{
  "title": "Women’s leadership in the canton of Fribourg: how can professional connections bridge French and German?",
  "url": "https://shr.swiss/blog/leadership-au-feminin-fribourg-reseaux-professionnels-frontiere-linguistique-en",
  "language": "en",
  "datePublished": "2026-06-26",
  "publisher": {
    "name": "SHR — Swiss Human Resources",
    "url": "https://shr.swiss",
    "address": "184 route de Saint-Julien, 1228 Plan-les-Ouates, Suisse"
  },
  "summary": "A professional network is more than a count of people met. In Fribourg, it also matters whether a useful contact can be approached beyond one’s usual working language.",
  "section": "Research",
  "topic": "Women in Leadership",
  "place": {
    "name": "Fribourg",
    "region": "Fribourg",
    "country": "CH"
  },
  "keyPoints": [
    {
      "heading": "1. What the literature establishes about professional networks",
      "point": "Herminia Ibarra (1992, Administrative Science Quarterly) shows, in an advertising agency, that women’s and men’s professional networks differ in structure and in the access to resources they provide."
    },
    {
      "heading": "2. Language also shapes the formation of trust",
      "point": "Helene Tenzer, Markus Pudelko and Anne-Wil Harzing (2014, Journal of International Business Studies) examine how language barriers influence trust formation in multinational teams."
    },
    {
      "heading": "3. The hasty conclusion: simply do more networking",
      "point": "One might conclude that women should attend more networking events and improve their command of the other language on their own."
    },
    {
      "heading": "4. What these findings cannot establish",
      "point": "Ibarra’s research concerns one organisation, while the study by Tenzer and her colleagues examines multinational teams rather than Fribourg’s specific bilingual context."
    },
    {
      "heading": "5. A practical check in Fribourg",
      "point": "One possible exercise within the SHR programme would be for each participant to map the people she can approach for technical advice, sector information or an introduction, noting the usual language of each relationship."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "authors": "Ibarra",
      "year": "1992",
      "source": "Administrative Science Quarterly"
    },
    {
      "authors": "Harzing",
      "year": "2014",
      "source": "Journal of International Business Studies"
    }
  ],
  "wordCount": 435,
  "image": "https://shr.swiss/img/blog-Training-Women-In-Leadership-Fribourg-leadership-au-feminin-fribourg-reseaux-professionnels-frontiere-linguistique-en.jpg?v=4",
  "translations": {
    "fr": "https://shr.swiss/blog/leadership-au-feminin-fribourg-reseaux-professionnels-frontiere-linguistique",
    "en": "https://shr.swiss/blog/leadership-au-feminin-fribourg-reseaux-professionnels-frontiere-linguistique-en",
    "de": "https://shr.swiss/blog/leadership-au-feminin-fribourg-reseaux-professionnels-frontiere-linguistique-de",
    "it": "https://shr.swiss/blog/leadership-au-feminin-fribourg-reseaux-professionnels-frontiere-linguistique-it"
  },
  "relatedPages": {
    "programme": "https://shr.swiss/formation-leadership-au-feminin-fribourg",
    "city": "https://shr.swiss/formations-ville/fribourg",
    "blog": "https://shr.swiss/blog"
  },
  "citationPolicy": "Citation autorisée avec mention « SHR — Swiss Human Resources » et lien vers l'article."
}