be a meeting point for different cultures and different market areas and therefore, a positive fact for their competitiveness. From a language point of view, companies generally had no difficulty in becoming established on markets currently covered and in part they consider language skills to have been a strategic key to their success. They are more cautious in their assessment of how much language skills are suited to expansion into new markets. According to management, employee skills need to be improved in terms of Italian and German (above all in the case of auxiliary staff) as well as in terms of English (management and directors). There is a particularly evident need to improve the language skills of employees who mainly speak Italian. 
Graph 6 Need to improve language skills according to position within the company. Viewpoint of company management.

Employees actually using a second language in the work place were asked to express their opinion about their skills in this language. The answers show that their assessments were very realistic. Although they think they are well prepared for the tasks assigned to them, about a third of them state that they should improve, first and foremost, in German for native Italian speakers. Many state that they are convinced of the need to increase their English knowledge, showing that they are well aware of the new challenges of a market that is becoming more and more global.
Graph 7 Self-assessment (by native Italian-speaking employees) of their knowledge of German with regard to a hypothetical search for employment on the South Tyrolean job market.

Note: Only those who actually use the language considered were asked
Complaints about the lack of language skills in young people are frequent in South Tyrol. If we add that in businesses too, the second language is not used and that companies feel the need for improvements both the mother tongue and second language, then it is reasonable to state that there is still much to do to transform bilingualism and even more so, multilingualism on paper into a real competitive advantage. Looking at the different company situations, it is possible to see that in the world of work, there is awareness of the worth and applicability of language skills. With some 40,000 migrants residing in South Tyrol (8% of the population), the language question has become even more multi-faceted and has come to have an importance that goes beyond the three traditional language groups living side by side. It is essential for those with a different mother tongue to those originally present in the area to learn the local languages if they are to become genuinely integrated workers and citizens. 
IV. Assessment of the importance of language skills. 
A basic test bench in assessing the importance of language skills in this survey was to look at staff recruitment management in the 80 companies that were part of the reasoned sample of manufacturing, commerce and tourism sectors. The aim was to obtain as much self-explaining empirical evidence as possible, able to have an unequivocal impact on the perception in public opinion of the worth of language skills o the job market. Businesses have confirmed that staff recruitment places great importance on the knowledge of the province’s two official languages in cases of vacancies at management or directorship levels, in administration, secretarial and reception, as well as in sales and marketing. For these positions, bilingualism is an essential skill. For qualified workers, knowledge of Italian and German was thought to be rather important but not so important for auxiliary workers. As soon as a company sets itself the aim to enter non-German-speaking markets in Europe, it is necessary to develop English language skills, since this is the true lingua franca for all business. Referring to economic sectors, the greater needs in terms of language skills were found in service companies. There is also a challenge for strategic repositioning in the tourist industry: hoteliers are already used to dealing with staff of different nationalities and cultures, but now they need to prepare to establish loyalty in guests from other countries. 
The recruitment procedure does not just place a good deal of importance on language skills; numerous candidates for vacancies in the last few years have been rejected on the basis of a lack of these skills. As can be seen in the table, the percentage of candidates rejected at every level on account of insufficient language skills was always more than 20%, with peaks well over 30% in administration/secretarial and sales/marketing.
Graph 8 Candidates rejected in recruitment procedures over the last few years by the businesses interviewed, according to the HR managers. Distinguished according to business area

When talking about candidates who have been rejected, this is not just a case of situations in which it was necessary to prove a certain level of English fluency, but also fluency in the two official languages of the area, Italian and German, in the case of businesses mainly working on the Italian and German-speaking markets. For companies working mainly on the local market, however, candidates were rarely rejected on account of a lack of language skills. Only those who are satisfied with not moving in this pond can therefore feel secure if their specific professional skills are not matched by language abilities. 
6.	Scientific assessment
All things considered, from a viewpoint of the interest in information of the customer, work allocation entity, Ripartizione Lavoro, it can be said that the survey was doubtless able to provide answers worthy of attention not just from policy makers but also from those who follow the subject of language learning from a scientific viewpoint. The information collected on business needs with regard to language skills is precious because it makes it clear that the employment sector above all needs written and spoken skills for easier interaction with suppliers and clients and they make it obvious that the methods used in schools do not take this sufficiently into account. This survey has also made it possible to place the recurring belief that South Tyrol is already a multilingual area in the right context of theoretical statements: there is still much to do both in education and training to make multilingualism a distinguishing and qualifying feature of this area. And this is not just because of the way in which normatives regulate language learning or because of the number of initiatives to be put in place but, as has been seen in the different chapters and in the comments of experts already mentioned, because it also regards methodology and teaching. It is to deal with the needs of adults with a special emphasis on immigrants, that it is necessary to rethink language teaching methods, focusing on the obstacles faced by good intention and using low-impact strategies when it comes to the frustrations of the single targets. There is a need to be ready to find new paths, such as, for example, promoting a business culture that looks more towards informal teaching. This will bring the young people who are so reluctant to learn a second language into the adventure of crossing cultural boundaries in order to create a cultural humus that will promote the coming together and exchange of ideas without any fear of losing their own identity. 
The survey has succeeded in meeting the expectations of an exploratory survey: an articulate picture of the problem in descriptive terms, as well as focusing on some of the problems in a manner sharp enough to point out the salient features of the survey and blurred enough to avoid hasty conclusions. What emerges from an exploratory survey always needs to be looked at in greater depth, with a joint reading by experts and policy makers. The correlations hypothesised need to be examined, as do the next steps to be taken to develop the suggested measures. The high number of businesses involved and the large number of workers interviewed, although not strictly necessary in the context of a qualitative survey, has given greater weight to the results. 
To attract the attention of public opinion to the changes that began many years ago as a result of the process of European integration, and to highlight the importance in terms of employment market policy and training, even at regional level and especially for a province that tends to overvalue the characteristics of its local context, this report has looked at the respective guidelines for the European Union. These were developed from the Lisbon Talks in 2000 and then in Barcelona in 2002, leading to the approval of a plan of action for 2004-2006 entitled “Promoting language learning and linguistic diversity” and identifying language skills as one of the eight key skills from the viewpoint of permanent learning. For a decade now, increasing language skills has been one of the main political objectives of the EU with regard to employment, recognised in terms of potential to promote economic exchange and discover new markets and in terms of enriching the individual and contributing to dialogue between cultures. The target was set at Barcelona for “At least two European languages as well as the mother tongue,” setting out a range of support means and financing, such as the Socrates and Leonardo programmes. At a local level, council offices, from education to vocational training and culture as well as sport and leisure, will be called upon to put in place initiatives to promote learning. 
7.	Assessment of utility in policy terms
Without repeating what has been said above, the final remarks need to sum up the points on which language teaching experts first and policy makers after need to think about.
If the facets of language use in the manufacturing and business world continue to change and grow, then it is necessary to see how to add elements that take these needs into account to language courses, and which make language learning on the job easier and more intuitive. Last but not least, it is necessary to state an explicit goal to increase language skills and make it a strategy for area development. More attention needs to go to learning the standard language, both in Italian and German, to foster informal learning processes based on their use and reducing the propensity towards indiscriminate use of dialect. In particular, the German-speaking population needs to be motivated to use more “Hochdeutsch” when communicating with people of a different mother tongue, to aid the learning process. When we mention bilingualism and multilingualism, attention should be shifted from regulations that safeguard minorities and from formal and political considerations concerning the obligations and benefits, to the opportunities stated in European learning strategies and to chances for individual growth, to the ability to interact and to collaborate. Young people should be informed that language skills represent all this and besides, they are an essential requirement for entering the job market. This applies both to communication within businesses and to contacts with suppliers and more specifically for positions within companies where employees need to have continuous contact with clients as well as for managerial positions. It is better to be prepared in time and to show oneself as able to meet expectations of companies than to risk being turned down by businesses with vacancies, and this also refers to English, of course. The survey has confirmed the pre-eminent role of the public stakeholder in guaranteeing the development of language skills for the whole population. Businesses’ willingness to invest in language skills is linked to their own strategic aims and further limited by numerous possibilities to externalise costs, thanks to numerous sources of financing. Lastly, initiatives are needed to overcome the language segmentation found outside working hours.
Coming back to what was stated in the conclusion of the alpha beta publication in 2009, I would like to close with a wish, sure in the knowledge that many people are already committed to making it come true. It is my hope that by changing the mentality used to deal with the subject of language skills in South Tyrol, we will be able to lay the right foundations for language learning to be considered useful and fun and that the people who live in the province, above all the younger ones, will see it as an ambition to be achieved.
8.	Excursus: comparison with the Eurac survey on the language skills of students in secondary education
In the last few years, other studies on language learning have been carried out in South Tyrol, concerning the high schools. In particular, Eurac carried out a socio-linguistic and socio-psychological survey into the written communication and interaction skills (and partly spoken skills) of a representative sample comprising 1200 German and Italian students at high schools. The purpose of this brief excursus is a comparison of some of the aspects of these studies with those of language learning in the workplace. This is to point out parallels and highlight suggestions from surveys into language learning in schools compared to the tendency, which emerges from the survey of companies, to focus the policy on the advantages of language learning for the job market. The Eurac survey, which was carried out together with the Department of Education and Cognitive Sciences of the University of Trento, used tests to find out the level of skills in a second language of students aged 17-18. It emerged that learning Italian was easier than German: those studying Italian at school very often (44%) achieved level B1 of the QCER and many more (40%) achieved level B2, while only 10% could achieve C1. However, of the students learning German, only about one third reached A2 and almost half B1, while the percentage reaching B2 (13%) and C1 (5%) is rather low. Both in businesses and in schools, then, there is a determining incidence of environmental factors.
The positive results of language learning in schools are closely tied to multilingual social environments, which would go to confirm the potential of capitalising on the specific context of this area. A notable difference was generally found between types of school, with technical institutes clearly disadvantaged. This result should be looked at using factorial analysis. It is worth underlining an important clarification for teaching approaches and the focus of support policies: the Eurac survey shows that in schools, stressing the benefits of bilingualism for the job market is an approach that does not pay off. The determining factors for the success of learning a second language are motivation to learning and orientation towards integration, aspects that deal with the strictly personal sphere of young people. While it would seem reasonable to believe that learning a second language at school would notably influence the socio-psychological constellations of age, it is also possible to object that a lack of attention to a practical approach is mainly also due to a lack of attention to the preparation of pupils to their future in the labour market in school curricula. In the quest for more suitable strategies to solve this situation, Eurac’s findings are enlightening. Since there is no practical assessment of learning a second language to boost language skills, the authors of the report suggest to change “social and school rhetoric”, focusing more on contact outside of school, through projects that involve families and networks of friends. To confirm this message has already been taken on board by those concerned, the autonomist party, Südtiroler Volkspartei has already launched signals of being open to this type of initiative.
For the record, and to provide a picture of current scientific knowledge, at this point, we should mention the survey realized from The Education Science faculty of the University of Bressanone and just presented at the end of October by the authors Siegfried Baur and Dietmar Larcher, two renowned experts in multilingualism, who carried out various studies on the situation in Alto Adige-Südtirol. Under the title “Ready for the European challenge? Experiences of multilingualism in South Tyrol”, they have summed up the results of interviews with 70 high school graduates (2008/2009) in South Tyrol on how they perceive language socialisation, also showing the importance of social and cultural contexts in learning a second language. The questions concerned experiences both in and out of school in terms of learning a second language. As the authors explain, the overall negative opinion of the school experience of language learning, at least from the students’ point of view, seems not to support the intentions of school authorities to focus on teaching innovations and more effort being put into didactical aspects as a means to improve skills in the second language. According to the authors, young people are trapped in a “German-Italian” dichotomy without having identified or internalized a meta-subject that would present prospects for overcoming the trappings of a cultural enclosure characterized by historical events, dated rules and by the hidden agenda of local society. Faced with these obstacles, the authors are dismayed to have to stress that given the years of commitment to developing a culture of living side by side, roots of such a culture of plurilingualism, with a package of public and private measures, supported by rules and institutions, good practices and customs, are still lacking within the territory. The answers of young people to the request to point out the optimum path to learning the other language are slightly different to those of the Eurac survey, which is based on a wider sample. If the students’ answers in the Baur-Larcher report are looked at using the results of their learning as a filter, it is possible to see that those whose results were higher place more emphasis on contact outside school and insertion in a plurilingual environment, factors also highlighted by Eurac researchers, Vettori, Wisniewski and Abel. With numerous references to scientific literature and philosophical concepts, Baur and Larcher offer interesting points for bringing new life to the attempt to create the culture of plurilingualism that we need to successfully face the challenge of European competition. Reading between the lines, young people should see Euro-competence as an attractive goal that frees the mind. In fact, this is the wish for institutions and young people that we have placed at the end of our survey on language learning in the work place.
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David Gibson (Queen's University Belfast, UK) 
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Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl (Dublin City University)
Fiontar
Abstract 
In 1993, Fiontar was established in Dublin City University in order to deliver the BSc in Finance, Computing and Enterprise degree. This was the first occasion in Ireland where a primary degree was offered through the medium of Irish, other than degrees than in aspects of the Irish language itself (Fiontar, 2004:3). The ethos of the programme was underpinned by the belief that:
	There is a complex and well-established link between national identity, self-	confidence and economic performance. Language is a critical component of 	national identity and hence plays a special role in economic development.
									(Fiontar, 1996:7)
The aim of Fiontar’s first degree was to provide graduates with financial and computing skills and at the same time to develop an appreciation of their national identity in the wider European context. Fiontar now offers four academic programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and engages in a wide range of research. This paper contextualises Fiontar’s development and explores how the issue of language has evolved in the School in relation to its academic activities and in terms of the experiences of graduates of the School.

Fiontar’s Academic Offerings
Fiontar is an interdisciplinary academic School and research unit in Dublin City University. The language medium of the School is Irish.  Fiontar currently has four academic programmes, which reflect in various ways the ethos and the strengths of the School. The undergraduate offerings include a BA in Business and Irish, and a BA in Irish and Journalism. At postgraduate level the School delivers the MSc in Business and Information Technology and the MA in Irish (Language resources or Irish & Society). All of these programmes have been established to address a particular need: for example the BA in Irish and Journalism was established to provide the next generation of bilingual journalists in Ireland; the MSc was designed to engage with the Irish language sector and to ensure that those within it are equipped with the latest business and technical competencies; whilst the MA in Irish and Society challenges those in the public sector to engage with language questions centred on language policy, planning, awareness and the  contribution language plays in our society not only through the implementation of legislation but through societal interactions and structures. Our modules are delivered through the medium of Irish, and therefore it is from this basis we interact and communicate with our students. Students can, as is the case with most of our programmes, decide to complete similar programmes in other institutions but through the medium of English. Fiontar students therefore make an informed choice to complete their university education through the medium of Irish. The making of that choice and their coming to Fiontar, links the student immediately into an environment, an approach and probably most importantly a value system actively supported and lived within the School. Understanding that ethos is probably best explained by delving into the School’s history and examining how it has engaged with enterprise education. 
The School of Fiontar was established in Dublin City University in 1993 by Professor Finbarr Bradley and a team of like minded colleagues and individuals. The School through its original degree programme the BSc in Finance, Computing and Enterprise set about actively cultivating this approach and value system within students. This was the first occasion in Ireland where a primary degree was offered through the medium of Irish, other than degrees than in aspects of the Irish language itself (Fiontar, 2004:3). The ethos of the programme was underpinned by the belief that:
	There is a complex and well-established link between national identity, self-	confidence and economic performance. Language is a critical component of 	national identity and hence plays a special role in economic development.
									(Fiontar, 1996:7)

A commitment to excellence was and remains central to the School’s endeavours. Well before, the rhetoric of the importance of the link between universities and industry, Fiontar had created and benefited from strong links with both the private and the public sectors. Looking back through the School’s historical documentation members of the School’s advisory board, demonstrate the strength of these links; IBM Ireland, Department of the Taoiseach, Department of Enterprise and Employment, the Economic and Social Research Institute, Electricity Supply Board, Údarás na Gaeltachta to mention but a few. Fiontar also incorporated DCU’s sustained and real engagement with industry into the design of its flagship degree programme. This engagement was realised through DCU’s INTRA or integrated training programme, which essentially is a mechanism for students to receive valuable work-experience through industrial placements. Fiontar students have made the most of the opportunities presented to them during their time on INTRA. One of the most interesting stories happened a few years back when a Fiontar lecturer was travelling to Europe and on her flight spoke with the business man next to her about Fiontar, its ethos and the internship programme. At the end of the flight the man suggested that his company would like to participate in the INTRA internship programme. Each year the business man would fly from Paris and interview a selection of students and offer one or two the opportunity to work with the company in Paris. The company was impressed with the students and at the end of their internships would offer them a permanent position, on completion of their undergraduate degree. After a few years the business man came back to DCU and offered the students the opportunity to start a local office in Dublin, many of them do just that. The company is a major player in the financial software scene and has offices across the five continents. Fiontar graduates can be found in many of these. Fiontar and DCU have developed a network of relationships across Europe through the INTRA programme, which has benefits for both students and graduates and it is typical for this School to receive job offers for graduates.  
Finally, within the undergraduate degree, the School sought to challenge our students through a final year project designed to encourage students to become involved with an Enterprise Start-Up; to hone their entrepreneurial skills and to develop their self-confidence. This module known as Bunú Fiontair has evolved over the years to become the most challenging and absorbing of modules for students. The module design is synonymous with best practice in Enterprise education and draws on a wide range of support mechanisms and techniques to facilitate student interaction with this learning process. Students are tasked with coming up with a business idea or implementing a business idea within an existing organisational context. They then set forth to develop and critique the potential of this idea across a wide variety of domains which encourages them to communicate, research, pilot and  for some to take their idea to the next level through actual start-up. Students are supported through seminars in a variety of domains, they liaise with mentors and lecturers, and they collaborate closely with INVENT in DCU which is the university’s innovation and enterprise centre. Students pitch their ideas in a format something similar to what is now seen on television as the Dragon’s Den. 
This model of enterprise education is similar to a movement associated with engineering education known as the CDIO (Conceive – Design – Implement – Operate) (CDIO, 2011). This initiative as with our own programme is based around a curricular framework which recognises a broad set of skills and competencies are required to engage with enterprise education. These skills and competencies are not limited to the disciplines of business, information technology or finance only, but draw from a wider discipline base and conceptualisation of education. Fiontar essentially conceives of and integrates the lrish language within its programmes in line with this understanding. Students on our current undergraduate offering in this area - the BA Business and Irish -, study modules in business, finance, IT and contemporary Irish language. The model is not unique to Fiontar and can be found in other universities which seek to provide students with an integrated multi-disciplinary approach to their education. This model is underpinned by a belief that it is important to simultaneously develop both humanities and social science based competencies within business students. We believe through this approach we can facilitate students becoming rounded learners, who can transfer and bridge learning and understanding across disciplines with criticality and creativeness. It is through the enterprise module that students usually harness these links and demonstrate them in action but our graduates have also continued to reaffirm this approach.  Our most recent success in relation to this module was this year when Oisín Ó Doinn, a Fiontar student in conjunction with a student of mechanical engineering were named College Entrepreneurs of the Year in the Enterprise Ireland 2011 Thinking Outside the Box Awards. Students have not only conceived of start-ups but they have also brought their products and services to market – examples of these include the founding of ZAMANO, a company which delivers services and  markets national and international brands through mobile and internet platforms, EleVease bathroom products, Suka Technologies to mention but a few. Some students have worked closely in the social-enterprise and cultural spaces – developing concepts, ideas and services for community and regional based organisations, whilst other students have sold their ideas to investors. 
One of the intended outcomes of this approach has been to demonstrate to students that it is safe to take a risk; to try and create bridges; to overcome obstacles and perhaps most importantly of all to try and work out why something will work or why it will not. Not all students will be entrepreneurs or wish to set up their own business but we believe that entrepreneurial qualities of innovation and creativeness can usually be brought to a myriad of settings, this is usually termed in the entrepreneurship literature as intrapreneurship and this quality is fundamental to our value system and to the experience of our graduates. We also aim to sow a seed with our students who may not wish to start their own business directly after their degree, but will perhaps in the future. We have a number of incidences where students have gained experience in the workplace and then moved on to start their own concerns or to pursue a different life path. Those who have set up business have done so across a range of sectors from the Irish language sector, to media and production, to sports consultancy, Internet and technological services and hospitality. One example of this was one of our graduates who worked for the IT division of a global concern in the financial services centre in Dublin. After a few years, she decided to return to complete a Masters in Music Therapy and she now runs her own Musical Therapy Consultancy – working with those with emotional trauma and learning difficulties. 
The feedback we receive from employers demonstrates that they view our students and graduates as possessing this competency of intrapreneurship or entrepreneurship – well worn phrases such as innovative thinkers or being able to look at things differently are commonly associated with our graduates. Part of this mentality, we believe is associated with the language choice that students make when they come to Fiontar and the ethos and environment that the School operates within. Kennelly and Bradley (2008:243) suggest that the Irish language has the potential to support the development of self-confidence in young people, formed by a motivation based on  meaning and a sense of purpose. As previously, described we therefore are taking it for granted that students understand and recognise their culture through language. Hannon  (ibid:243-244) in Kennelly and Bradley states that language is an unquestionable symbol of self-confidence and identity. He goes on further to say that the Irish suffer from a “leaky-identity” through the near exclusive use of English and as such the Irish struggle to achieve the necessary self-confidence for success in enterprise. Kennelly and Bradley  (ibid:257) describe the consequences of the near mono-lingual status of the Irish people and the loss of our cultural identity through the wide-spread loss of our national language and the wholesale adoption of the English language:
	…the country has the tendency to absorb second-hand ideas, values and 	concepts developed elsewhere (and often discarded there), without making 	the adjustments essential in a genuinely innovative culture.
Although, it may be quite difficult to scientifically establish such claims, it is useful and insightful to consider them all the same. In Fiontar we have established that our academic programmes and our research agenda support an interlock between the recognition of culture, as viewed through our engagement with the Irish language and an emphasis on innovation and excellence. Fiontar has engaged in this strategy of innovating, translating and combining of competencies throughout its activities and typifies what Kennelly and Bradley (2008) call the marrying of the sciences and the humanities. An examination of the School’s research agenda underlines this, our agenda is congruent with DCU’s and is directed at conducting research which provides real societal benefits (DCU, 2009). DCU terms this as translational research and Fiontar has sought actively to demonstrate how research through the medium of Irish can have a unique and ongoing societal benefit. 
Research in Fiontar
The School has gained a national and international reputation in the evolution of the digital humanities for the Irish language, through inter-disciplinary, team-based research. During the early years the School undertook some major terminological work to support the development of Irish language resources in non-traditional subject areas such as computing and finance. This work has been invaluable to the evolution of terminology in the Irish language across subjects and domains. Fiontar has worked closely with the National Terminological Committee or An Coiste Téarmaíochta and received funding from Foras na Gaeilge the cross border language body for Irish to complete this work.  Earlier in March of this year one of the projects that we are involved with, www.focal.ie celebrated its fifth anniversary, focal is the Irish translation of word. This resource provides real time access to terms for users, with grammar guidelines and links to the national corpus. User statistics of focal.ie have surpassed all expectations – at the time of its fifth anniversary we reported 25 million searches completed by nearly one million users, currently we are running at just under 1 million searches a month for the last three months. The statistics and the demand continue to rise and the website is now available on mobile platforms. 
Another project which the School is involved in is the website www.ainm.ie, which was launched last week. This project involved the digitisation of 1,693 biographies of individuals associated with the Irish language and the Irish sector from 1560 up to the present time. This is a collaborative project with the original writers of the biographies, Diarmuid Breathnach and Máire Ní Mhurchú and was conducted with Cló Iar-Chonnacht. This resource is now available worldwide to researchers, academics, students, historians and the media. 
Moving from the digital humanities the School has sought to play a wider role in the development of the Irish language and bring its vision for Irish to the fore. Fiontar was commissioned by the State as consultants to advise them to develop a ten year strategy for the Irish language. The strategy has been welcomed widely and has been accepted by all political parties as the roadmap for the development of the Irish language in the Republic of Ireland. The strategy is a coherent plan which attempts to charter a course for the State to view, consider and develop the Irish language across domains – aiming to promote and harness linguistic competency, whilst supporting a cohesive interaction between the Irish language and the Irish people. 
Conclusion
Fiontar celebrates its twentieth anniversary in 2013, in academic and historical terms, a blink of an eyelid. In that time the School has grown from a single programme School, to a unit which is recognised for its innovative programmes and its translational research agenda. The School does not seek to become a traditional department of Irish, but rather it seeks to emphasise and maintain its unique mission. There are continuing challenges faced by the School but are similar to those of any other initiative operating in a lesser-used language environment. These challenges are independent of the current economic difficulties but are not immune to its consequences. Fiontar has taken advantage of a core competency of multi-disciplinarity, by which  it has endeavoured to demonstrate that an innovative approach to education and research can be achieved through a value system recognising the link and interface between identity, self-confidence and enterprise or as Bradley and Kennelly (2008:248) state: 
	…programmes through the medium of Irish have a special potential to be 	powerful sources of creativity, innovation and renewal…they offer an enabling 	culture centred on a local response to the challenges of globalisation
References
BRADLEY, F. & KENNELLY, J. J. (2008) Capitalising on Culture Competing on Difference: Innovation, Learning and Sense of Place in a Globalising Ireland, Dublin, Blackhall Publishing.
CDIO (2011) The CDIO INITIATIVE, [Available at: www.cdio.org] [Last accessed: 01st November 2011] 
DCU (2009) Leading Through Challenge: University Strategy: Knowledge Transformation and Innovation Strategy 2009-2014. Dublin, Dublin City University.
FIONTAR (1996) Fiontar: Entry 1996, Dublin City University.
FIONTAR (2004) Quality Assessment / Quality Review 2004 Self-Assessment 	Report, Dublin City University: 137.

CV 
Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl is the Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning in Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Dublin City University. She is the formeer academic programme Chairperson of Fiontar’s programmes. Mairéad is currently completing her Doctorate with the University of Durham in England on Academic Reform and Organisational Change in a Higher Education Institute. She is a member of the information technology committee of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and a board member of the cross border language body, Foras na Gaeilge.  She has spent time working with Murex in Paris and in the IFSC in Dublin in financial and computing positions and holds an MSc in E-Commerce and a BSc in Finance, Computing and Enterprise from DCU.  
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Josep Maria Canyelles (Responsabilitat Global, think tank on CSR) 
Managing linguistic diversity within a Corporate Social Responsibility approach
Abstract
This paper gives an interpretation of what CSR is and means in the Knowledge Society, and explores the incoherence that implies the limited incorporation of linguistic aspects into this management style and its standards to the present. 
CSR is not understood as simply going beyond the law but as a way of integration of this increasing complexity that is filling organizations and the world. Then, an approach combining legal, marketing and CSR vectors is proposed. Stakeholders are also asked to develop new ways to drive.
Managing language conflicts or multilingualism through CSR appears to be an innovative way to create value for all stakeholders. A focus on CSR could allow new approaches and new solutions, based on the idea that CSR focuses creation of trust. The paper explains some examples of individual and corporative behaviour like the ones known as “I defend your language, not mine” or “Let’s live multilingualism”.
CV
Josep Maria Canyelles is a consultant in Corporative Social Responsibility. Experienced in three sectors: public, private and social. Master in Public and Social Policies. Promoter of www.responsabilitatglobal.com (think tank), technical consultant for the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, coordinator of CSR in the Catalan Account. & Manag. Assoc., and teacher of CSR at universities: www.uoc.edu, www.ub.edu, www.upc.edu, www.url.edu.
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François Grin (Université de Genève, CH)
Language economics: How to meet the analytical challenges of globalisation?
Abstract
Since the publication of the very first papers in language economics in the 1960s, this field of investigation has significantly expanded and has been addressing a growing range of issues. In the last fifteen years, the most noticeable evolution has been a sustained emphasis on language policy issues. At the same time, language economics has remained at the margins of the economics discipline, and has not gained the institutional recognition enjoyed by education economics or environmental economics, for example. The advantage of this fringe status is a more pronounced willingness to engage with other disciplines when confronting a variety of issues, including new topics relevant to the understanding of the links between language and economics.
In this lecture, I present a general overview of language economics, emphasising how the specialty has dealt with theoretical challenges coming from other areas of research (often with contradictory orientations), before turning to the response of language economics to two major contemporary issues: making sense of globalisation; and reconsidering linguistic hegemony in the context of macro-level language dynamics.
Short Bio
After a PhD in economics in Geneva, François Grin has worked at the University of Montréal and the University of Washington (Seattle), then served as Deputy Director of the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) in Flensburg, Germany, and subsequently as Deputy Director of the Education Research Unit of the Geneva Education Department. He is currently full Professor of Economics at the University of Geneva, where he teaches at the Faculté de traduction et d'interprétation (FTI) and at the Department of economics. He is also visiting professor at the University of Lugano, where he teaches the management of linguistic and cultural diversity. François Grin has specialised in language economics, education economics, and policy evaluation in these areas. He is the author of numerous publications, and has carried out numerous projects for scientific research agencies and international organisations, and advises various national and regional governments on language policy issues. He is the Deputy coordinator of the “DYLAN” project under the European Commission’s sixth framework programme, and president of the “Délégation à la langue française” for Switzerland. His latest book, The Economics of the Multilingual Workplace (with C. Sfreddo and F. Vaillancourt) was published by Routledge in 2010.
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Miquel Strubell (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, CAT, ES)
Multilingualism and the global economy in Catalan firms
Abstract
ELAN.CAT, a survey carried out in Catalonia in 2009, was based on the ELAN study of European firm commissioned by the EU. It studied the language profiles of over 1000 firms, of which a third were exporters. The almost generalised use of Catalan within these firms and a widespread need for multilingual strategies emerged, many firms improvising rather than planning ahead; and few were aware of the need to acquire intercultural skills. The study was followed by a qualitative phase, with over 20 in-depth interviews of stakeholders. A shortage was underlined of young qualified people with good French, the language of Catalonia's largest market outside Spain. Nevertheless, the mainstream opinion was that "English is enough" except for firms' consolidated markets. At the same time, the level of competence in English was regarded as lower than elsewhere in Europe. In the paper, these issues will be discussed in the context of the growing reliance of the Catalan economy on the worldwide market, and the linguistic and cultural factors that make for competitiveness.
Keywords: Catalonia; Catalan; multilingualism; business; foreign languages; exporting companies
Preliminary draft
What is the effect of globalisation on businesses based in a territory whose native language has spent longs periods of history in a subordinate position vis-à-vis an international language, that is, the language of a people with an imperial past? Does globalisation lead to this language being used less in such firms, because of increased competition and complexity in managing languages? Or does it encourage firms to adopt more explicit and rational language strategies, including the native language? This paper describes a research project designed to answer this question, among others, undertaken by the Linguamón-UOC Chair in Multilingualism, which from its establishment at the end of 2006, chose multilingualism in business as one of its core research areas.
The research presented here is an example of action-research: it was specifically intended to help to design policies, by detecting needs and also examples of good practice. The aim was to be able to advise the Catalan government, chambers of commerce and other bodies as to the linguistic impact and opportunities related to globalisation in Catalan companies. For the first time, a survey was undertaken to look at both foreign languages and Catalan inside Catalan businesses, including those that export abroad.
In Spain languages are a controversial issue. Several times in the 20th century there have been politically motivated calls across Spanish-speaking for boycotts against products made in Catalonia. The most recent campaign was against Catalan cava (sparkling wine) in 2005, and sales did drop markedly as a result (see Table 1). Numerous letters to the editors, editorials and numerous articles followed a statement by the Catalan deputy prime minister in which he said that given that Spain had pulled strings to have the International Roller Sports Federation’s initial decision to admit the Catalan hockey federation reversed, he saw no reason for Catalonia to support Madrid’s bid to host the Olympic Games in 2012. The press widely quoted a statement by the president of the Consell Regulador del Cava, Gustavo García-Guillamet ("El boicot ha distorsionado muy gravemente el mercado interior"), in which he attributed the 6·6% drop in sales to Spain in 2005 to the boycott; and the Spanish news agency EFE openly claimed that the Spanish conservative party (Partido Popular) was behind the campaign. This drop was all the more remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, because in the Spanish market, a high proportion of cava was and still is sold inside Catalonia itself (an area not affected by the boycott, of course). And secondly, because some of the main cava producers (such as Codorniu) invested heavily in advertising to try and counteract the effects of the boycott.

Table 1. Sales of Cava inside and outside Spain, 1998-2008.
Year	Sales inside Spain	Exports outside Spain	
1998	91865	48,2%	98643	51,8%	
1999	100180	43,5%	130373	56,5%	
2000	99732	50,7%	97019	49,3%	
2001	97368	48,4%	103849	51,6%	
2002	96646	47,1%	108443	52,9%	
2003	97816	45,6%	116832	54,4%	
2004	100103	45,2%	121275	54,8%	
2005	93501	42,0%	128901	58,0%	
2006	101336	45,1%	123573	54,9%	
2007	98167	43,6%	126783	56,4%	
2008	89130	39,1%	138920	60,9%	

Moreover, unlike the blossoming of the commercial use of many European languages since the late 19th century (Czech, Finnish, Hungarian, Romanian, etc.) the use of Catalan has been held back both by the political oppression of the language over the period, and chiefly during the two dictatorships (Primo de Rivera 1923-1930, and Franco 1938-1975) (Benet 1978, 1995; Ferrer i Gironès 1985). As a result its (particularly written) use in business is much less than might be expected on the basis of the number of its speakers (Rovira (2006). Indeed, a study is needed to confirm the hypothesis that most products made in Catalonia and sold in the rest of Spain avoid the word “Catalonia” and even bi- or multilingual formulae on the labels.
The study was therefore designed to fill a gap in the research, placing Catalan alongside other languages (including Spanish, of course) so as to see to what extent firms based in Catalonia regard language use in an overall, coherent way, in terms of strategies for coping with different linguistic situations.
Theoretical background
The conflicting needs to use foreign languages in international commerce and sto protect the national language have been studied elsewhere (e.g. Mohd Kamal & Syed Ali 2010). Inside Catalonia itself, some research has been done on the general issue of languages in business. Amado Alarcón, for instance has used small scale in-depth interview and discussion group methods to approach the issue both from a theoretical perspective – applying rational choice theory (Alarcón 2005a) and other models to analyse events and processes (e.g. Alarcón 2001, 2003) -, and also from a more applied one (Solé & Alarcón 2001, Alarcón 2005b). Solé et al (2005, 2006) dealt with the linguistic coordination strategies of four enterprise models located in Catalonia (Spain), unequally affected by the mobility of factors of production. The linguistic regimes of each model were analysed, with a special emphasis on the importance of linguistic criteria in personnel selection and promotion, and two company types were identified, with differing importance attached to communicative efficiency and to control strategies which apply linguistically discriminatory practices (Solé et al. 2006: 45). Marta Rovira has also studied the issue. In Rovira & Sauri (2005) the authors reported on the outcome of thirty in-depth interviews of managers of large Catalan firms. Rovira (2006) stated that though Catalan is the language of millions of consumers, its use in the world of business is “very deficient”. Her research was based on the rationale that in a context in which companies have to cope with increasing levels of multilingualism among their consumers or customers as a whole, it would be expected that it would be more feasible for Catalan to be incorporated. Rovira (2007) reveals another central issue of the research presented in this paper, that of “multilingual management”, though not in the terms of Language Management Theory (see Jernudd and Neustupny 1987; Neustupný and Nekvapil 2003).
Linguistic management is not yet fully professionalised in the business world, in the same way that the assumption of multilingualism is sooner considered in general as an unexpected need and not a strategy to interact with the customer. Companies usually act by inertia. And this inertia leads them to strictly comply with legislation (sometimes not even that), and with the "perceived” distribution needs. (Rovira 2007: 5) 
Grin (2006) points out that the “economics of language” goes well beyond such limitations, and the study does not look at objective assessments of the economic value of polyglottism, for professionals. This has been studied, for instance, by Savoie (1996), who compared the advantages of bilingualism in the Canadian job market, finding that bilinguals had better access than monolinguals, despite the lack of apparent salary differentials. More recent research, however, has found that there are very substantial, statistically significant, rewards to second official language use in Quebec (though not in the rest of Canada; see Christofides and Swidinsky 2010). Bleakley & Chin (2004) found a significant positive effect of English proficiency on wages among adults who immigrated to the United States as children. For their part, Grin & Sfreddo (1998), working in Switzerland warn against generalised optimism, for outside the predominantly Italian-language region of Tessin, they found that male speakers of Italian were at a significant disadvantage on the labour market, even after controlling for the effect of other determinants of earnings, including competence in Switzerland’s other national languages. As Catalan businesses become more and more international in their scope, and less and less dependent on the Spanish market, we asked ourselves: What are the language needs of these firms? To what extent are they even aware of them? Is the government doing enough to support them linguistically?
At the same time, there is another dynamic. As Catalan firms become less dependent on a market which traditionally has looked on the use of the Catalan language with suspicion, and sometimes with outright hostility, as the language repression of the Franco era recedes into the historical distance, we asked ourselves to what extent the effects of that (long) period may remain entangled in their internal (linguistic) habits, behaviour and ideology.
In conclusion, there have been a number of studies on the use of Catalan in business, but none have put this use into an international context, that is, none have looked at how companies working in the global market (or even just across the border) cope with Catalan (and Spanish) in their activities.
Precedents: The ELAN report
Despite previous work done in Catalonia, the study being reported in this paper had an immediate precedent: a report commissioned by the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the European Commission in December 2005 and undertaken by CILT, the UK National Centre for Languages in collaboration with InterAct International and an international team of researchers directed by Professor Stephen Hagen. The report was published in 2006: ELAN: Effects on the European Economy of Shortages of Foreign LANguage Skills in Enterprise (Hagen et al. 2006). ELAN did not fall out of the blue: it was the direct result of the initial concerns of the then-recently appointed Commissioner for Multilingualism Leonard Orban, whose aims were defined in the Commission’s earlier Communication A new framework strategy for multilingualism (European Commission 2005). Two are particularly relevant: to develop the multilingual skills of European businesses in order to make them more competitive in the world market; and to develop the technological, linguistic and human resources essential for multilingual communication.
The Catalan adaptation of the questionnaire and method was taken following a seminar on “Multilingualism and own language” held in Barcelona, in November 2007, and chaired by Commissioner Leonard Orban, at which Stephen Hagen gave a detailed presentation of his report and, subsequently, agreed to act as a consultant for the ELAN.cat study. 
It should be noted that the method does not entail data-gathering by direct observation, but relies on information given by an (undoubtedly well-informed but not necessarily objective) qualified person in each firm’s managerial team. 
The ELAN report was also to offer a reference point, a benchmark against which the Catalan results might be compared. This meant of course, the same items and method had to be used, with as few alterations as were to be necessary. The main difference was that in the ELAN study, for obvious reasons, no interest was attached to companies’ use of the language of their own country: ELAN is about exporting, about foreign markets. The Catalan study, “ELAN.CAT”, therefore added this dimension to the questionnaire, asking about Catalan and Spanish alongside foreign languages. At the same time, this dual concern led to the choice of a sample which was only in part comparable to the samples used across Europe. An overall view of Catalan firms as a whole, not just exporting firms, was required. Indeed, for many of them, selling in Spanish-speaking Spain was to prove to be linguistically half way to exporting, though without the problems related to finding staff skilled in more or less exotic languages. 
The ELAN.CAT study
The universe of SMEs from which the sample was to be selected is not well defined. Existing databases, whether official or commercial, contain errors of all kinds: firms classified as exporters simply because they have made an exploratory approach to the authorities for advice on exporting; firms whose ownership has changed hands; firms that no longer exist; firms whose addresses and contact data are incorrectly recorded; and firms about which no information is available on their sector of activity.
In the event the sample was based on the universe of existing firms in Catalonia, with between 10 and 249 employees. All appropriate industrial and commercial sectors were proportionately represented in our sample. At the same time, as an overall sample error of ±3·0% was aimed for, measures were taken to ensure that at least a third of the chosen firms were exporters. This precaution, which was to allow results to be comparable with the ELAN study, in the event proved unnecessary: just over a third turned out to be exporters.
Several hypotheses, which are listed below, were formulated, and the questionnaires adapted accordingly. These in synthesis assumed that firms that deliberately plan their language strategy or strategies are more sympathetic to linguistic diversity and therefore use Catalan as a working language and/or a language of communication to a greater extent than firms that do not.
It was decided, on the basis of Hagen’s results, to try and check whether his four keys to international competitiveness, in language-related matters, were also relevant in the ELAN.CAT study. His four keys are:
•	having a well-defined language strategy, 
•	recruiting linguistically competent staff, 
•	having native speakers available and
•	using translators/interpreters properly.
These matters will be discussed in the remainder of this paper, before drawing some conclusions.
A qualitative study was also commissioned, based on a selection of 18 firms that had come across, in the quantitative phase, as scoring highly in terms of multilingual behaviour and strategies; 5 large firms covering as many sectors; and 10 experts in the fields of business, trade and economics. In all cases in-depth interviews were carried out to obtain insights into what constitutes good practice in this field. The main findings of the qualitative phase are not specifically covered in this paper.
The hypotheses
The five hypotheses that focussed the research, above and beyond a mere description of the situation, were as follows (in all cases, a positive correlation was foreseen): 
•	Hypothesis 1. There is a correlation between generalised management of multilingualism and the use of Catalan as a language of communication with the firm’s customers in Catalonia / in the Catalan-speaking area.
•	Hypothesis 2. There is a correlation between the generalised management of multilingualism and the use of Catalan as a working language (meetings, internal communications, salary sheets...).
•	Hypothesis 3. There is a correlation between the location of the head office (and/or a majority of Catalan shareholders) and the use of Catalan as a working language.
•	Hypothesis 4. There is a correlation between the location of the head office (and/or a majority of Catalan shareholders) and the use of Catalan as a language of communication.
•	Hypothesis 5. There is a correlation between the main market(s) of the company (Catalonia / Catalan-speaking territory / Spain / international) and the language strategy adopted.

Method
Let us start with a brief description of the sample. This consisted of 1071 companies, all of which were contacted prior to the data gathering in order for them to agree and to offer an interlocutor, who was then interviewed by telephone. The interviews were conducted between February 2nd and May 4th 2009. The sample was stratified by grouped activity sectors and by employee number bands. Proportionate numbers were allocated to cells on the basis of the number of employees (10 to 19, 20 to 99, 100 to 249). Instructions were given so that, if necessary, more exporting companies would be selected in order to ensure a minimum quota of one third. In the event, no special adjustment had to be made, for 33·8% of firms fell within this category. 1034 of firms (96·5%) had customers in Catalonia, 36·3% had customers in other Catalan-speaking territories in Spain, and 52·9% had customers in the rest of Spain. 
The fieldwork was carried out by Instituto DYM, by pre-arranged telephone calls by professional interviewers with a company official designated for the task, who had been sent the questionnaire prior to the call. The questionnaire had been piloted on a small sample. Replies were introduced directly into the computer using the CATI method. 
The variables for multilingual management (Hypotheses 1 and 2) were generated as follows.
A summated score for the affirmative answers to each of the following items:
•	Do you have a formal communication strategy? (p12a)
•	Do you employ staff on the basis of their knowledge of languages? (p14a-b-c)
•	Do you employ native speakers of languages? (p16c)
•	Do you use translators or interpreters? (p17c)
•	Is your web in various languages? (p18a-b)
•	Do you keep a record of the language skills of your staff? (p28)
•	Has your staff ever been offered language courses? (p29)
•	Has your staff enrolled on language courses in the past three years? (p30)
•	Does your firm apply the criterion of replying to customers in their own language? (p19a)
•	Does your firm apply the criterion of having documentation in the language of its customers? (p19b)
The summated score (0-10) was termed “level of multilingual management” and was then treated in two ways: 
1.	By classifying firms into one of three categories on “degree of multilingual management” (low: 0-3 points; medium: 4-6 points; or high: 7-10 points) 
2.	By classifying firms into one of two categories of “generalised multilingual management” (on the basis of the score being below 5, or 5 or more). 

Results
1.	Language use with customers.
Table 2. Answers to question “Which languages does your business use in its commercial relations with ...?”
Language	Catalonia (n=1034)	Balearic Islands / Valencia (n=389)	
Catalan	97·9%	76·1%	
Spanish	81·3%	87·9%	
English	4·7%		
French	2·7%		
Others	2·3%	1·5%	

Restricting the issue to the 362 exporting firms, the main foreign market was as follows:
 
Table 3. Answers to question “Please indicate, in order of preference for your business, the main foreign markets [and the languages used in each of them...]” The data refer to the first market stated by each firm (Percentages add up to 100)
Country	Proportion of firms (n=362)	
France	29·3%	
Portugal	10·8%	
United Kingdom	8·0%	
Germany	7·2%	
Italy	5·0%	
United States	4·4%	
China	3·9%	
Andorra	3·6%	

Looking at the language mainly used by these exporters with their main foreign market, English was mentioned by 43·5% of firms, followed by French (33·1%) and Spanish (22·2%), with Portuguese and Italian trailing well behind. The position of French is hardly surprising given that, as has been shown, France is the leading customer of 29% of these firms. But the use of English greatly surpasses the commercial weight of English-speaking countries. Nevertheless, 67·2% of exporting firms claimed to use the language of the main market in their dealings there.
Once all replies (and not just the main market of each firm) are considered, the picture changes considerably. As many as 69·2% of exporting firms said they used English with their customers or interlocutors in one or more markets, while the figures for some Romance languages are considerable: 55·3% use French, 40·8% use Spanish, 11·2% use Portuguese and 6·2% use Catalan. This can be explained in another way: English predominated in dealings with non-Romance-speaking countries (88% in China, 100% in the USA, 98% in the UK, 52% in Germany); whereas it tailed behind in Romance-speaking markets (5% in Andorra, 0% in Latin America, 38% in Italy, 21% in Portugal and 13% in France).
The question was asked: to what extent does diversifying markets have the effect of increasing the use of English? The questionnaire allowed each company to identity all the foreign markets it operated in, and to rank them by importance.
The data for the use of English in each market was as follows:

Table 4: Percentage of firms using English in each market, ranked by to importance
Ranking	No. of firms	% that use EN in these markets	
Most important market	338	43·5%	
2nd most important market	257	51·8%	
3rd most important market	166	59·0%	
4th most important market	99	68·7%	
5th most important market	54	72·2%	
6th most important market	29	72·4%	

It is clear, therefore, that firms tend to adopt the language of the main customers, and use English to a greater extent in their less important markets.
Linguistic difference also gave a greater role to English. Its use in dealings with Germany and China are much higher than in dealings with Italy or Portugal, for instance.

Table 5: Use of local languages and English in dealings with the most cited export markets
Country	N	% local language	% English	
Non-Romance languages	
Germany	55	28%	52%	
China	17	0%	89%	
UK	48	98%	
USA	29	100%	
Romance languages	
Andorra	19	58%	5%	
South America	34	97%	0%	
Italy	42	60%	38%	
Portugal	61	25%	21%	
France	153	80%	13%	

2. Communication strategies. 37·8% of the total sample claimed to have a “formal communication strategy” in dealings with customers from other linguistic environments, and this figure was considerably higher among exporting companies (53·3%), as well as in the larger firms (100 to 249 employees). As regards particular criteria, fully 97% of the whole sample claimed to answer communications in their customers’ own languages, though this applied particularly to Spanish and Catalan, and much less so to other languages (led by English). As regards drawing up documents in the customers’ own languages, a very similar pattern was found. As regards languages present on their websites, 85% of those that have one stated Spanish, well ahead of Catalan (64%), with English tailing behind (16%). 
A different picture emerged when we asked about the use of translators and interpreters: fewer than 11% said they had used these services in the past five years, and over a half of these mentioned English. 
Yet another picture emerged when we asked about languages used for internal communication: again Catalan and Spanish predominated, while English was only mentioned by 12% of the whole sample (let it be remembered that only one-third are exporters).
Graph 2: Languages used for internal communication by firms in the ELAN.CAT sample, in order of citation.

3. Staff policy.
In a third bloc questions were asked about staff policy. Nearly all firms said that had staff competent in both Catalan and Spanish to cover all communication needs. Moreover, 74% mentioned staff proficient in other languages, mainly English (70% of this group) and French (47%), but also Italian and German in 13-14% of cases. Most claimed their staff could cope with one or more of these languages in “all situations”. As expected, exporting firms scored very highly (93% have staff proficient in languages other than Catalan and Spanish). 
However as regards recruitment, only 43% of the total sample said language skills were taken into account in staff selection for dealing with particular customer markets (the figure was higher in the hotel industry and among exporting firms). More firms mentioned language skills being a requirement than simply as desirable. Spanish and Catalan (both over 70%) and English (46%) were most frequently mentioned as being a requirement, while English (59%) came ahead of Catalan (54%) and Spanish (44%) as being preferable, with French taking fourth place (27%).
Companies seemed aware of the linguistic capital of their employees in only 31% of cases, though a greater number (47%) have offered them language courses (by no means all in the past three years). These courses were overwhelmingly in English, with French (17%) and Catalan (14%) far behind. Two-thirds of our firms (66%) feel extra language training will not be needed in the coming three years, and among those that said it would, English was overwhelmingly identified (90%), with French following up (25%).
Companies in the sample were asked “2.3 Has the language competence of your staff ever influenced your company’s choice of markets to expert to or to operate in, and if so, which markets and languages?”. 

Table 6: Firms choosing markets on the basis of the English language competence of their staff
Ranking	No. of firms	% that use EN in these markets	
EN language competence in choice of first market	41	36,6%	
EN language competence in choice of second market	21	52,4%	
EN language competence in choice of third market	11	63,6%	

French and German are also mentioned in each of these choices, but at fairly stable figures of 27-29% and 9-10% respectively.
Companies in the sample were asked “2.4 Have you acquired staff with specific language skills in order to operate in specific markets?”. 
Exporting firms seem to have done so in only a relatively small number of cases (82). The countries most chosen in first place for this purpose were France (21 cases, 23·9%), China (10 cases, 11·4%), the United Kingdom (9 cases, 10·2%) and Germany (8 cases, 9·1%). While French and German account for 22·0% and 9·9% of languages mentioned – in line with expectations, English is cited far more frequently than expected (54·9%) while Chinese was cited less (4·9%). 
Only 6% felt that they will need extra training on international cultural aspects over the next three years. Acquiring intercultural skills is not seen as a priority.
In many cases there were significant differences between the replies given by exporting firms and the rest. Needless to say, some items were specifically designed for exporting firms, not least because the ELAN survey questionnaire on which the ELAN.CAT data-gathering tool was based was aimed solely at exporters.
Among these significant differences were the following:

•	Has your business established a formal communication strategy to make contact with customers in the different linguistic regions? Whole sample (n=1071): Yes, 37·8%. Exporting firms (n=362): 53·3%.
•	Do you think your business will need extra training in Catalan, Spanish or other languages over the next three years? Whole sample: Yes, 32·0%. Exporting firms: 41·7%. 
•	In selecting staff, do you take account of their language skills in the customer's language? Whole sample: Yes, 43·0%. Exporting firms: 50·8%. 
•	Have you recruited outside translators/interpreters for your commercial operations in a specific market in the past five years? Whole sample: Yes, 10·6%. Exporting firms: 15·5%%.

The hypotheses
The results of putting the five hypotheses to the test are now presented.

Table 7. Hypothesis 1: “There is a correlation between generalised management of multilingualism (or corporate efficiency) and the use of Catalan as a language of communication with the firm’s customers in Catalonia / in the Catalan-speaking area”.
Hypothesis No. 1	Independent variables	
	They reply in Catalan (Yes / No)	They have documentation in Catalan (Yes / No)	Catalan is a language of communication with customers (Yes / No)	Catalan is the main language of communication with customers (Yes / No)	Level of communication with customers in Catalan (0-3 to 3)	
Dependent variables	Level of multilingual management (0-10)			-	-	*	
	Level of multilingual management (High / Medium / Low)			-	-	*	
	Generalised multilingual management (Yes / No)			-	-	*	
- = There is a significant, negative correlation
* = The correlation is significant, though communication in Catalan is highest among firms scoring 2 out of 3. 

The hypothesis was NOT supported when the variable was the use of Catalan as the main language with customers. The average value on the “level of multilingual management” (0-10) scale was significantly higher (5·87) among the 150 companies for whom Catalan is NOT the main language with customers than among the 921 for whom it is (4·22).
The hypothesis was supported when the variable was the existence of documentation in Catalan. The average value on the “level of multilingual management” (0-10) scale was significantly higher (4·90) among the 631 companies that have documentation in Catalan than among the 440 that do not (3·80).
High levels of multilingual management seem to be negatively correlated with the use of Catalan with customers. This may be due to the fact that companies with high levels of multilingual management are more likely to be exporting companies, for whom Catalans are not the primary customers.
Nevertheless, in his unpublished report on the results of the survey, Hagen reports that
“…it is clear that there is significant capability in Catalan amongst the export sample of 362 Catalan companies: 94% of them have confirmed that they can handle any situation in Catalan when asked” ... “there is a correlation between the use of Catalan and greater sensitivity towards customer’s needs.”

Table 8. Hypothesis 2: “There is a correlation between the generalised management of multilingualism and the use of Catalan as a working language (meetings, internal communications, salary sheets...)”.

Hypothesis No. 2	Independent variables	
	Catalan is a language of internal communication (Yes / No)	Catalan is the main language of internal communication (Yes / No)	
Dependent variables	Level of multilingual management (0-10)		-	
	Level of multilingual management (High / Medium / Low)	-	-	
	Generalised multilingual management (Yes / No)	-	-	
- = There is a significant, negative correlation

The hypothesis was NOT supported. Indeed, the table reveals that in the main, a high level of multilingual management is negatively correlated with the internal use of Catalan. As in the case of hypothesis 2, this may well be due to the fact that the former are more likely to be exporting companies, the category in which there is a greater presence of non-Catalan capital and control in the company.
The average value on the “level of multilingual management” (0-10) scale was significantly higher (4·95) among the 62 companies in which Catalan is not used for internal communications than among the 1009 in which it is (4·42).
The author differs with Hagen, who states that 
… “the survey clearly shows a link between the greater proportion of exports as a percentage of sales and the use of Catalan as an operating language. In the total sample (n=1071), 49% of companies take Catalan into account when operating in Catalonia, but the figure rises to 52% and 55% in the more focused sample of export and established-exporter samples.” (Hagen 2010: 28) 
These are not significant differences, for the two exporting samples are not large enough. 

Table 9. Hypothesis 3: “There is a correlation between the location of the head office (and/or a majority of Catalan shareholders) and the use of Catalan as a working language”.
Hypothesis No. 3	Independent variables	
	Main offices situated in Catalan-speaking lands (Yes / No)	Catalan ownership or shareholding (Yes / No)	
Dependent variables	Catalan is a language of internal communication (Yes / No)			
	Catalan is the main language of internal communication (Yes / No)			

As already posited in our remark on hypothesis 2, Catalan is indeed used for internal communication by a higher proportion of firms whose main offices are in the Catalan-speaking lands, or whose capital is (mainly) Catalan. 
94·0% of the 1,010 firms whose main offices are in Catalonia (or other Catalan-speaking territories) use Catalan as their main language of internal communication, as compared with 75% of the 60 firms whose main office is elsewhere. 

Similarly, 94·3% of the 972 firms whose owners are Catalan use Catalan as their main language of internal communication, as compared with 79·8% of the 99 firms owned by non-Catalans. In both cases the differences are statistically significant (chi squared, p<0,001).

Table 10. Hypothesis 4: “There is a correlation between the location of the head office (and/or a majority of Catalan shareholders) and the use of Catalan as a language of communication”.
Hypothesis No. 4	Independent variables	
	Main offices situated in Catalan-speaking lands (Yes / No)	Catalan ownership or shareholders (Yes / No)	
Dependent variables	They reply in Catalan (Yes / No)			
	They have documentation in Catalan (Yes / No)			
	Catalan is a language of communication with customers (Yes / No)			
	Catalan is the main language of communication with customers (Yes / No)			
	Level of communication with customers in Catalan (0-1 to 3)			

The hypothesis is confirmed: Catalan is used for communication with customers by a higher proportion of firms whose main offices are in the Catalan-speaking lands, or whose capital is (mainly) Catalan. 

A significantly higher proportion of the 1010 firms whose main office is in Catalonia state they have documentation in Catalan (59·6%) than among the 60 others (46·7%).
The hypothesis cannot be confirmed on one score (“They reply in Catalan”) because such a high proportion state that they reply to their customers in Catalan that its power as a discriminating variable is greatly diminished: there is no significant difference between the replies given by  the 1010 firms whose main office is in Catalonia (93·0% reply in Catalan) and those given by the 60 others (88·7%).

Table 11. Hypothesis 5: “There is a correlation between the main market(s) of the company (Catalonia / Catalan-speaking territory / Spain / international) and the language strategy adopted”. 
Hypothesis No. 5	Independent variables	
	Main market (Catalan-speaking lands / Rest of Spain / Abroad)	Highest level at which company operates (Catalan-speaking lands / Rest of Spain / Abroad)	
Dependent variables	Number of internal languages (up to 4)			
	Languages of internal communication			
	Number of internal foreign languages (up to 3)			
	Languages used in dealings with Catalonia			
	Languages used in dealings with Valencia and the Balearics 			
	Languages used in dealings with the rest of Spain			
	Level of linguistic adaptation to foreign markets (<33%, 33-65%, >65%)		-	

The picture is mixed. As might be expected the numbers of languages used by a firm increase significantly as the company’s markets expand. 

Graph 3. Number of working languages, by firm’s main market.

However, the variable “Languages used in dealings with…” does not correlate significantly with the independent market variables. Thus for instance:

Graph 4: Languages used with customers in Catalonia, by firm's main market

The Catalan results in a European perspective
Hagen put the Catalan results into a European perspective, by highlighting areas in which the Catalan sample stood out, either above or below the European average. First of all, strategies which are well developed in Catalan export companies:

Table 12. Strategies which are well developed in Catalan export companies
	Elan.Cat %	Elan-Europe average %	
Offering language training to staff	63%	49%	
Evidence of having a formal multilingual communication strategy	53%	48%	
Received language training in last three years	45%	35%	
Acknowledge they will require additional language skills over next 3 years	38%	20%	
New export market plans based on own language knowledge	27%	10%	
Employment of native speakers	24%	22%	

And secondly, strategies which are not well developed in Catalan export companies:

Table 13. Strategies which are not well developed in Catalan export companies
	Elan.Cat %	Elan-Europe average %	
Adapt website for foreign markets	45%	62%	
Keep records of staff with language skills	45%	57%	
Plans for new export markets	32%	46%	
Acquire staff with language skills	24%	40%	
Employ professional translators, interpreters	15%	45%	
Choice of market by language skills of staff	13%	13%	

Hagen (2010: 39) notes that “Despite the widespread use of Catalan in business in Catalonia and its beneficial effect on trade and commerce, there is still room for improving the quality of Catalan usage in business”.
The Recommendations, the results, in which we highlight in particular the main differences between Catalan exporting firms and overall figures for the ELAN study, have been formally presented to the heads of the various government departments concerned. 
The results were presented to the Catalan government voted into power at the November 2010 elections, in order to encourage it to:
•	Improve its foreign language information services;
•	Raise awareness about the importance of having staff trained in intercultural skills;
•	Disseminate examples of good practice in the field;
•	Encourage firms to employ staff with skills in the languages of emerging markets; and 
•	Encourage and support firms in setting up multilingual strategies.
Conclusions and discussion 
The study has helped to see to what extent internationalisation of companies interplays with the use of a language that is in an intermediate position on many scores (social prestige, demography, official international recognition…).
Catalonia is used to having to cope with conflicting language demands at home, yet to judge by the sample studied it has not adequately faced the challenge of the more diverse language demands and needs when operating in the rest of the world. The in-depth interviews revealed reactions such as “Our company won’t develop a language policy because we want to keep politics out of the firm” or “A formal language strategy might be perceived by the staff as an imposition”. However, not doing anything is also a political decision: and not identifying and addressing language needs would hardly seem to be appropriate in a climate of increasing global competitiveness. 
The study has shown that the use of Catalan is very widespread inside SMEs, including exporters. This is particularly so as an internal working language, but claims by the sample that they can serve all customers in Catalan and Spanish are so widespread that it would make sense for the existing legislation in favour of consumers’ language rights in Catalonia (despite the legislation currently being challenged in the Constitutional Court, as regards its reference to Catalan language rights) to be duly enforced by the authorities.
Hagen’s 2010 paper outlines in some detail recommendations of a general nature, such as his remark that 
…“Catalonia has particular advantages by its position and status as a bilingual region which is a material benefit to its trade and commerce. Bilingualism and multilingualism have a serious impact on the local economy. For this reason, bilingualism and multilingualism should be celebrated, promoted and their value recognised as a key feature of Catalonia.” (Hagen 2010: 40)
Other comments are aimed either at business or at the education and training authorities. In regard to company policy, he points out that…
… “there is a surprisingly high diversity of languages already in use by Catalan export companies, notably English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Portuguese. Though the breadth of languages is impressively wide, the footprint of particular world languages beyond the major European ones is too small for global trade.” (Hagen 2010: 40)
He finds evidence of awareness of the future capability required in Chinese, Russian and Portuguese. Overall, 
… “Catalan companies indicate they need staff who are fluent in four languages (at least): Catalan, Spanish, French and English. It is the role of education to ensure graduates and school-leavers have skills in the four languages.” (Hagen 2010: 42)
In this issue, demand for French in schools has greatly declined in the past thirty years, and the boom in demand for English (various studies reveal the generalised perception that it has grown much more in quantity than in quality) has not been additive, largely because the curriculum has not been reformed so as to encourage the study of a second foreign language. The growth of English, therefore, has been at the expense of French. He notes that southern French universities (particularly Perpignan) are openly encouraging students to learn Catalan. 
“With French students graduating in Catalan, Catalan firms have an excellent opportunity of recruiting bilingual graduates whilst increasing cross-border mobility and facilitating multilingualism. This process of cross-border graduate recruitment should be encouraged and systems set up to do so.” (Hagen 2010: 42)
At the same time, more research is clearly needed, focussed this time just on exporting companies. Indeed, in terms of quantitative research, the fairly limited number of exporting companies (with, of course, the additional validity issue raised by the self-reporting method) in the study made it less likely to find significant differences or effects of the variables studied.
Hagen (2010: 42-43) notes with some curiosity that 
“43% of the situations mentioned where there have been cultural difficulties are paradoxically in Spanish-speaking areas of the world, but primarily in Spain, though France and Japan also pose cultural difficulties. The fact that there is such a high incidence of barriers in Hispanic areas needs further research.”
These difficulties are perhaps understandable in the context of the conflictual issues mentioned in the introduction. 
Finally, the interesting findings of Alarcón and co-workers (e.g. Solé et al 2005) on strategies to achieve linguistic efficiency and effectiveness are a reminder that qualititative research can make a valuable contribution to understanding the linguistic dynamics inside firms working in the context of a globalised market.
References
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Alarcón, A. (2003). Economía, Política e Idiomas: Intercambio lingüístico en Cataluña y sus efectos sobre la eficiencia y la distribución de los recursos. Análisis por medio de la teoría de conjuntos borrosos. PhD thesis. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. URL: http://www.tesisenxarxa.net/TDX-1118102-175246/ 
Alarcón, A. (2005a). Los mercados lingüísticos. Aportaciones desde la perspectiva de la elección racional, Papers 78, pp. 89-109.
Alarcón, A. (2005b). Factor mobility, efficiency and language discrimination: analysis of four company scenarios in Catalonia. Noves SL. Revista de Sociolingüística. Winter issue. URL: http://www6.gencat.cat/llengcat/noves/hm05hivern/docs/a_alarcon.pdf 
Benet, J. (1978). Catalunya sota el règim franquista. Barcelona: Editorial Blume. 
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Bleakley, H. & Chin, A. (2004). Language Skills and Earnings: Evidence from Childhood Immigrants, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 86, No. 2, pp. 481-496. URL: http://www.uh.edu/~achin/research/bleakley_chin_english.pdf
Christofides, L.N. & Swidinsky, R. (2010). The Economic Returns to the Knowledge and Use of a Second Official Language: English in Quebec and French in the Rest-of-Canada. Discussion Paper 2010-04. Nicosia: Department of Economics, University of Cyprus. 34 pp. URL: http://papers.econ.ucy.ac.cy/RePEc/papers/04-10.pdf
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Brief CV
Miquel Strubell (Oxford 1949) studied Psychology at several universities in the UK and Catalonia before specialising in language planning. He worked for the Catalan government for 19 years, and since 1999 lectures at the Open University of Catalonia. He has coordinated a number of reports for the European Commission and the European Parliament, and has been on OSCE and Council of Europe missions to a number of former Soviet Union republics. He directs the Linguamón-U.O.C. Chair in Multilingualism, and coordinates the EUNoM network.
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René Jorna (Frisian Academy and University of Groningen)
Email: r.j.j.m.jorna@rug.nl
Knowledge, Knowledge Types and Sustainable Innovation: Why the idea of a global economy is disadvantageous for the objective of realizing multilingualism
Abstract
In the literature on Knowledge Management (KM), a distinction is made in knowledge storage, control and use on the one hand and knowledge creation and knowledge production on the other (Dalkir, 2005, Jorna 2006). The former often is related to information systems (ICT) and business processes, whereas the latter focuses on innovation and developing new products and services. Knowledge creation requires not only a perspective on knowledge, but also asks for a more detailed study of humans, including their languages (individually or in groups) who produce and evaluate new knowledge. This study entails the process from invention to implementation, i.e., the phases of innovation.
Important in Knowledge Management (and Innovation) is the role of the expressions of knowledge: from behaviour (sensory knowledge) to languages (coded knowledge) and theory formation (theoretical knowledge). The idea of a knowledge economy is an economic myth, not taking into how people communicate and what knowledge is. In my presentation I will discuss three themes: 1) the assumptions of the economic models in language transfer, 2) the relevance of different views on the world, and 3) the presence of various knowledge types in innovation. Basic in these discussions is the underlying aspect of sustainability.
1. In dealing with and institutionalizing multilingualism, it is extremely relevant to discuss the basic assumptions of the dominant economic model we are using, whole heartedly or sceptically. This model, called neo-liberalism, favours competition and distrust and thinks that streams of whatever kinds strive for the lowest point in a stream, like water does. The model argues that the same holds for other assets, like labour, prices and social and human capital and languages. In this model the preservation of multilingualism is an anomaly. In the end we all speak English, Spanish or Chinese. The question is whether this model is correct and if not what alternatives are possible? And, perhaps more important, what are the implications of these alternatives for the dominant economic model?
2. Favouring multilingualism implies accepting different views of the world. Because a language is at least partly related to our conceptualizations of empirical reality (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), this means that we have to accept different views on the world, including different views on governing societies, on institutionalization, on organizational forms and on language policy. The idea that democracy is a bridging bottom line is then difficult to accept? Isn't it?
3. In earlier work we developed the relationship between Knowledge of Sustainability and Sustainability of Knowledge. The first is about content, the second about the processes of knowledge. Incorrectly, sustainability is often only related to environmental or ecological issues. Waste, emissions and various kinds of pollutions are of course physical and environmental, but they are the result of individual and collective human behaviour. Often situations of pollution ask for innovations that correct the damaging situation, and for that reason some people call this sustainable innovation. These innovations often have a technological nature, but we call them downstream innovations. We would like to argue that sustainable innovation should be upstream innovation and we would like to put the focus on new and better ways of organization human behaviour, which reduces the appearance of (ecological) unsustainable outcomes. The topic of sustainable innovation introduces notions of equilibrium, dynamics and offloading into discussions on KM. In my presentation, I will argue that an increase of knowledge of ecological and social sustainability will lead to sustainability of knowledge (Jorna, 2006) which has consequences for how we view the various expressions of knowledge and the co-existence of languages.
References
Dalkir, K (2005). Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice. Elsevier: Butterworth Heinemann.
Jorna, R. (2006). Sustainable Innovation. The organizational, human and knowledge dimension. Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing Ltd

Paper:
1. Introduction
EUNOM (European Universities Network on Multilingualism) focuses on the one hand on multilingualism and on the other hand on universities as knowledge institutions. This brings together knowledge and language. The field where the “knowledge” discussion is most prominent in organizational settings is knowledge management. However in this field the issue of language or, stronger, multilingualism is not discussed (see Dalkir, 2005; Jorna, 2007). This is the practical situation. There is, however, an implicit assumption, namely that knowledge is very often expressed in language. The question then is whether knowledge is expressed only in one language or that the precise language is irrelevant. I would argue that the “same” knowledge can be expressed in many languages. This is not to say that language is the only expression of knowledge; there are more as will be discussed in another section (5). In this article we take an individual perspective on language and knowledge. The human information processing system or cognition is the basis for both. This is not to say that knowledge and language are only individual; both are also very much societal. But I would argue that if you do not start with humans individually, the collective discussion of groups of people is empty. Therefore, one needs the individual and collective perspective on knowledge and on language. The best way to start this is by discussing various aspects of knowledge management, in the first place, including the often mentioned relationship in knowledge management with knowledge economy (2). Because of the complicated discussion on knowledge management we begin with knowledge creation (3), that is to say the development of “new” knowledge. Knowledge creation is more or less equivalent to innovation. We then discuss the other aspects or functions of knowledge management (4). Within knowledge management we go into the details of the distinction in knowledge content and knowledge type (5). With respect to knowledge types we discuss sensory, coded and theoretical knowledge. Then (6 and 7) we make an explorative step, in which we substitute knowledge and knowledge management with language and language management and try to find out what are the consequences. In the final section (8) we argue that developing and promoting multilingualism is advantageous for the knowledge issue and for the sustainability issue within EUNOM, but not in the sense that everyone will in the future speak English, Spanish or Chinese. The existence of languages in the world is helped by a large variety or diversity of the languages. The variety in languages is also important for the social sustainability view on the world and its societies. The classical neo-liberal (knowledge economy) idea that languages and knowledge are comparable to other assets such as products, services and processes and are therefore flowing to the lowest, the cheapest or the most encompassing points cannot be defended.
A uniform and monolingual world or society is not what we envision. The human kind is too diverse to make that happen.
2. Remarks about the Knowledge Economy
Issues related to Knowledge Economy come from three sources. The first concerns the knowledge term itself, the second comes from the field of economy and the third is related to the ideology of innovation.
Knowledge is a difficult and complex “asset”. There are many definitions concerning knowledge of which the two most well-known are “knowledge is justified true belief” and “knowledge is interpreted information”. The most accepted assumption concerning knowledge is that it is at least in the minds of people. Without humans as information processing systems the discussion concerning knowledge is abstract and metaphysical. We come back to the consequences of the human oriented perspective on knowledge.
Knowledge as an asset also means severe limitations to positions with regard to assets that economists normally take for granted. However, knowledge as an asset is different from products, processes, services and materials. There are three differences that are positioned outside standard economic perspectives. The first refers to the fact that knowledge is on an individual basis. Human minds are necessary in developing and exchanging knowledge. Other assets like a product or a service are much less individually based. Related to that, the consequence is that when an experienced person leaves an organization, his knowledge is also gone for the organization. The second is that when I give my knowledge to you, i.e., exchange my knowledge, the knowledge I gave is still in my mind. Therefore, selling my knowledge does not mean that the knowledge is not mine, anymore. For all products and service the standard idea in economy is that when I sell something to you, the asset is not my property, anymore. The third difference is that a determination of price or of other forms of quantification is nearly impossible for knowledge in its roughest form. How to quantify ideas or neurons in the minds and brains of people is a not-solved issue in the knowledge domain. A last, but sideway difference is that economists presume humans to be rational actors or agents. In classical studies about the quality of human rational behavior it is empirically known that this rational man does not exist. It is a myth, sustaining many standard models in economy; mathematically nice, but not true.
The most well-known interpretation of the knowledge economy is its focus on innovation. I like to call this source, the ideological source. Innovation, in the sense of knowledge creation, is the perpetual mobile of the economy. Again and again new products, services and processes are necessary. It is the fuel of economic growth. If a country or organization does not innovate, it is not growing and therefor in comparison with others it falls back. This shift towards innovation is important the last 50 years, especially with respect to SME’s. As von Tunzelmann, Ranga & Martin (2003, 7) argue:
“For much of the 20th century, there was a belief in the virtues of consolidation, in ‘national champions’ and the very ‘visible hand’ of corporate management. These advantages were seen as resting on economies of scale (disproportionately greater output) and economies of scope (synergies from harnessing allied activities). However, in the later years of the century, opinion in many countries swung back to favoring the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), which were seen in some quarters as more agile and responsive to change”.
Much of this shift of opinion was brought about by the “knowledge economy”’, that induced a gradual shift from labor-intensive industry and natural resource-based growth, to innovation- and knowledge-driven growth, based on ideas, information and intellectual capital. These changes implied a declining relative importance of physical capital that weakened the focus on bigness and emphasized the growing importance of knowledge capital (human capital, R&D, etc.) and the benefits of smallness (Martin et al. 1993). In the literature, the relationship between innovation and size varies from linear (Schumpeter 1942) to U-shaped (e.g., Gellman Research Associates 1976; Acs and Audretsch 1981; Veugelers et al. 1995) or other type of relationship that may depend upon the industry (Mansfield 1964; Freeman 1974). Scherer (1965) attributes inter-industry differences mainly to the ‘vigorous scientific climate’ typical for some industries. Klevorick et al. (1995) relate inter-industry differences to differences in technological opportunities, while Cohen et al. (1987) relate the firm size-innovation relationship to differences in the appropriability of returns from R&D.
Most of these studies echo in one way or another, the original Schumpeterian views known as ‘Schumpeter Mark I and Mark II regimes’ (Schumpeter 1934, 1942) and the so-called “Schumpeter’s hypothesis”, which asserts that:
 There are economies of scale in R&D expenditure, implying that (i) a larger R&D staff is more productive than a smaller one, because it allows more specialized personnel; and (ii) that an R&D staff of a given size is more productive in a larger firm, because such firm is more diversified and has greater capacity than the smaller firm to spread the risk of new research and to gain from its R&D expenditure.
 Economies of scale in the financial market allow bigger firms to get larger access to funds and larger R&D staff than smaller firms, thereby increasing their innovation flow per worker and willingness to assume risk.
We conclude from the discussion about “knowledge economy” that the knowledge term is not evident, that economy as such has serious problems with knowledge as an asset and that the “knowledge economy” is often equated with innovation, especially in an ideological role as the motor for growth. In the following sections we first go into the details of innovation and knowledge. Then we discuss the organizational functions of knowledge, that is the field of knowledge management (KM) and we focus on an individual perspective in knowledge management. Later on, we substitute knowledge with language and discuss the possibilities and (dis) advantages.
3. Various aspects of innovation
Starting from the perspective of the firm, that is to say looking at processes within an organization, innovation can be approached in three different ways:
 First, organizations can have a department especially dealing with Research & Development (R&D). In fact, an R&D department has innovation as its core activity. The oldest example in the Netherlands - started in 1914 - is the physics laboratory of Philips (NatLab; Nat = Natuurkundig = Physics Lab). Now, in general, only large companies have their own R&D departments. We leave out, here, universities. They exist since the 11th century and their mission by definition is to foster research, but not on a commercial basis.
 Second, there may be a focus on innovations throughout the whole organization. No separate department exists, but the organization as a whole is engaged in innovation. In this context, a well-known example in the Netherlands is Nedap (www.nedap.com). Nedap, with locations all over Europe, focuses on developing and supplying innovative and sustainable solutions in the fields of security and electronic control units as well as automation, management and information for organizations. Quite often organizations in the small businesses sector have no separate R&D departments. If innovation is an issue here - and concerning this topic opinions vary within the small and medium businesses sector (SME’s) itself - it plays a role throughout the entire organization. R&D is (extremely) expensive and many small businesses cannot afford separate innovation departments.
 Third, there is the individual. Whether separate departments are concerned with innovations or whether innovation is an issue throughout the entire organization, in both cases individual human beings are involved. Innovations have to be conceived, worked out and realized. On all kinds of levels, this requires knowledge, and knowledge is something that only people can develop, use and maintain. They can of course together share, store, distribute and integrate it.
The three ways of practicing innovation ideally take place simultaneously within the same organization. A separate R&D department can coincide with an innovative attitude throughout the whole organization. However, because separate R&D departments are more common in large and international companies, which due to their size are forced to deal to a larger extent with formal procedures and bureaucracy, this combination is rare. In any case, one condition is the presence of individuals who are willing to try things out, who possess knowledge and skills and who are not afraid of failing (Waalkens, 2006).
Innovations can be important for both external and internal reasons. By external reasons we mean that there are weak or strong impulses from an organization’s environment. Urgency for renewal may exist, for example from other companies in the form of purchasers or suppliers, but also from consumers and customers. As motives for responding to these external reasons one often refers to competitive power, competition, necessity for survival and an increase in profit. Also, internal reasons for organizations to engage in innovations exist. Internal reasons imply interacting and dealing adequately with intrinsic motivation of staff members (Ranga, Miedema & Jorna, 2008).
There are uncountably many definitions of “innovation” (van de Ven 1999; Waalkens, 2006). In general, they consist of three elements. The first element is change; according to Schumpeter (1934): “doing things in a different way”. Innovation also means doing something in a way that has not been done before, thus “starting something new”. Therefore, newness is the second aspect of the definition. Often this newness is interpreted in an absolute manner: “not realized before by mankind”. Here we can see the dominance of the technical approach, because once a device, a machine or design has been invented, it is easy to repeat this. The disadvantage of a merely technical viewpoint is that one forgets that people actually have to understand and accept an innovation. Very often, a brilliant innovation is not accepted because people do not understand it or do not see the surplus value of it. I would argue that this implies that every innovation - also or especially technological ones - brings along many organizational, societal and other non-technical aspects.
The third aspect recurring in almost all definitions of innovation is that of an improvement in performance. In the classic work of Schumpeter, performance is especially linked to economic activities. Innovation creates value in terms of rewards for entrepreneurs. This one-sided economic view has not remained indisputable.
As already mentioned, there are many definitions of innovation. We will name four important ones. Schumpeter (1912/1934) gives the following description: “doing things differently in the realm of economic life.” In this respect, he also refers to the realization of new combinations, by which he means that existing things and products are further developed. What is implicit in his description though is, that when making or designing something new, some things have to be broken down or ended.
The Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD (1991), gives the following description of innovation: “an iterative process initiated by the perception of a new market and/or new service opportunity for a technology-based invention which leads to development, production, and marketing tasks, and in which the focus is on the commercial success of the invention.” What is striking in this description is the one-sided choice of technology, market and commercial success. This description suggests that hospitals or universities as non-commercial institutions, which operate without markets, are unable to realize innovations, unless they become commercial.
Another description is by Nonaka (1994) who states: “innovation can be better understood as a process in which the organization creates and defines problems and then actively develops new knowledge to solve them.” Nonaka’s description is general and very much resembles Newell & Simon’s (1972) perspective on human reasoning and behavior. In line with Simon and Newell, Nonaka considers the human activity of innovation as a kind of problem solving.
Nonaka’s description emphasizes what happens at the process side of an innovation. It does not define what innovation is. Instead of looking for other definitions where references are made to “absolutely new”, I prefer a relative approach. I follow the description by West & Farr (1990; p. 9): “An innovation is the intended or premeditated introduction or application - within a particular role, group or organization - of ideas, processes, products or procedures, which are new to the relevant adoption-unity, with the aim of being clearly beneficial to the individual, the group, the organization or society as a whole.” In this description, an innovation is context-bound. In addition, it is not merely limited to commercial environments. Moreover, an innovation does not necessarily have to be complete, radical or new in the sense that it has never been realized before. A particular renewal may already have been invented elsewhere, but not in this particular country or organization. Furthermore, the description includes the possibility of looking at individuals, teams and organizations. It also enables one to consider the things that happen when an innovation takes place as a form of problem solving. The term “relevant adoption-unity” also makes clear that an innovation has to develop as well as to be understood. The implicit reference in the definition by West & Farr to various kinds of “newness” can be further differentiated. They can be categorized based on a dimension that runs from radical via incremental to imitation.
Radical innovations are based on fundamental inventions that are “new to the world”. When in line with West & Farr we think of the “relevant adoption unity”, we should not speak of “a” world, but “the” world. The effects of radical innovations are far-reaching, for they change the rules of the game. To put it briefly: the product or service is completely new. In economic terms, they lead to a completely new (market) infrastructure (O’Connor, 1998; Song & Monya-Weiss, 1998). Radical and fundamental innovations are commonly followed by a large number of innovations connected with them; for example, the first “integrated circuits” and the consequences in hardware and software. The time horizon of this kind of innovations is often more than 20 - 30 years.
Somewhat less far-reaching is the “really new innovation”. A completely new product or service is being developed, which leads to a discontinuity in the market or in the technology itself. A good example of a “really new innovation” is the cell phone. As opposed to the computer, this product and its use are not radical innovations, for telephones already existed. Cell phones, however, have led to a discontinuity in the market and the product. The production process of the mobile telephone has in fact been designed from scratch, and only in this sense, one could speak of a radical innovation. The time horizon is often between 10 - 15 years.
Again somewhat less renewing are discontinuous innovations, the so-called “game changers”. These innovations offer the possibility to either realize an improvement in performance of 5-10 times, to reduce costs by 30-50%, or to introduce an existing “item” with completely new characteristics (Rice, O’Connor & Peters, 1998). An example is the introduction of televisions with broad screens in the late nineties of the last century. The time horizon is 5- 10 years.
Next, we have incremental innovations. They are strongly focused on renewal and improvement. Here, rules are not changed, but the game is played better. These innovations lead to products and services that provide existing technology in an existing market with new qualities, revenues or improvements (Garcia et al, 2002). Although risky to mention here, the ongoing development of new subsequent operating systems of Microsoft is an example. Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, 7 and so on, can be considered as incremental innovations. The time horizon is less than 3 years.
Finally, at the complete opposite pole of the newness dimension imitative innovations can be distinguished. We are talking about innovations that are new for a particular company or organization. However, they are not new in terms of product, service or process, nor in terms of the market do they offer any kind of renewal (Garcia et al., 2002). The most obvious example of imitative innovations is the earlier copying urge of Japan and currently that of China. Innovations in China, for instance, constitute the development by new companies of all kinds of existing products and services, which are offered at much cheaper prices on existing markets. These low prices, for that matter, result from the extremely low labor costs. About thirty years ago, Japan followed a similar path, but in later years it has, in fact, started other types of innovations. The time horizon is often less than 1 year.
Concluding from the above, the dimension of newness demonstrates that innovations involve the following aspects (Garcia and Catalone, 2002):
a) science as well as state of knowledge in physics and behavioral sciences;
b) the product, the service or the process and the structure itself;
c) the market, other companies, the consumers and the customers;
d) the company or the organization itself.
An innovation is radical if there is discontinuity in all four aspects; an innovation is merely an imitation if there is only a new company or organization involved (see table 1).
	Radical	Really new	Discontinuous	Incremental	Imitative	
Science/technology	X					
Production/service	X	X	X			
Environment of Organisation	X	X		X		
Organisation/firm	X	X	X	X	X	
Table 1: Types of innovation and aspects on which innovation is based; X means: applies to (Jorna, 2004)

The dimension of newness also shows that the more radical an innovation, the more uncertainty as well as risk is involved. In case of radical innovations, the chances of failure are therefore much more severe than in the case of incremental innovations. Another factor concerns complexity. This factor can be measured by the number of components involved in an innovation, which is, in turn, related to the number of disciplines (Kleinknecht et al., 1992) that take part. The more disciplines are involved, the more complex and, as a result, the more risky the innovation.
4. Functions of Knowledge Management (KM)
As indicated earlier, innovations are based on knowledge; they have knowledge as input, as throughput and as output. In the KM literature (Dalkir, 2005; Jorna, 2006) various phases in dealing with knowledge are distinguished. The phases are knowledge creation, encoding, storage, sharing, maintenance and use. Functions of knowledge management activities are use, sharing, distribution, development and integration of knowledge elements within an organizational context. These different activities operate on different levels (Dalkir, 2005). Knowledge use points to the usual business processes of staff, focusing on the actual application of a person’s knowledge during normal task executions and processes. A person’s existing set of knowledge elements enables him to make certain decisions and to perform his task.
Both activities of knowledge sharing and knowledge distribution take place at the level of a group of co-workers, expressing the transport of knowledge between them. The distinction between these two functions concerns the mode of communication. Knowledge sharing refers to peer-to-peer knowledge transfer where knowledge elements of one person are transmitted to another who integrates them into his own set of knowledge elements. In knowledge distribution, knowledge elements of one person are transported to multiple colleagues.
Knowledge integration refers to the acquisition of knowledge elements from sources that are external to the individual, focusing on the input-side of employees. From external sources, a member of an organization is presented with “new” knowledge elements. Subsequently, he integrates the knowledge elements into his own set.
Knowledge development concerns the generation of new knowledge elements. The generation of new knowledge elements is mainly an internal (mental) activity of a person. Based on an existing set of knowledge elements, a person creates new knowledge elements. Knowledge development and creation primarily are individual human-information processing activities.
KM started as a discipline with regard to organizational issues of knowledge. An organization or company has to deal with storage, sharing, distribution or use of knowledge. Although every researcher in KM knows, that staff is the ultimate quality or “gold” in the performance of an organization, this individual perspective remains mostly implicit in standard innovation models (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; van der Ven et al., 1999).
Another issue in KM is that the development, fluctuation or dynamics of knowledge, and therefore implicitly of learning, often is not accounted for. Knowledge seems to be a static, stable and defined entity, which can be manipulated and controlled as if it were something material. Nothing is less true and it seems that common sense in KM takes the volatile or dynamic character of knowledge for granted. This is unsatisfactory. The only theoretical research that at least deals with the dynamics of knowledge was formulated by Boisot (1995/1998).
Knowledge development concerns the generation of new knowledge elements. The generation of new knowledge elements is in the first place an internal (mental) activity of a person. Based on an existing set of knowledge elements, a person creates new knowledge elements.
5. Content and Types of Knowledge
To complete our picture of innovation from the knowledge perspective, a distinction can be made in content of knowledge and how this knowledge content is expressed: its form or type. To formulate this explicitly, content and type of knowledge bring us directly to the expression of knowledge, which in many situations is language or if one wants to: multilingualism. Content of knowledge refers to domains, e.g., the construction of houses, physics, the working of computers or health care. Knowledge according to type is the denomination of how this knowledge content is presented. The various aspects of knowledge make it almost impossible to define types of knowledge unambiguously. Based on the work of Boisot (1995), we developed three types of (semiotically inspired) knowledge: a) sensory or tacit, b) (en)coded, and c) theoretical (or tacit) knowledge (Jorna, 2006).
The first type concerns sensory (or tacit) knowledge or just behavior. It starts from a perception of difference. The situation is well known: when you eat a fruit you never ate before, your reaction to the new taste will be something like: “Well, it reminds me of …” and you name a fruit you know. Essential is to recognize the situation in terms of a situation you already know. It should be clear that the bigger the sensory “problem” is, the more difficult to find an analogue. We believe that sensitiveness in sensory knowledge is often underestimated but of the utmost importance. We hypothesize that creative people also are the ones with a big talent for expressing sensory knowledge.
The sensory - or as some would call it the tacit - perspective underlies what Michael Polanyi has coined “personal knowledge” (Polanyi, 1967, p. 11). He describes the process involved in this knowledge type as being “aware of that from which we are attending to another thing, in the appearance of that thing”. Sensory knowledge is bodily knowledge: “when we make a thing function as the proximal term of tacit knowing, we incorporate it in our body - or extend our body to include it - so that we come to dwell in it” (16). Boisot identifies this knowledge as the domain of the “ineffable” (Boisot, 1995, p. 62). It cannot be coded, it is about concrete experiences, and it can be shared only with those who are physically co-present.
Quantification of sensory knowledge is possible through looking at details. The more detailed a sensory experience is, the richer it is. Knowledge of details is relative to domains. A professional will be able to perceive more when looking at a certain activity than an amateur will. Sensory knowledge can therefore mostly be measured through the analysis of behavior.
The second type, (en)coded knowledge, materializes when signs become codes. Certain aspects of remembered situations (visual, acoustic and tactile forms) evoke these situations. For example, concrete cows are replaced (represented) by the sound “cow” and the category of “cow” emerges. With the sign, codes emerge - a code being nothing else than a convention establishing a relation of substitution. The sign enables communication and makes communication easier. The diffusion of knowledge becomes easier where signs (codes) are available (Boisot, 1995). Externalization requires coding. In terms of Boisot (1995): the diffusion of the sign now takes place along the lines of a social community. Co-workers or partners do not have to be co-present. It is therefore extremely unlikely that coded knowledge is dominant in the early phases of innovations.
Codes can be quantified by taking into account the number of elements and the combination rules a code consists of. Musical notation systems are more strongly coded (allow less ambiguity) than natural languages. Therefore, in the use of images and metaphors, coded knowledge comes closest to the non-coded sensory knowledge. More details on the weakness or strength of signs (codes) can be found in Goodman (1968), who uses five syntactic and semantic requirements to distinguish weaker from stronger sets of signs (see Jorna, 1990; 2006).
A third kind of knowledge type emerges when a third aspect is added to the aspects of sensory difference and codification (substitution), that of structure or pattern. It arises when coded signs relate to the events represented, not based on a convention, but based on patterned or structural qualities. We then have theoretical knowledge. Scientific, ideological and religious knowledge are of this type. Can one be creative in this phase? Certainly one can learn. However, no longer is knowledge acquired through searching for perceptual analogies or categorizing. Knowledge is now the result of (scientific) inquiry - empirical as well as theoretical. This means that innovation, here, is much more difficult, because an enormous accumulation of past knowledge has to be re-interpreted.
An attempt to quantify theoretical knowledge is to describe this type in terms of “why” or “because” chains. The longer the chain, the more abstract the theoretical knowledge. Therefore, we believe that knowledge creation and therefore innovation at the start is more sensory than theoretical. One should note that not only scientific knowledge is theoretical. Ideologies or religions also provide complex “why” chains and therefore are theoretical too.
In practice the various types of knowledge are used in combinations. They depend on the domains and content, on the tasks to be executed and on other people one works together with. It neither is the case that the one’s knowledge only is sensory or coded or theoretical. They are always present together, but with different emphasis. Sometimes the mixture of coded and sensory is dominant, in other situations it is the combination of coded and theoretical (Jorna, 2007; Polanyi, 1966; Boisot, 1995 and Jorna & Faber, 2011). In the next section we make the transgression from knowledge to languages. To make this transgression we use two assumptions. The first is that a language or multilingualism is an expression of knowledge. It is not the only expression as we explained above, but it is the most important one. The second assumption is that language, as is the case with knowledge, presupposes a human mind. The operational definition of a human mind can be found in the model of human cognition as a human information processing system that has been developed since 1950 in cognitive science (Posner, 1989; Newell & Simon, 1972 or Anderson, 2006).
6. Replacing Knowledge within KM by Language: What are the consequences?
If we start replacing knowledge with language in the various phases of KM (Dalkir, 2005; Jorna, 2006), we could formulate language creation, language encoding, storage, sharing, language maintenance and language use. And if we continue with the functions of KM we find language use, language sharing, distribution, language development and the integration of language elements. With respect to language or multilingualism, it is obvious that most substitutes for knowledge are strange or at least improbable if replaced by language. We mean language creation, language encoding, language maintenance and language use, but also language development and the integration of language elements.
Language creation normally takes place at the beginning of a human life, especially if it is the mother tongue. Language is by definition an encoded structure and language maintenance is a task of linguists preferably in the monolingual situation. The substitution of knowledge by language becomes more meaningful if one looks at language storage, language sharing, language distribution and (new) language development. If one uses language storage analogue to knowledge storage, the hidden assumption is that knowledge can only be stored if it is expressed in one language or another. This language can then be retained in books, documents, databases and reasoning patterns, to name but a few. In multilingual situations, storage here means that the first language is translated into a second language and so on. Language development, if not interpreted as initial language learning, means that one learns a second language annex to the mother tongue.
Language sharing and language distribution are related to multiple people having at least one common language. Many concrete situations in this sharing and distribution can be imagined. Two people separately speaking L2 and L3 and using L1 for exchange or two people speaking L1 and L2 and the other speaking only L1 or two people both speaking L1 and L2 and normally speaking L1 but in cases also L2. These situations can be multiplied in many combinations as can be demonstrated in the present situation in the European Union, where more than 15 languages are formally equal or the United Nations where every member state is allowed to use his or her own language.
The substitution of knowledge by language has a fundamental underlying problem. It is evident that many multiple languages do exist and that many people can speak more than two or three languages. There are even people who speak more than five or seven languages. But do these languages refer to as many knowledge elements as there are languages. The answer has to be negative. One knowledge element can be expressed in many languages or to be more explicit in as many languages as necessary or possible. On the other hand, the knowledge elements themselves can be represented in many constellations, from pictorial representations to episodic representations and propositional representations (Jorna, 1990; Kosslyn; 1980). In an earlier section we therefore mentioned the various type of knowledge: sensory, coded and theoretical.
The conclusions from the above are twofold. In the first place multilingualism is not a replacement of multi-knowledge management and neither leads multi-language management to a comparable discussion as is the case for knowledge management. If multi-language management means anything, it is about the strategic and operational issues in supporting, developing and using more than one language in an organization. The second conclusion is that any discussion about language and knowledge starts – but does not stop - with a language user or knowledge carrier as a human information processing system. Therefore, not any kind of linguistics can address the relationship between creativity, shared meaning and tacit knowledge: not creativity, because creation is beyond or before language, nor shared meaning, because then any language can do and not tacit knowledge, because as we know from KM tacit or sensory knowledge is about human behavior.
Based on the field of cognitive science one uses, since the 1970’s, a model of the human information processing consisting of three constituting elements (Newell, 1990, Posner 1989; Jorna, 1990): a) a cognitive architecture, b) representations and c) computations or operations on representations. Newell & Simon (1972) stated that human thinking and reasoning consist of the manipulation of (internal) symbols (physical symbol system hypothesis). Symbols are the basic constituents of our thoughts. They are the functional constituents of representations. They have a material carrier: their brain. A cognitive architecture implements the design and organization of the human mind. It presents various functions and properties of the mind and their interrelations. This concerns characteristics of functional components, such as memory, processing capacity, perception, motor systems and various kinds of central processors (Posner, 1989). Architecture without content is empty. Representations are the content, the substantial knowledge in our cognitive system. They refer to books we have read, movies we have seen or experiences with our relatives and friends. All this knowledge and information exists in our memory in the form of representations: stories, icons, images, propositions, semantic nets and scripts (Jorna, 1990). Operations on these representations are activities of symbol manipulation, such as combining them, forgetting, abstracting from and restructuring them. This general cognitive perspective of human information processing is fundamental in studying using languages, multilingualism and knowledge management
7. Assumptions of economy for multilingualism: globalization and regional strength
Economy is not the field where multilingualism and language studies can find many advantages. Economy itself, especially neo-classical or neo-liberal economy, is not a field that is without debate and neither is the partial domain of the knowledge economy.
As formulated before the asset of knowledge is not the same as other assets. Knowledge, and to a large extent also language, is not a product, a process or a service. It is not tangible and it is restricted to the human mind, first individually and then collectively. Many other assumptions of neo-classical economy do not hold in the case of languages and knowledge. Language does not flow to the lowest price in societies simply because it is always restricted to people who speak the language or who have the knowledge. One may physically move, but one’s language cannot easily be changed. One should also realize that most people in the world speak only a few languages fluently. Most people are born, work and live in a small environment that is to say in a circle of between 50-100 kilometers. Is this wrong? I would argue not, because I estimate that only 1-3% of the world population, that is 70-210 million people, are really globalized world citizens and often only for a limited period of time.
Furthermore, in contrast to what many economists argue, the human individual is not a rational actor. He or she is full of emotions, has limited mental capacities and use, has longstanding habits and customs and rebuilds his prejudices all the time. Rational man, whether using bounded rationality in the ontological sense or in the epistemological sense, is a myth. Continuing this line of reasoning based on the knowledge economy for language and multilingualism is not real and, leads often, I would argue, to wrong promises and to not working recommendation. EUNOM should be aware of these pitfalls.
Knowledge and multilingualism do not have much to expect from economy or the knowledge economy, as I explained above. However, there is another line of reasoning to in which (neo-liberal) economy can be neglected. Having various and diverse kinds of knowledge and supporting many coexisting language is the best guarantee to deal in this century with the challenge of ecological and social sustainability for the following reason. Sustainability is a delicate balance between a system and its environment (Jorna, 2006). The more diverse the system is, for example in human societies, cultures and the many existing languages, the more capabilities we have to adapt to the global environment.
8. The relevance of KoS for SoK for using, teaching and propagating multilingualism
The distinction between knowledge in terms of content and in terms of processes forms the basis for two concepts: Knowledge of Sustainability (KoS) and Sustainability of Knowledge (SoK). KoS indicates (i) knowledge content about the actual state of the relationship of a system and its environment and causes that underlie environmental, organizational, social and individual problems, and (ii) the knowledge by which such problems can be resolved. The improvement of an organization’s behavior, i.e., improving the sustainability of an organization, builds on the problem solving capabilities in which a firm, government or culture applies KoS, and builds on the learning processes based upon which they use SoK. This SoK focuses on the knowledge processes that govern the production, creation and integration of knowledge and the languages that are expressions of this knowledge or of KoS.
Sustainability	KoS	SoK	
Ecological-Nature	1.Much knowledge available	4. Little knowledge available	
Ecological-Climate	2. Much knowledge available	5. Little knowledge available	
Social-Human	3. Little knowledge available	6. Little knowledge available	
Table 2: KoS and SoK
Adaptation and learning are essential for any form of sustainability. Assuming that artificial systems exist in continuously changing environments, the human(s) who control these systems need to adapt their behavior to these changes and hence often need to acquire or create new knowledge. The newly generated knowledge should eventually result in knowledge use, i.e., humans need to incorporate new knowledge into their existing behavior. As indicated, Sustainability of Knowledge (SoK) denotes the aspect that humans need adequate open processes to acquire new knowledge and integrate this new knowledge into their behavior. SoK is about how individuals and groups learn, how people adequately interact, how knowledge is transferred and how it is developed. This also requires that they have Knowledge of Sustainability (KoS). This kind of knowledge is used to operate the needs of an artificial system to be updated and adjusted continuously. Individuals, who control the artificial system, including themselves, have to cope with the changes of the system to maintain a balance between the system and its social and cultural environment. Furthermore, it is not certain that all knowledge concerning sustainability is available, applicable, designed and organized in the right way at this moment. In other words, SoK needs to be targeted at the development of new KoS, and hence to the improvement of sustainability.
The two sides of the coin: Knowledge of Sustainability (KoS) and Sustainability of Knowledge (SoK) are based on various kinds of feedback loops, on internal and external dynamics and on learning. For example, as we perceive discrepancies between desired and actual states, we take actions that will (hopefully) cause the real world to move toward the desired state. New information about the state of the world causes us to revise our perceptions and the decisions we make in the future. We know that not only we, but also the world changes continuously, in terms of knowledge but also in terms of languages.
References
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Short curriculum vitae:
René J. Jorna (1953) is full professor of Knowledge Management and Cognition (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) and since 2009 also head of the Social Science department and responsible for the Mercator group in the Fryske Akademy. He has a Master in analytical philosophy (1981) and a Master in cognitive psychology (1982). His dissertation was in Cognitive Science. He has teaching experience in various aspects of Philosophy, Psychology and Statistics & Methodology, Knowledge Technology and Knowledge Management. From 1992-1997 he was project leader of the DISKUS project on planning and scheduling and from 2001-2004 he was program manager of “Knowledge Creation for Sustainable Innovation” a research program with industry of NIDO. He supervised and supervises 20 PhD’s. His research and publications address cognition, multilingualism, semiotics, knowledge management, sustainable innovation and knowledge technology.
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Teresa Tinsley (independent consultant)
‘Languages for Jobs’ in the EU
Abstract
The ‘Languages for Jobs’ working group, which met during 2010-11, was convened by the European Commission Multilingualism Policy Unit under the ‘Open Method of Consultation’ and linked closely to the Business Platform for Multilingualism. The purpose of the group, which was composed of representatives from most member states, with input from CEDEFOP and Eurydice, was to produce a report with recommendations on how to better harness the potential of languages for employability, mobility and economic growth in Europe. This report has been now been published and provides evidence of the need for a strong place for languages within education and training systems and within new European programmes. It will also feed into the general review of multilingualism policy scheduled for 2011-12. The session will provide an overview of the report and its relevance to issues of key concern to governments such as mobility for work and study, the employability of young people and adults, and support for international business.
The European policy context for the ‘Languages for Jobs’ report
Europe’s vision for 2020 ‘to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy’ – ET2020, ‘The new strategic framework for European cooperation in Education and Training’ – to achieve a better match of supply and demand of skills for the labour market. 
•	Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment’ (2008) – linking languages and employability. Recommendation on VET ‘students in VET should have access to practice-oriented language provision’.
•	European strategy for multilingualism 2008: linked multilingualism to the economy, highlighted importance of languages for SMEs, languages for career development of individuals, need for contextualised language courses in VET and to ‘use the linguistic competences of citizens with migrant backgrounds’. 
Also: 
•	Barcelona European Council (2002) – 2 x FL from an early age
•	Key competences framework 2006 – communication in foreign languages one of 8 key competences needed y all citizens ‘for personal fulfilment and development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment’
•	Bruges communiqué 2010 – need to ensure ‘provision of language learning and intercultural competences in VET curricula’
•	Agenda for new skills and jobs 2010 – A European contribution towards full employment
•	European Business Platform for Multilingualism – CELAN (Network for the promotion of language strategies for competitiveness and employability)
•	Languages mean business, 2008 report 
•	Pimlico study and SME campaign
The Languages for Jobs group
•	Set up by DG Education and Culture, Spring 2010. Nominated experts from each member state. 
•	Aim: Establish policy recommendations on how to enhance the role of languages in improving the chances of employment, to be submitted to the Ministers of Education as part of the general review of multilingualism policy in 2011-12.
•	6 meetings. Collection and exchange of information and good practices. Discussion of issues and priorities. CEDEFOP and Eurydice + input from other units and organisations. 
Findings
•	Increasingly multilingual labour market 
•	Wide range of languages needed
•	Languages required in addition to other skills, both generic (e.g. intercultural skills) and specific (e.g. finance, marketing, law...)
•	Gap between supply and demand – types of languages, types of learner, combinations of skills. 
•	Too little work-related language learning
•	Training needs for teachers/trainers
•	Learner mobility – languages both a facilitator and a benefit of mobility programmes
•	Qualifications and certification – tools such as Europass, use of CEFR
•	Importance of business-education dialogue
Recommendations
•	Improve the information flow about language skill needs on the labour market
•	Widen the range of languages taught (from secondary onwards)
•	Increase opportunities to continue language learning throughout education pathways including HE
•	Offer more work-related courses
•	Support teachers in VET
•	Support best-practice networking between training institutions
•	Increase learner mobility
•	Make adult language learning more targeted towards employability
•	Improve methods and assessment in relation to work-related language learning
•	Validate informal language skills
•	Improve dialogue between education and the world of work
•	Improve employer capacity to manage and exploit language skills
•	Establish awards for companies with good language management practice
•	Funding for development and maintenance of work-related language courses. 
Many of these recommendations directly relevant to university sector. 
Issues for HE
•	Fundamental questions regarding the role of HE in relation to the labour market
•	Validity and use of labour market intelligence
•	Developing the offer in relation to:
o	Languages offered
o	Links with other disciplines
o	Intercultural skills, international experience, personal development.
Conclusions

Biographical details:
Teresa Tinsley was until recently a Director of CILT, the UK National Centre for Languages, where she was responsible for planning, delivery and communications. During her 8 years in that role she led the development of many aspects of the organisation’s work, including publishing, research, PR and the promotion of languages. Her achievements include developing the highly regarded ‘Languages Work’ suite of materials on languages and careers and directing the EU’s ‘ELAN’ research project on the economic value of languages to European business. Before joining CILT in 1992 she was a staff member of the Spanish Embassy in London and was instrumental in developing the promotion of Spanish as a foreign language in the UK. She is the author of several books including an adaptation/translation of a Spanish Grammar, and regularly contributes to press and journals. She now works in a freelance capacity.
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Peeter Müürsepp (Tallinn University of Technology, EE)
The Trilingual University and the Knowledge Economy
Abstract
The conception of the trilingual university as the model case for the future will be developed in the context of knowledge economy taking Henry Etzkowitz’s Triple Helix conception as an important point of departure. The focal point of the main argument will be the idea that the model case of trilingualism should be extended from the university to practical business and industry. The universal need for diversity plays the central role here. According to the methodology of self-organization, diversity is necessary for self-organization to work, for development to occur. Diversity, however, must not be chaotic. A certain measure has to be kept. In the case of multilingualism, the measure can be based on the number of languages at stake. In the case of universities, it is probably three. In order to make knowledge economy efficient on a broader scale, diversity, including languages, has to be made an issue. Concentrating on using just one language (English?) may seem cost-effective and probably really is so in the context of traditional economy, although even this can be doubted. Knowledge economy, however, needs to be open and flexible. The latter can be achieved by preserving cultural (language) diversity. 
Outline
Why the Model of Trilingual University?
It would be simple to apply just one language for any academic matter anywhere in the world. To some extent we need such simplicity. Or rather we just need a common language in order to understand each other. English works quite well for the latter task. Still, the main purpose of the academia cannot be just efficient communication. It is the pursuit of knowledge of most diverse nature, including scientific knowledge but not only that, we should be striving for. This is really the heart of the matter. In order to be successful in our knowledge pursuit, we need to preserve diversity in the choice of the instruments at our disposal. One of the most important ones of these instruments is language. Therefore, we need to preserve the diversity of academic languages. English is sometimes quite inadequate for expressing knowledge produced by social sciences or humanities. Nicholas Maxwell would probably call the latter rather wisdom than knowledge (Maxwell 2010) but this will rather support our claim than work against it. Concerning knowledge the English language still copes with its tasks. However, then we try to explain the difference at the level of verbs, English leaves us in trouble. We need to know for having knowledge, but just to be wise for having wisdom.
It is possible to add even a more solid theoretical background to the case. That would stem from the theory that has been presented by Ilya Prigogine as his methodology of self-organization (see for instance Prigogine, Stengers 1984; Prigogine 1997). The theory states that self-organization can occur only in open systems. Universities of today are definitely open systems. They exchange not only knowledge they have produced but students and faculty as well. At the same time, universities are nothing chaotic in the bad sense of the word. Normally, they are structured in quite definite way. In addition, however, in a progressive university, there is always space for something new not just as far as knowledge is concerned but concerning their structural build-up too. We can claim that a university is not stable but a structurally stable system. It is flexible but tends to retain its basic structure under not too strong fluctuations. About the concept of structural stability one can learn, for instance, from Thom (1975) or Müürsepp (2010). 
Therefore, normally all the main Prigoginian conditions for efficient self-organization have been fulfilled in the case of the universities. We should probably even say that universities today are the most perfect systems from efficient self-organization point of view. This is mostly due to their structural stability. Therefore, movement towards unification in language usage, which is definitely going on, does not contribute to our main task here. We need to preserve diversity as the basis for effective self-organization and apply some efforts for the support of this task.
What are the other ‘academic’ languages beside English we need to go for? How many do we need? Let us agree at once that no-one knows the correct answer to this question for sure. We can just give some considerations that might prevent us from going totally wrong.
There is a suggestion that the organizing centre of the stability of the academia requires active presence of three languages. This does not mean that we are adding two definite languages to English and that’s it. It is certainly not such a clear cut case we are facing. 
So what are these languages and why three? Well, there is an astonishingly simple explanation. Three seems to be exactly the number to reach in the context of our analysis. It is still the case in the world today that almost any nation, at least the ones having statehood, wants to have university education in its own national language, at least at the most basic (Bachelor) level. This goal has been achieved to quite different extent on different continents. However, the idea is progressing rather than regressing at least as far as Bachelor level education is concerned. Often, it is the national language that helps to consolidate the identity of an ethnical group. There are exceptions, of course, but they rather confirm the rule.
This is all clear, but what about the third language. Is it a unique one or it depends on the region? Well, the latter is true. In most geographical regions of the world there is a regional lingua franca, which the academic world should not ignore.
Needless to say, there are places on the face of the Earth where there is no need for exactly three academic languages. The British greats or the American Ivey League can probably go on according their own deeply rooted historical tradition. American universities that do not belong to the ‘Premier League’ should probably adopt Spanish as their second language of instruction. Therefore, we should not stick to the ‘trilingual’ case. Sometimes one is more than enough. Two may be very good as well. By all evidence, sometimes there is a need to go further than three. Still, three seems to be the model case.
What are the typical third languages? The answer to this question obviously depends on the region we are dealing with. In Eastern Europe it is normally Russian. In the Nordic countries Swedish, excluding Sweden of course. In Central Europe the third language would obviously be German. Latin America would fluctuate between Spanish and Portuguese. We shall not be going into details concerning China or Africa. Still the trilingual case seems to hold. The idea of the regional lingua franca clearly holds on these continents. Needless to say, a language that is second in some area may well be the third one in another.
These points were made in Koper already.
How does this relate to knowledge economy?
We understand knowledge economy as the term denoting the new type of economy where new knowledge produced by academic institutions as well as practitioners, i.e. engineers becomes quickly and efficiently implemented in economy. The triple helix comes in here. It is double for the time being but can be made triple. The idea of bringing the university, industry and government closer together that is developing and is practiced more and more is important for us. The connection can be made very simply. If the university is normally trilingual then none of these languages will be lost in industry, i.e. in economy in the case of close contacts. The latter is what the new entrepreneurial university has to strive for. If the university will be monolingual, by all evidence the same will happen to the economy. If not then everything will be multilingual. 
It may seem that the more unified economic issues are, the more cost-effective any move we undertake is. Therefore, communicating in one sole language seems to be an asset. It is true to some extent. Obviously, there has to be a global language of communication in business just like in the academia. Some immediate needs can definitely be met more efficiently if there is no serious communication barrier. But in order to keep sustainability of society, we need to address long-standing goals.
We can hardly endorse the diversity of economic systems here. The only functioning economic system is free-market economy that involves free entrepreneurship. This position can be defended even at times of deep crisis, believing that the inner resources of an open self-organizing system will eventually enable the system to regain the positive trend of development. But it has to be a diverse system.
By all evidence, knowledge economy can really work only in an open society. There has to be freedom of creating, producing and distributing knowledge. This cannot be the case in a totalitarian or authoritarian society.
Using one and the same language creates a uniform platform for understanding and effectiveness of communication that is very important. But we need to rise above this uniform platform. Diversity has to come in. What provides diversity in the globalizing world of today is culture. It is different cultural background and different resources stemming out of it that enables us to take new original standpoints on different matters, economical ones included. Normally, culture has a lot to do with language. Therefore, language diversity is highly appreciated. Connection to language based cultural diversity is fruitful to industry and business. Our economy benefits from it.  
Biographical details:
Peeter Müürsepp received his M.Phil. in Philosophy from Tartu University and Ph.D. in Humanities from Vilnius University. He has been Visiting Research Fellow at LSE, New School for Social Research and Roskilde University Centre. Currently he is Professor of Philosophy and Methodology of Science at Tallinn University of Technology. 
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Sonja Novak (Institute of Ethnic Studies, University of Ljubljana)
Language education and workplace
Abstract
In the presentation some research data from research on language and economy will be discussed. The research is focused upon two aspects - for an individual person the command of language is an advantage, securing employment, adequate workplace and better income; the choice of language in company management and the choice of language at the entry on a new market is related to the business success of a company.
Proceeding from these statements we will discuss the way companies in the ethnically mixed  areas in Slovenia deal with language command (level of the competence of minority and foreign language)  in employment and work and whether/ the labour market affects  the language /educational policy in the area. The significance of the level of specific language command (minority or foreign language), along with the choice of language in employment and workplace, is changing and adapting to the needs of economy, which is affected by global as well as by local competition currents. This will be confirmed by data analysis of non-formal language learning in language schools which function at the ethnically mixed area in Slovenia.
CV
She graduated at the University of Ljubljana, she finished Ph.D. at the University of Ljubljana, and she works as an associate professor at the Department of Comparative and General Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana and as a higher scientific collaborator at the Institute for Ethnic Studies. Since 2010 she is the director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies in Ljubljana. Her research work has focused on language and culture in multicultural societies. She has been involved in many research projects of the Institute for Ethnic Studies as a head or collaborator and she has participated in various international projects (CERI/OECD, UNESCO, Council of Europe, RSS, Working Community of Alps-Adriatic).
She has published articles in a number of publications and has attended several international conferences ( for bibliography see: www.cobiss.si).She is a president of Slovene Association for Aplied Lingusitics and a member of Slovene national commission for UNESCO, and she cooperates  with a number of state institutions and bodies (e.g. Ministry of Culture,  Ministry of Education and Sport).
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