How employees cope with the requirement to work in a foreign language has received little scholarly attention. To narrow this gap, we conducted an ethnographic study at KONE and NOKIA, companies using English as a lingua franca. Results indicate that employees who are non-native lingua franca speakers may cope collectively with the language demands by building a psychologically safe language climate. Although benefitting them emotionally, psychologically safe language climate may simplify the lingua franca and, in turn, decrease innovative performance. Our findings contribute to research on language-coping mechanisms and psychological safety in adding language as a potential barrier to innovativeness.

员工如何应付使用外语工作的要求，在学术上很少受到关注。为了缩小这一差距，我们在通力和诺基亚公司进行了民族志研究，这些公司使用英语作为通用语言。结果表明，讲非母语的雇员可以通过建立心理上安全的语言环境来集体应付语言需求。尽管在情感上对他们有益，但心理上安全的语言氛围可能会简化通用语言，进而降低创新表现。我们的研究结果有助于研究语言应对机制和心理安全，从而将语言添加为创新的潜在障碍。