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The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals have recently emphasized the importance of diversity inclusion. Motivated by this goal, we examine the impact of employing individuals with disabilities in apparel manufacturing cells on overall team productivity (PD). We formulate a series of deterministic and stochastic PD maximization assignment problems to study the impact of disability inclusion on a production line. We extend the baseline PD maximization formulation to study a multi‐objective problem that simultaneously maximizes PD, disability diversity (DD), and language diversity (LD). Each analysis is performed across two different garments drawn from a real‐world setting. The models are tested using archival time study data collected in partnership with an apparel manufacturing firm where more than 75% of the billed work hours are from individuals with significant disabilities. The following insights emerge from the analyses. First, the PD of teams that have individuals across multiple, different types of disabilities is higher than the PD of teams with employees who share a single, specific type of disability. Second, teams that employ both individuals with and without disabilities perform slightly better than teams that consist of only individuals with disabilities. In some instances, contrary to intuition, teams of only individuals with disabilities even have higher PD than teams of only individuals with no disabilities. Finally, our results from the multi‐objective problem that simultaneously maximizes PD, DD, and LD suggest that PD is not generally sensitive to increases in DD. However, PD is sensitive at extreme levels of DD and LD. Limitations and possible future extensions of the study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commentary amplifies Kidd and Garcia's call for increased attention to language diversity in research on language acquisition by noting several implications of language diversity for acquisition theory and practice. An examination of the languages discussed in six recent articles on acquisition theory echos Kidd and Garcia's observations on the inordinate role that better-studied languages play in acquisition research. Documenting the acquisition of 7,000 languages over the coming decade requires a new infrastructure for acquisition research. Sketches of child languages offer a community-based solution to processing bottlenecks and promote the use of indigenous languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commentary opens by pointing out why Kidd and Garcia's study is an important milestone in research on child language. The commentary goes on to survey insights from crosslinguistic research in the domain, focusing on the author's work in acquisition and development of Israeli Hebrew as a first language, from toddlers via schoolchildren to adolescents. And it calls for further research to enhance our understanding of what is universally shared by children across the world compared with developmental factors filtered by the impact of a particular target language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussing the issue of representativeness from a bilingual perspective, we address how the problem is multiplied in the case of bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA). Given 7,000 languages, there are over 24 million possible language pairs that bilingual children might acquire. In current research and databases including CHILDES, English and Indo-European languages dominate: even non-Indo-European languages are typically paired with an Indo-European language. Referring to studies involving East Asian languages, we outline how genetic, contact, and typological relationships between language pairs may influence the course of BFLA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kidd and Garcia demonstrate that the field of language acquisition must consider a more diverse range of languages. This is certainly needed, to gain a deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms of language acquisition; to achieve that, we need more longitudinal studies of several children per language, with (trained) fluent-user transcription and analysis. This could, for example, help to establish the size of the unit from which the child extracts generalizations and builds categories and networks in phonological development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the workplace is becoming increasingly global, organizations are employing more persons who work in a nonnative language. Moreover, challenges in communication between employees with different linguistic background is inevitable in international mergers and acquisitions, and failure to recognize and address these challenges can create major obstacles to achieving effective integration benefits. Thus, it is imperative for global leaders and managers to understand the effects of language diversity on intraorganizational dynamics. The purpose of this article is to (1) examine the cognitive and affective experiences of both native and nonnative English speakers when they interact with one another and illustrate how language diversity can affect intergroup dynamics in organizations and (2) provide recommendations and interventions to global leaders and managers on how to create a productive and inclusive environment for both native and nonnative language-speaking employees at the individual, team, and organizational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide penetration of location-aware mobile devices and location-based services renders the location-based social media as a reliable proxy to study the real-world geographic space. Language diversity is an important indicator of a city's internationalization level. People communicate using different languages in the cyberspace of social media as they do in the geographic space. The location-based social media therefore provides an innovative set of lens to map the language diversity and study the internationalization of cities. In the enclosed graphics, based on a collection of geo-tagged Twitter posts, we generated a fine resolution map of language diversity index in the area of Hong Kong to illustrate the potential of location-based social media in city research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines power issues related to language diversity in organizations, thus answering the need to investigate the role of language in cross-cultural management. More specifically, it contributes to a better understanding of how intraorganizational power relations are (re)defined through language use. Building on insights from language-sensitive research in international business, the article suggests that a further conceptual development of power is needed to study multilingual organizations and their "politics." Inspired by the writings of Michel Foucault, it aims at developing a differentiated notion of power that allows moving beyond possessive, competitive, and limitation-oriented understandings. It investigates power from a discursive perspective and thus suggests conceptualizing power as an effect of speaking acts. From this point of view, people contribute to the creation of power relations by adopting a multiplicity of subject positions when they talk about their and others' experiences in multilingual organizations. These processes were empirically investigated by conducting a qualitative case study of a multinational company located in Switzerland. The findings show a variety of subject positions for members of multilingual organizations, ranging from "winners on the rhetorical battlefield" to "helpers paving unskilled speakers the way." While being in the position of the "battle winner" means discursively constructing competitive power relations, being a "helper" entails the discursive construction of cooperation-oriented power relations. Adopting a discursive approach thus allows to move the focus from "having"/"not having" power and from conflicts to a broader perspective on power relations. Power is then considered as productive in a general sense, and this productivity might engender competition as well as cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although language is gaining increasing attention in the international management literature, much of the existing empirical work takes a mechanistic approach and as such fails to give sufficient attention to the relationship between language policies and power. By synthesizing the language-sensitive literature in international management with that of organization studies, I demonstrate how the choice of language policy can be viewed as a particular application of power and how employees may seek to resist such choices. This is an important contribution to the cross-cultural management literature, as it extends the understanding of the link between language policies and power by moving away from neutral, pragmatic understandings of language use which have dominated previous research. In doing so, it provides future directions for empirical research in order to enable a deeper understanding of the microprocesses by which employees subjectively experience and resist the imposition of such policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this qualitative research study is to portray the complex language practices of multilingual children when learning mathematics. To do so, I draw on data collected as part of a three-year research study that was designed to understand the relationship between young children's language use and mathematics learning, focusing on students’ work as well as interactions collected through research journal entries and audio recordings. I center the practice of thick description as a path to advance disruptive understanding of multimodal representations of children's language use while learning mathematics. I then consider the necessary movement from a preconceived understanding of language to enacting an understanding of language that is responsive to the experiences and diverse language practices of children. I argue that a disruptive understanding and enactment of language can foster meaningful mathematics learning by dismantling hierarchical power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spoken parent—educator interactions through language interpreters for parents who do not speak English can challenge early intervention/early childhood special education professionals. Research suggests that language interpretation is often inadequate to ensure that the parental participation, informed parental consent, and interpretation mandates of IDEA (P.L. 108-446) Parts B and C are met. Examples from several contexts are presented to illustrate communication disconnects between early educators and parents. Subsequently, a discussion of quality language interpretation in early intervention/ early childhood special education is presented followed by program and policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the connection of immigration and diversity to homicide by advancing a recently developed approach to modeling spatial dynamics—geographically weighted regression (GWR). In contrast to traditional global averaging, we argue on substantive grounds that neighborhood characteristics vary in their effects across neighborhood space, a process of "spatial heterogeneity." Much like treatment-effect heterogeneity and distinct from spatial spillover, our analysis finds considerable evidence that neighborhood characteristics in Chicago vary significantly in predicting homicide, in some cases showing countervailing effects depending on spatial location. In general, however, immigrant concentration is either unrelated or inversely related to homicide, whereas language diversity is consistently linked to lower homicide. The results shed new light on the immigrationhomicide nexus and suggest the pitfalls of global averaging models that hide the reality of a highly diversified and spatially stratified metropolis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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