Crisis Management training in FribourgCrisis management in the canton of Fribourg: how can you check that an instruction means the same thing in French and German?

In the bilingual canton of Fribourg, food businesses, industry and the university sector often work across the Sarine, switching between French and German in everyday management. For SHR’s “Crisis Management” programme, this raises a specific question: how can managers check that both versions of an instruction lead to the same action?

What the literature establishes about language barriers

Helene Tenzer, Markus Pudelko and Anne-Wil Harzing (2014, Journal of International Business Studies) show, through a qualitative study of multinational teams, that language barriers influence trust formation. Difficulties expressing oneself can shape judgements about competence or reliability beyond the actual content conveyed. This research cautions against equating linguistic fluency with operational understanding.

A complementary mechanism: the fragility of shared meaning

Karl E. Weick (1993, Administrative Science Quarterly) analyses the Mann Gulch disaster to explain how an organisation can lose its ability to make shared sense of events. His analysis does not address bilingualism, but highlights the fragility of the reference points that make an instruction intelligible in an extreme situation. Applied cautiously to language use, it suggests examining what each recipient understands they should do, rather than checking wording alone.

The hasty conclusion: impose a single language

One might conclude that a single language is enough to make crisis communication reliable. It may simplify distribution without ensuring that everyone correctly interprets a restriction, condition or deadline. The issue is therefore not an abstract choice between one language and two, but whether recipients identify the same obligations. (our executive and employee training programmes)

The limits of the evidence and of routine translation

These studies assess neither organisations in Fribourg nor the comparative effectiveness of French–German crisis protocols. A qualitative investigation of trust and an analysis of a disaster cannot quantify the risk associated with a bilingual instruction. Likewise, a linguistically correct translation does not, by itself, prove that teams have understood the scope of an action.

A practical check in Fribourg

For the “Crisis Management” programme, a possible exercise in Fribourg would be a hypothetical simulation of a food production batch being placed on hold, involving production staff, industrial maintenance and a partner laboratory in the university sector. After receiving an instruction in French and German, each recipient would independently restate the required action, its scope and the condition for resuming operations. An observer would record discrepancies across these three elements, then repeat the check after the message had been revised. The number and nature of the remaining discrepancies would provide a verifiable measure of understanding within the exercise, without proving readiness for a real crisis. To go further: explore the Crisis Management training in Fribourg in the canton of Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.

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