The Swiss Info – Andrew Hill
“When Isabelle Allen joined KPMG in 1991, she says, the professional services group valued, promoted and rewarded those people who had deep expertise. “We were looking for people who were master of a task and getting better at doing the same task year on year,” says the French executive, who is now global head of sales and markets at KPMG. These days, the company is looking for breadth as well as depth, seeking staff “who thrive on change, people who are comfortable with ambiguity – solvers of problems that didn’t even exist two years ago”. Having studied the latest research into the cognitive benefits of multilingualism, Ms Allen wonders whether knowledge of foreign languages may be one hidden signpost pointing towards those future stars. “The multilingual brain might actually be better at doing business than the monolingual brain,” says Antonella Sorace, professor of developmental linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. Multinational companies have long recognised the functional benefits of multilingualism as a bridge between business cultures. Not speaking other languages may even be a block to promotion these days, according to early findings from the British Academy’s Born Global research into language policy in the UK.”(more)