Knowledge sharing is a product of the collaborative and supportive environment shaped by socialization and informal communication between employees. Under the pressure of globalization and business internationalization, organization's workforce has become increasingly diverse particularly in terms of language. This has implications for knowledge sharing. It has been observed that employees tend to gravitate toward their own language communities leading to language clustering (language-based grouping) which affects informal communication and knowledge mobility in organizations negatively. Although existence of such clusters has been reported in many previous studies, we do not clearly understand how and why language brings these clusters into being and what kind of implications this has for knowledge sharing. This paper draws upon the theory of the semiotic processes of linguistic differentiation taken from linguistic anthropology to provide a theoretical framework capable of explaining the dynamics of language creating language clusters. Unlike previous knowledge management studies, which largely focus on the instrumental aspect of language, this paper adopts a social perspective on language. It is argued that to deal with language clustering we have to explore the dynamics operating behind it in detail. This will not only allow us to understand its implications for knowledge sharin g but will also be helpful in devising potent knowledge management initiatives in multilingual workplaces.
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