Abstract

Language, a major vector of “corporate culture”, enables a firm’s leadership to value certain behavior patterns. Its use and comprehension are not free of ambiguity however, since a language is laden with the ambiguities specific to the corporate culture. Managerial science often analyzes this culture as a factor reducing ambiguity, since it generates a coherence between the ideal and practical dimensions. By placing the ambiguities of language and, thus, of corporate culture at the center of our analysis, we explain how an organizational culture evolves concomitantly with its utilization by various stakeholders (the personnel as well as the leadership), how ambiguity can become a resource whereby stakeholders justify their practices.