With a ‘Licence to Adapt’: Investigating Translation Shifts in Subsidiaries’ Corporate Value Statements

Abstract

When multinational corporations (MNCs) implement corporate values as a managerial tool, they face the challenge of conveying them to a culturally and linguistically diverse workforce. The values may undergo recontextualisation when transferred to foreign subsidiaries (Brannen, 2004). Research suggests that for corporate values to function as a managerial tool in MNCs, they should be adapted to the local culture and business setting in subsidiaries. However, MNC management tend to be reluctant to adapt corporate texts such as the Corporate Value Statement (CVS) to local subsidiary contexts, believing that this is not compatible with the ambition of a strongly unified organisation. The present study adopts a linguistic approach to shed light on this paradox. It examines a set of CVS texts from a French multinational that empowers subsidiaries to translate and adapt its CVS. Translation shifts between the headquarters’ CVS in English, and subsidiary versions in Denmark (in Danish) and in India (in English) were first identified, then interpreted in light of local culture and business settings. I propose a methodological approach that enables the identification of translation shifts between radically rewritten texts that cannot be compared sentence by sentence. This demonstrates the usefulness of methods from applied linguistics and discourse studies in International Business. Findings suggest that subsidiaries may use the value terms as vessels to be filled with their choice of Group corporate content. This article extends current research by examining the linguistic aspect of how ideas and practices travel within MNCs, focusing specifically on corporate values.