Data collection
This investigation is based on 90 semi-structured interviews (conducted in 2011–2012) with the formally assigned leaders of all 15 selected MNTs, 67 of their subordinates and eight superordinate managers of the three MNCs under study. Emotions are experi- enced at the level of the individual MNT member and the respective measures to regulate them are performed by individual MNT leaders. Therefore, we argue that interviews are best suited for obtaining in-depth insights into the lived experiences of these distinct groups. We considered semi-structured interviews most appropriate for our theory building purpose, as they secure comparability through a certain degree of consistency in questions, but still allow informants to bring up additional issues they consider important. We designed our interviews in a problem-centered fashion, asking our interviewees to illustrate their reflections on the emotional impact of language with critical incidents, i.e. occurrences from their working environment which they perceived as both problematic and significant in the context of the general topic. According to Gooty et al. (2010), critical incident techniques are well suited to capture the dynamic nature of individual emotions.
We started each interview with initial demographic questions and gathered information about team composition, language prac- tices and policies. We subsequently continued the interviews in an exploratory fashion, asking, among others, about informants' emo- tional experiences related to working in a multilingual environment. We introduced this topic with rather open questions such as “How do you feel about the need to communicate in a foreign language at work?” or “How do you feel about the unequal working language proficiencies in your team?” When speaking with MNT leaders, we added the question “How do you think your subordinates feel about these issues?” Based on the emotions our informants named, we subsequently asked probing questions to capture related critical incidents: “Could you please describe a specific situation in which language barriers created anxiety/resentment in your team?” With questions such as “How do MNT members and their leader cope with language anxiety/resentment?”, we explored suc- cessful measures to manage the negative emotional impact of language barriers.
In the process of interviewing, it quickly emerged that MNT leaders have a highly prominent role in the mitigation of language- induced emotions. Since the respondents we interviewed in the early phase of data gathering stressed this aspect very prominently, we focused our subsequent data collection even more on the MNT leader's role. At this stage, we asked general questions such as “What does your leader do to mitigate language anxiety/resentment?” and probing questions such as “Could you please describe a specific situation in which the MNT leader successfully addressed language-related emotions in your team?” When speaking with
MNT leaders themselves, we adjusted the wording of these questions accordingly. We constantly compared our findings to the extant literature on leadership in MNTs, language in international business and emotions in organizations.
To triangulate different perspectives on language-related emotions and their management by leaders, it was crucial to sample in- formants from different hierarchical levels. First, we gathered in-depth problem descriptions by interviewing those who were most affected by language-induced emotions, i.e. MNT members. These interviewees also provided us with descriptions and evaluations of how their leaders have addressed language-induced emotions, respectively how they should have addressed them. To obtain di- verse perspectives from MNT members on the issues under study, we aimed to sample interviewees from as many different nation- alities and native tongues as possible. Our final sample includes team members from 19 nationalities, speaking 14 different mother tongues. With the recommendation of theoretical sampling in mind, we moreover covered interviewees with varying proficiency levels in English (the working