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This study aims to investigate the treatment of translation within the international business and management (IBM) literature to highlight colonialist assumptions inscribed in this treatment as a result of the hegemonic status of English.

This investigation takes the form of a systemic literature review to examine the treatment of translation in the IBM literature through a postcolonial lens.

The findings demonstrate that despite growing interest in language in international business, matters of translation have received comparatively little attention. However, those articles that do address translation matters tend to do so in five key ways, including epistemological/methodological considerations, exploring translator agency, the investigations of the discursive void/conceptual fuzziness between languages, and approaches that discuss translation as social practice.

Despite the authors’ critique of English-language hegemony, this literature review is restricted to English-language journals, which the authors acknowledge as problematic and discuss within the article.

In exposing the limited treatment of translation within the literature, the authors provide a call to action for IBM scholars to be more explicit in their treatment of translation to ensure representation of cultural and linguistic Others, rather than providing domesticated accounts of multilingual research.

Although there have been other articles that have examined translation in the past, this paper is the first to do so through a postcolonial lens, demonstrating from a linguistic perspective the colonialist assumptions that are still prevalent in IBM knowledge production, as evidenced by the treatment of translation in the field.

Discusses sandwich placements and their importance at Sheffield Hallam University. Outlines the Business Studies degree programme and the assessment procedure of work placements, mentioning its role in final degree assessment. Lists problems of assessment, and criticisms from the employers’ points of view. Finally, provides a framework for a new programme based on both the competence approach and a survey of placement companies.

Examines teleworking schemes at Rotherham and Doncaster councils, in South Yorkshire, England. Takes account not only of employees actually undertaking teleworking, but also of their office‐bound colleagues.

Presents some of the conclusions of a two‐year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)‐funded study into home‐based telework, led by Dr Susanne Tietze, of Bradford University School of Management, with Dr Gill Musson, of the University of Sheffield School of Management, and with Dr Tracy Scurry, of Newcastle upon Tyne University, UK as research fellow.

Reveals the results of pilot studies conducted to promote understanding of the complexities of this form flexibility and the effects of teleworking on a wide group of organisational stakeholders. Shows that the home‐workers were more productive, had greater feelings of well being, reported improvements in their work‐life balance and a reduction in stress. Colleagues sometimes felt sidelined and ignored, as did at least some of the team leaders who felt left alone in dealing with additional and more complicated co‐ordination tasks and addressing the emotional fall‐out. Points to the importance of running pilot studies to identify potential problems before long‐term implementation.

Serves as a useful reminder to take account of the concerns of employees who are not able to take part in teleworking.

Provides plenty to interest any large organisation considering whether to implement teleworking among at least some of its employees.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to previous research on intraorganizational power in multinational corporations (MNCs). It shows that a subsidiary manager may use language and acts of translation to resist control from headquarters and to (re)define his and his unit’s power position in a headquarters-subsidiary relationship. It also uncovers the interplay between natural languages and “company speak” as a specialized language.

The paper is based on a single case study of a European MNC undergoing strategic change. The data were drawn from company documents, personal interviews and focus group discussions.

The findings show that actors at both headquarters and in the focal subsidiary employed language and translation to exercise power over meanings; headquarters exerted control over “mindsets” and practices, while subsidiaries responded by resisting these meaning systems. The authors argue that the crossing of language boundaries offers a window onto shifting power positions and micro-politics in the MNC.

The study was limited to a single translation act in a focal headquarters-subsidiary relationship.

From the managerial perspective, any process of communication in a multilingual context needs to be sensitive to power (re)definitions associated with language and translation.

This study sheds light on translation as a political act and hidden activity in the MNC.

In this chapter, we align two approaches on the multinational enterprise (MNE), that is, research on languages and international business, and micropolitics, in order to establish the language-based underpinnings of micropolitical behavior in the MNE.

This theoretical chapter departs from a social, relational perspective on power relationships in the MNE. Power relationships are constituted in multilingual encounters between different language users.

Our analysis builds on the assumption that the mandated corporate language in the MNE, which often is English, results in a language hierarchy. This hierarchy creates inequality and tension between the languages in use in the MNE. However, language agents, that is, headquarters, foreign subsidiaries, teams, managers, and employees can – individually or collectively – change, challenge, and disrupt this hierarchical order. Their micropolitical behavior is essential for action as it redraws organizational structure, alters the degree of foreign subsidiary autonomy and control, redefines the privileged and the disadvantaged groups in the MNE, and reinforces subgroup formation and dynamics in multilingual teams.

We highlight the important role played by language agents who sit at the interstices of organizational networks in the MNE. The interplay between their actions and motivations and their historical and situational contexts represents an underexplored and undertheorized area of study.

Senior managers in MNEs are frequently very competent or native users of the English language. Appreciating the continued existence of various languages has implications for how different MNE units can effectively connect and operate as an overall entity.

This chapter highlights the languages-based mechanisms that underpin power relationships in the MNE.

This paper aims to compare pre‐telework anxieties, expectations and motivators reported by 394 teleworkers with their corresponding actual experiences of telework.

Based on an organizational survey, 394 samples were generated who had been teleworking for less than 12 months at the time of the survey. By using χ² tests, comparisons were made between pre‐telework expectations and post‐telework outcomes reported by teleworkers with different characteristics such as gender, job type, the presence of dependent children, and working hours spent at home.

The study found that prior to adopting telework sampled teleworkers tended to underestimate positive and overestimate negative experience of telework. It further demonstrated some statistically significant differences in pre‐telework expectations and post‐telework outcomes reported by different groups of teleworkers. For example, female teleworkers were more likely to report that telework made it easier to cope with caring responsibilities. Sales and marketing teleworkers were more likely to report reduced visibility and career development.

Implementing and maintaining successful telework schemes requires managers to take heed of the emotional aspects that accompany the use of such flexible work arrangements. Furthermore, career implications and the development of appropriate support structures for teleworkers need to be taken into account.

The contribution of this paper lies in the comparative approach between pre‐telework expectations and post‐telework outcomes. It compares different social and occupational groups.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically summarise and evaluate recent articles on modern homebased work (2000‐2009). In identifying the key recurrent themes and commonalities in the existing research, it brings order to the variety of contributions to provide future directions for inquiry and knowledge production.

Papers are identified through systematic keyword searches of multi‐disciplinary databases. The aim is to identify papers that explore the social/organisational embeddedness of homebased work, rather than framing it as a technology related phenomena/problem.

The review highlights some contradictory evidence about the potential for change entailed in homeworking practices and an absence of studies which focus on “less visible” workers engaged in homebased production. It also argues that few longitudinal studies exist which could address the question of the ability of homebased work to initiate change.

The paper provides an evaluation of the literature to make sense of the diversity of themes and issues within existing research. The insights gained are of use to both academics researching this form of working and practitioners implementing it. Gaps within existing knowledge and directions for future study are also identified.

This paper is a timely review of the recent articles that have been published on homebased work.

This paper seeks to show how the shift of paid work from traditional locations into the home environment raises serious questions of identity for managers who have started to work from home and who have to “cope with” the sometimes conflicting demands imposed by different socio‐cultural spheres.

Based on an empirical study of working from home, three case studies are presented, which articulate and summarise different modes of engagement with both paid and domestic work and respective identity issues.

Adding to the extant literature on working from home, the findings indicate that the success or failure of working from home is intrinsically tied into issues related to homeworkers” identity.

The empirical data are taken from a period when homeworkers had to “learn” how to cope with being both “at home and at work”. Further empirical enquiry might focus on longitudinal aspects of the relationship between working from home and identity.

With regard to working from home policies it is advisable to take into account questions of identity, rather than applying exclusively task‐based or technical aspects when considering the organisational benefits of this form of spatial and temporal flexibility.

In conceptualising working from home from an identity perspective, new insights have been gained into the reasons why this mode of work sometimes fails to deliver on its promises, yet proves outstandingly successful on other occasions.

To provide insight into the consequences of telework from the perspective of the teleworker and the household. The paper discusses the consequences of telework for the formulation of identities.

The paper is based on empirical work, which comprises home visits to teleworkers and therefore includes observational data and interview data. The data are analysed following a particular framework, which is views discourse as a “strategic resource” and draws on the vocabulary of performativity and connectivity to investigate why some “discursive acts” take successfully while others fail.

It is shown that teleworkers and their households need to engage in strategies to protect and reconfirm their respective identities. This is achieved through the enactment of regulatory as well as self‐regulatory (identity) acts.

The paper is located in the household of teleworkers and therefore, includes this less well researched perspective. The linking of the conceptual framework (strategic resource) with the location of the study in the household in order to investigate the theme “identity” is an innovative feature, which shows that (internal) self‐regulatory identity acts are equally or even more important than (external) regulatory acts.

Drawing on an empirical investigation situated in 25 households of professional managers, who worked regularly at home, this article explores how internalised time discipline is evoked, appropriated and challenged through and in home‐based telework. The notion of clock‐time is opposed with the notion of task‐time and it is shown how both temporalities inform the organisation of paid and unpaid work. It is shown that in some households the simultaneous co‐presence of conceptually different temporalities led to an increasing bureaucratisation of time as boundaries between “work” and “the household” had to be maintained and protected. In other households such co‐presence resulted in the emergence of more task‐based approaches to the co‐ordination of all activity and more elastic temporal boundaries drawn around them.