Culture Issues in Global IT Management

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Culture Issues in Global IT Management

• What is Culture
• culture provides members with images of their
  basic concerns, principles, ethics, and bodies of
  manners, rituals, ideologies, strategies, and
  tactics of self-survival including certain
  notions of good deeds and bad, various form of
  folklore and legends The way we give logic to
  world begins at birth with gestures, words, tone
  of voice, noises, color, smells, and body contact
  we experience Our culture is what is familiar,
  recognizable, habitual, It is what goes without
  saying.
• Van maanen, J. and Laurent, A. The flow of
  cultures some notes on globalization and the
  multinational corporations, New York, NY, St.
  martins Press 1993.

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Global Village
• Is there a universal Business Culture that is
  independent of surrounding culture?

Cultural differences explain everything
Business is business all over the world
The computer subculture is the same all over the
world
Cultural differences explain everything
The continuum of does culture matter
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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Stereotype
• Normal distribution cluster around a hypothesis.
• American stereotypes
• Indian stereotypes
• British stereotypes
• Finnish stereotypes
• German
• African
• Cultural experts claim that most successful
  managers are those that use these cultural mental
  files as starting points and continuously update
  them with new information
• Less successful managers are those who deny
  having any stereotypes and those who rely
  strictly on stereotypes.

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Culture

• Some notions about culture
• The idea that culture can be managed is itself
  cultural
• American managers understand culture as something
  an organization has
• Europeans understand culture as something as
  organization is
• Americans believe in controlling their destiny
  and their ability to change corporate cultures,
  even in relatively short time spans.
• Corporate cultural change is something not highly
  stressed in Europe compare to America

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Do Cultural Differences Affect Global Software
  Development and Management

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Different Types of Culture
• Within a national boundary (Canada or India or
  even US)
• Across boundaries (Arab or Arabic)
• Organizational culture (corporate culture)
• IBM, Microsoft, Toyota, Ford, etc
• Professional culture
• Lawyers, military, academic, programmers etc.
• Team Culture
• emerges from bonding through common work
  experiences, disaster and success, from cliquish
  jokes, team symbols or icon.
• Individual
• Multiple caps
• Im more American now than Indian
• Which of these cultural norms is the strongest?
• What is the future of a true corporate culture?

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Managing Cultural Differences
• Awareness
• Knowledgeable
• Understand fundamental differences
• There is no general theory of cultural difference
  so what can we do?

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People who speak 3 languages trilingual 2
languages bilingual 1 language American
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In Heaven, The Police are British, The Cooks are
French, The Lovers are Italian, and Its all
Organized by the Germans In Hell, The Police
are French, The Cooks are British, The Lovers are
German, and Its all Organized by the Italians.
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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Key Cultural Dimensions
• Data for these research was collected between
  1967-1978
• By Geert Hofstede, a Dutch scholar, an industrial
  psychologist at IBM.
• Survey of IBM personnel in 40 countries
• Sample size was over 100,000
• Good data resource for our purpose but not
  perfect for social scientist in general because
  of the data was from a control group (IT
  professionals).

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Result
• Revering Hierarchy (or Power distance)
• Individual versus Collectivism
• Taking Care of Business
• Risk Avoidance
• Long term orientation.

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Revering Hierarchy (Power Distance)
• How people think about equality and relationship
  with supervisors and subordinates
• In some culture
• Large gaps between levels of organizational
  hierarchy
• Individuals are careful about expressing their
  opinion to superiors
• Show proper respect to their boss
• Superior issue directives and expect subordinates
  to speak only when allowed and unpleasantly
  surprised when subordinates freely air their
  opinions
• Vice-versa
• Implication

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management
Revering Hierarch. How unequal between rank and
class is normal? Low scores represent little
reverence of hierarchy.
Israel 13 Rank and class are less important
Germany 35
Netherlands 38
USA 40
Japan 54
France 68
Hong Kong 68
India 77
West Africa 77
Indonesia 78
China 80
Russia 95 Rank and class are very important
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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Individualism vs. Collectivism
• The extent to which a person sees herself as an
  individual rather than part of a group
• In individual culture people are
• Expected to have there own opinion
• Concern with personal achievement
• Individual right
• Independence
• In collectivism culture people are
• Opinions are determined by group members
• People see themselves first as part of the group
  and are concern with the welfare of the group
• Implication

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management
Individual-Collectivism. The degree to which
individuals prefer to act as individual rather
than members of groups (I.e. collectivistic).
High score indicate high individualism and low
scores imply high degree of collectivism.
USA 91 Highly individualistic
Netherlands 80
France 71
Germany 67
Israel 54
Russia 50
India 48
Japan 46
Hong Kong 25
China 20
West Africa 20
Indonesia 14 Rank and class are very important
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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Taking Care of Business (masculinity/femininity)
• Toughness needed in taking care of business
  (masculine)
• Softer values of taking care of people and
  being concerned with quality of life
  (femininity)

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management
Taking care of Business. To what degree are tough
values such as assertiveness valued against
paternalistic values such as relationships and
quality of life.
Japan 95 Tough values
Germany 66
USA 62
Hong Kong 57
India 56
China 50
Israel 47
West Africa 46
Indonesia 46
France 43
Russia 40
Netherlands 14 Paternalistic value
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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Risk Avoidance
• Attitude towards risky situations, ambiguous
  behaviors, predictability and control
• High risk avoidance culture places greater
  emphasis on
• Stability rather than innovation or change
• Resistance to outsiders or starting a company
• Low risk avoidance culture
• Embrace change more easily
• Tend to be more entrepreneurial
• More likely to break rules and
• Accepts new ideas faster
• Implication

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management
Risk Avoidance. To what degree do people prefer
structured, low risk situation versus ambiguous,
higher risk.
Japan 92 Avoid risk
Russia 90
France 86
Israel 81
Germany 65
China 60
West Africa 54
Netherlands 53
Indonesia 48
USA 46
India 40
Hong Kong 29
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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Long Term Orientation (Confucianism dynamism)
• Relative importance of here-andnow versus the
  future long-term.
• Confucian is a type of the Chinese philosopher
  Confucius.
• Persistence
• Diligence
• Patience
• The Confucian tradition, also implies strong
  patriarchal authority, which is family centered,
  and it is also close to the taking care of
  business dimension

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management
Long-term orientation. Based on values of
Confucianism. To what degree do people value the
future (e.g., in persistence and thrift) versus
the past or present
China 118 Future orientation
Hong Kong 96
Japan 80
India 61
Netherlands 44
Germany 31
France 30
USA 29
Indonesia 25
West Africa 16
Russia 10 Past and/or present orientation
Israel N/A
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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Do Cultural Differences Affect Global Software
  Development and Management
• No, there are essentially no cultural differences
  amongst software professionals
• Scientific culture dominates national culture
• I.e. Programmers in Moscow is more similar to his
  American peers than to other Russians.
• Engineering or Scientist stereotypes
• Is there a computer professional sub-culture that
  overpowers national culture?
• E.g Low social needs and high achievement
• Software development tools internationally
• Technical language and jargons

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Cultural Issues in Global IT Management

• Do Cultural Differences Affect Global Software
  Development and Management
• Yes, there certainly are cultural differences
  amongst software professionals
• Different development method are used in
  different countries
• French are better in OO
• Japan are better in metrics
• American code first and then design later
• Contract and requirement interpretations