‘Language policies? Maybe we should have some.’ – Diversity at work between strategy and ideology

In this contribution, I scrutinise the positions Norwegian managers and administrators in small and medium-sized companies take vis-à-vis their linguistically and culturally diverse workforces. The study builds on a series of telephone intetviews with representatives of 140 small and medium-sized companies, all located in the north of Norway. The dataset reveals considerable differences in moving and mooring between the informants in the study (managers and administrators) and the workforces they are responsible for: While many companies employ migrant workforces, most managers and administrators participating in the study have been rooted to the same place through most of their lives. This implies also that the latter do not share the workers’ experiences of migration and not being part of the linguistic majority. Against this background, I analyse the informants’ responses with respect to: how they position themselves vis-à-vis the linguistic diversity in their companies; what strategies they present for managing linguistic diversity at work; and what assumptions, experiences or ideologies such strategies build on. The study shows that, despite being in a position of institutional power and responsibility, many informants are caught between the ideal of a monolingual workplace and the forces of a dynamic job market, which render this ideal unrealistic. While some have developed functional approaches to handling linguistic diversity, many others rely first and foremost on ideological perceptions surrounding language in society. Some express feelings of insecurity about how to handle the diversity in their workplaces. In particular these cases highlight the importance of applied linguistic knowledge about language and diversity in the workplace.