Abstract
The chapter first explores the concept of strategy and considers how insights from the field of strategic management might inform approaches to language management. Then conceptual insights from the strategy as practice approach together with organizational sensemaking, are applied to the analysis of interview data gathered from the head offices of two Danish multinationals. Both these companies had introduced English as a corporate language during the first decade of the 21st century. The argument is that understanding strategy as the activity of strategizing can contribute to corporate language management by making relevant a greater range of actors to strategic processes, and incorporating production of, and reception to, strategy within strategic practices. In particular, the concept of strategic ambiguity, which relates to ambiguity concerning the communication of goals, seems useful in relation to English as a corporate language as this provokes strategic sensemaking on the part of organizational members. It is within these sensemaking practices that language management ultimately gets articulated.
