Linguistic Expats and Bounded Fluency

This chapter focuses on the Japanese linguistic expats and their linguistic shock, which initially presents a barrier to learning a foreign language. It provides the results of the seemingly insurmountable challenge at the mandate's announcement—base English language proficiency for the Japanese domestic workforce. Here, the term “linguistic expat” is used to describe employees like Kenji who live in their home country yet must give up their mother tongue when they enter their place of employment or sign into a conference call from a remote location. This chapter shows how this twist—a mismatch between language, nationality, and organizational culture—made the Japanese employees uncomfortable. Learning English, at least in the first phase, required that they form new perceptions of themselves, their company, and their jobs. The demands of the mandate made them feel anxious about their productivity and insecure about their future at Rakuten. Although the majority of the linguistic expats progressed in their acquisition of English, few were able to reach a level where fluency was automatic.

Five Years Post-Mandate

This chapter documents the largely beneficial results of the lingua franca mandate on Rakuten over a period of five years, including the rise in international acquisitions, accelerated post-integration activities, centralized technical platforms, and knowledge sharing. An expanded and global talent pool changed hiring patterns within the Tokyo headquarters and worldwide, particularly in the engineering ranks. While many advances were made in the advent of the English language mandate, the chapter also highlights enduring challenges. In addition, it shows examples of Rakuten's influence beyond the confines of the organization. It chronicles how the prime minister of Japan tapped Mikitani to join a newly formed advisory body, the Industrial Competitiveness Council, to aid in developing a globalization agenda. A national language strategy was rooted in the actions that the council adopted. These activities demonstrate the role that companies can have in shaping societal growth and character.

Leading the Lingua Franca Mandate

This chapter follows Mikitani's thinking and leadership development with regard to the Englishnization mandate. Initially, Mikitani believed the English language mandate would succeed if employees were independent and entrepreneurial, taking full responsibility—financially and otherwise—for learning English. However, after nearly a year and a half, upon discovering that progress was dismal, he led a major shift. The chapter introduces and discusses Mikitani's promotion of the mandate during the second phase of “English only”—learning English while retaining one's native culture. It assesses how Mikitani's leadership influenced employee attitudes and English language proficiency scores. Mikitani believed that given the right conditions, such as the deliberate immersion that he was cultivating, the Japanese employees could acquire English as well.

Lessons for Top Leaders, Managers, and Employees

This chapter considers how the insights from book's research and other in-depth work that the author has conducted can serve as a guide for practitioners at three levels in the organization—top leaders, managers, and employees—who are seeking to better navigate shifts as they adopt practices for their organizations' lingua franca and cultural transitions. It details the factors that top leaders need to consider when assessing the appropriateness of a lingua franca and corresponding implementation tactics. Without a broader understanding of how language changes affect their workforce, and what is needed for implementation, many organizations will falter in their lingua franca mandates. The chapter also highlights how managers can practically support and accurately evaluate employees who are operating in a cross-lingua environment. Finally, it provides communication strategies for employees in their everyday interactions globally.

Cultural Expats and the Trojan Horse of Language

This chapter follows the native English speakers through their first phase, when euphoria reigned because they (incorrectly, as it turned out) assumed that Englishnization was solely about language. It also follows them through the second phase, about two years into Englishnization. By this time, they found it nearly as difficult to accept the changes wrought in their day-to-day workplace as did the native Japanese speakers. While the Japanese employees had to change to adopt a foreign language, the American employees had to change to adopt the Rakuten organizational culture that had been mostly suppressed by the language barrier. Employees in both groups had to adjust their perception of themselves and their place in the company—in this respect, the groups were mirror images of one another.

The Lingua Franca Mandate

This chapter sets the stage with the dramatic announcement by Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten, informing his 10,000 employees, of which over 7,100 are Japanese nationals, that from that day forward they would need to speak English in the workplace. In two years, they would be required to clear a proficiency test or risk demotion. This chapter introduces three employees who represent the categories that make up the core of the book. The first is Kenji, a Japanese engineer gripped by shock and fear that his years of hard work with the company will count for naught, who then receives the technical and emotional support to practice new English language skills. Next is Robert, a native English-speaking marketing manager from the United States, thrilled that the company is switching to his native language and who anticipates an easy career advance only to have his sense of privilege curtailed by new, daily work requirements, followed by a trip to Japan where his cultural blinders begin to loosen. Finally, there is the German IT technician, Inga, who is pleased by the announcement, who hopes it will streamline her work process—and learns that it does once she climbs the steep and often frustrating learning curve.

Introduction

This introductory chapter shows how workers in the global organization Rakuten can be conceived of as expatriates in their own countries. Expatriates (often shortened to “expats”) are people temporarily or permanently residing as immigrants in a country other than that of their citizenship. This chapter repurposes the word “expat” to mean people who are temporarily or permanently detached from their mother tongue or home culture while still operating in their own country. Here, the change to a lingua franca is the catalyst for all employees to become an expat of one sort or another in their daily organizational work while still living in their native country. Furthermore, the expat perspective that this chapter conceptualizes rests on the assumption that everyone is at least slightly uncomfortable detaching from a native language or culture.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter provides some reflections on the lessons attained through the study of Rakuten's employees. The study reveals that a global company integrates its diverse and disparate pieces not only by specifying and adopting technical and organizational policies but also through the dynamic and evolving experiences that employees encounter as they meet the demands of global work. At the organizational level, a lingua franca can be a decoupling force between language and culture, and has the capacity to redistribute influence through a company in unforeseen ways. Most notably, an English-speaking Western culture is not necessarily always dominant in globalized organizations. An e-commerce giant like Rakuten that hails from an island country can forcefully assert its cultural identity. Of course, Rakuten's journey is still in process and there is no telling where it might lead. This study represents only a portion of what we can expect longitudinally when a globalizing organization makes a fundamental change to its official language.

Dual Expats’ Global Work Orientation

This chapter is about the linguistic-cultural expats. These refer to a third group of employees who worked at Rakuten's subsidiary offices in Asia, Europe, and South America. Like the Japanese employees, after the Englishnization mandate they too were required to communicate in a lingua franca that was different from their native tongue. Like the American employees, they too had to adapt to the many workplace changes that made up the Rakuten organizational culture. Because this group worked in both a language and a culture that was not their own, the chapter refers to them as the linguistic-cultural expats or, alternatively, dual expats. Here, the process of living in and learning a foreign culture, although challenging for many individuals in the first two groups, emerged as freeing for the dual expat employees and allowed them entry to more adaptive attitudes and behaviors.