Leadership Construction in Intra-Asian English as Lingua Franca Decision-Making Meetings

Abstract

In Asia, the English language serves as a lingua franca to connect people from various backgrounds for managerial synergy. In this study, we investigate leadership in a setting where English as lingua franca is used among Asian business professionals. Employing the notion of discourse, we use quantitative and qualitative analyses to identify how leadership emerges in meetings with multicultural participants, and how different types of leadership affect these decision-making meetings. We conclude that linguistic and contextual factors discursively construct different styles of leadership, and that these leadership styles lead to starkly different team outcomes. The overall result indicates that a business meeting is not a logical process leading to a rational decision, but rather an organic mix of contextual, linguistic, and leadership factors when English as lingua franca is used in multicultural participants.