Does low English proficiency lead to low organisational commitment?

The central objective of the present study was to find out whether and how foreign language proficiency, a personal level factor combined with factors of job and organisational levels would influence the commitment of middle managers. Investigated with middle managers who used English as foreign language at work in a Chinese subsidiary of a large Finnish multinational company, the results show two combinations of factors that result in high commitment of middle managers. One is high English proficiency combined with fit of reward to employee expectation. The other is low English proficiency combined with fit of employee competence to job requirements and non-fit of reward to employee expectation.

Previous research has suggested that low foreign language proficiency tends to contribute to staff turnover. This study finds that when combined with fit of competence to job requirements low foreign language proficiency can result in high commitment as well.