The impact of language barriers on knowledge processing in multinational teams

•Evident language barriers reduce participation in multinational team communication.•Hidden language barriers impair sensemaking in multinational team communication.•Both impede knowledge processing in multinational teams.•The instrumental view of language needs to be complemented with a cultural view.•The information processing + the sociocognitive view of knowledge are complementary. This qualitative study investigates how language diversity in multinational teams affects communication, which, in turn, influences knowledge processing. We show that evident language barriers (lack of lexical and syntactical proficiency) reduce participation in team communication, which impedes both basic and sophisticated knowledge processing activities. We also demonstrate that hidden language barriers (pragmatic and prosodic transfer between mother tongues and working language) impair sensemaking in the team, which disrupts sophisticated knowledge processing activities. By highlighting the relevance of hidden barriers, our study encourages a more comprehensive conceptualization of language barriers and uncovers the micro-foundations of knowledge processing in multilingual teams. Contrasting evident and hidden barriers, our study juxtaposes the instrumental and the cultural perspective on language. By distinguishing basic and sophisticated knowledge processing activities, we weigh the information processing against the socio-cognitive perspective on knowledge. We integrate these divergent perspectives on language and knowledge processing both within and across the respective research fields.