ECIS560: Introduction to IS and E-Commerce

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ECIS560 Introduction to IS and E-Commerce

• Global IT Management

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Categorizing nations

• Advanced Countries
• United States
• European countries
• Australia
• Newly Industrialized Countries
• Singapore
• Developing Countries
• India
• Lesser Developed Countries
• African countries

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Advanced countries US top 5 issues

• Aligning IS and corporate goals
• Instituting cross-functional systems
• Organizing and utilizing data
• Reengineering the business processes through the
  use of technology
• Improving IS human resource

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Advanced countries Europe top 5 issues

• Instituting cross-functional systems
• Improving IS human resource
• Reengineering the business process through the
  use of technology (tied for 3rd place)
• Cutting IS costs (tied for 3rd place)
• Creating an information architecture

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Advanced countries Australia top 5 issues

• Improve IT strategic planning
• Building a responsive IT structure
• Aligning IS and corporate goals
• Effective use of data resources
• IS for competitive advantage

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Newly Industrialized Countries Singapore top 5
issues

• Measuring and improving IS effectiveness
• Managing end-user computing
• Keeping current with new technology
• Integrating data, office automation, and
  telecommunications
• Training

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Developing countries India top 5 issues

• Understanding contribution of IS
• Human resources for IS
• Quality of input data
• Educating senior managers about IS
• Developing user-friendly systems

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Lesser Developed Countries African top 5 issues

• Obsolescence of hardware
• Obsolescence of software
• Proliferation of mixed vendor shops
• Availability of skilled MIS people
• Government interference in computer market

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IS Concerns vary by country

Infrastructure Issues
Operational Issues
Management and Control Issues
Strategic Issues
Under-developed countries
Developing countries
Newly Industrialized
Advanced countries
(from Palvia and Palvia, 1996)
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Based on the Issues.

• Number of country specific factors influence
  issues rankings
• The issues themselves are often a reflection of
  the economic development of a nation
• Global IS managers must be aware of the specific
  country issues and the factors that influence
  them

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Dimensions Influencing Key IS Issues
National Culture
Key IS Issues
Technological Status
Political/Legal Environment
Economic Structure
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Technological Status

• Pagers in Angola?
• Telephone lines in South America
• Economic status affects this factor
• Gulf countries became economic powers in the
  1970s and only recently started investing in
  infrastructure

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Political and Legal environment

• Political transformation in Eastern Europe has
  impacted businesses, and in turn, IS and IT
• EU laws will require great changes in existing
  systems and procedures
• Restrictions in Internet use in various countries
  affects Electronic Commerce

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Economic structure

• Level of economic advancement influences the IS
  issues that are important
• Usually indicated by GDP

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IS Concerns vary by countryGDP

Infrastructure Issues
Operational Issues
Management and Control Issues
Strategic Issues
Under-developed countries
Developing countries
Newly Industrialized
Advanced countries
(from Palvia and Palvia, 1996)
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Cultureisnt everyone basically the same?

• Japanese prefer fax to email
• Israelis are not big users of word-processing
  packages
• Indian programmers are too polite
• In Spain, the OK symbol is considered vulgar
• Malaysian programmers may be fluent in English
  but have no idea of slang terms.

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What is Culture?

• culture is defined as an integrated system of
  learned behavior patterns that are characteristic
  of the members of any society. It includes
  everything a group thinks, says, does, and makes
  its customs, language, material artifacts, and
  shared systems of attitudes and feelings -
  Czinkota, et al (1996), p.298

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Researchers agree that

• Culture is learned and shared from generation to
  generation
• Cultural norms may be acquired through parents,
  schools, religious organizations, and social
  organizations
• Elements of culture include both verbal and
  non-verbal language, religion, values and
  attitudes, perceptions, and protocols

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Dimensions of Culture

• Hofstede
• Power Distance
• Individualism/Collectivism
• Masculinity/Femininity
• Uncertainty Avoidance
• Confucianism/Dynamism
• Hall
• Space
• Material Goods
• Friendship
• Time
• Agreement

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Hofstedes Dimensions of Culture

• Conducted between 1967-1978
• Collected over 100,000 surveys from IBM employees
  around the world
• Single, consistent control group
• National differences emerge despite strong
  corporate culture

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Power distance

• Also referred to as Revering Hierarchy
• Extent to which subordinates expect and accept
  the fact that power is distributed unequally in a
  firm
• Some cultures see large gaps between hierarchical
  levels
• Panama scores highest, Israel lowest

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Individualism/Collectivism

• Extent to which individual sees themselves as
  part of a group
• Individualistic Cultures
• Expected to have opinions
• Stress personal achievements
• Independence
• Individual rights
• Collectivist Cultures
• Harmony
• Welfare group

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Implications for IS Management?

• Systems Design
• Inherently group effort
• Process designed for conflict
• Incentive Schemes
• Reward individual or group?

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Masculinity/Femininity

• Taking care of business
• toughness in meeting goals
• softness in taking care of people and quality
  of life
• Japan ranks as highly masculine
• Scandinavian countries rank low
• Implications?
• Work hours

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Uncertainty Avoidance

• Attitudes towards risk, ambiguity,
  predictability, and control
• High avoidance cultures place emphasis on
  stability
• Low avoidance countries embrace change and
  innovation
• Japanese high on Uncertainty Avoidance
• Hong Kong low on Uncertainty Avoidance

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Confucianism/Dynamism

• Recent addition to cultural dimensions
• Here-and-now vs. future
• Confucian traits
• Thrift
• Persistence
• Diligence
• Patience
• Patriarchal authority

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Halls Dimensions of Culture

• Space
• Close-talker?
• Queues
• Materialism
• Danish CEO admired for driving old car
• Americans fight for corner office with biggest
  desk
• Japanese manager may sit with other employees to
  downplay role of status and material goods

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Halls Dimensions

• Friendships
• Some western cultures make and lose friends
  quickly (due to high mobility)
• Other cultures may take longer to develop
  relationship but long-lasting
• Holds for businesses as well relationship
  first, then business

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Halls Dimensions

• Time
• Monochronic cultures
• See time as linear
• Events taken one at a time
• Stress on punctulaity and deadlines
• Polychronic cultures
• See time as non-linear, simulataneous, unlimited
• Plans constantly change
• Delays less important
• Germans considered monochronic, French are
  polychronic

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High Vs. Low Context Cultures
Japanese, Chinese, Mediterranean, Latin, Indian
High context (Implicit details)
American, German, English, Scandinavian
Low context (Explicit details)
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Opinion 1 Culture Does Not Matter

• Cougar et.al (1990)
• Compared motivation and personal growth needs of
  systems analysts
• Compared US, Austria, Singapore, Israel
• Found great similarities between all countries
• Suggests overpowering effects of professional
  culture

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Culture not important.

• 1996 study of software development tool
  preferences between Europe, Japan, US no
  significant differences
• 1989 Danish and Canadian analysts had similar
  design values
• First technical values
• Second, economic values
• Sociopolitical values (concern for users)

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Opinion 2 Culture matters

• Mostly anecdotal evidence
• French better at object-oriented design
• Japanese better at metrics
• British know about Jackson Methodology unknown
  in US
• Belgians more process-oriented
• Americans code first and design later

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Consider Japan

• Quality assurance
• Japanese fixed all bugs regardless of severity
• Meaning of requirements
• Americans see the requirements as a contract
  negotiation Japanese do not charge for minor
  changes
• Designers
• Americans tend to take a top down approach Japan
  takes bottom up approach

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Global Information Systems

• Information Technology (IT) facilitates the
  global transformation of business
• Crossing border poses challenges to technology
  managers
• geographic
• legal
• cultural
• temporal
• need radical changes to existing technology
  infrastructures and management

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Types of global enterprises

• Devised by Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989)
• International
• Global
• Multinational
• Transnational

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The International Strategy

• Subsidiaries leverage parent competencies
• Coordinated federation

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Global

• RD, manufacturing done at HQ
• Strategic decisions are centralized
• Central hub

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Multinational

• Multidomestic
• Aims at local responsiveness
• Knowledge developed/retained at subsidiary level
• Decentralized federation

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Transnational

• Shared decision-making
• Complex coordination
• Centers of excellence
• Dispersed resources
• Integrated network

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Jarvenpaa and Ives (1993)

• Built on work by Karimi and Konsysnki
• Based their work on Information Processing Theory
  (Galbraith 1973)
• Good fit when information processing capacities
  of firm match requirements of environment and
  technology
• Jarvenpaa and Ives develop typology of 4 global
  IT management configurations

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The Global IT Strategies

• Intellectual Synergy
• Headquarters Driven
• Independent IT Operations
• Global Integrated IT
• IS managers strive for best fit between above
  strategy and perceived global strategy

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Intellectual Synergy

• Includes several global systems
• Each likely to be tailored for individual use
• Each run independently by the subsidiary
• Subsidiary-HQ IS relationship characterized by
• Personal contacts
• Cooperation
• Shared learning

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Headquarters Driven

• All IT-related decisions made by headquarters
• Goal is
• To achieve efficiency
• To avoid duplication of development effort

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Independent IT Operations

• Independent systems initiatives in each
  subsidiary
• Focus on local responsibility
• Few, if any, common systems through the firm
• Fosters sense of systems ownership

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Global Integrated IT

• Strives for worldwide integration of IT that
  supports core competencies of firm
• Dispersed resources
• Numerous common systems
• Applications for non-core areas run locally

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Empirical Findings

• Data collected from 109 global companies
• Moderate level of fit number of misfits
• Misfits explained by problems with
• Hardware/software vendor support quality
• Telecommunications support
• Senior management support for IT
• Pressure for cost savings
• Subsidiary resistance

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Definition

• A global virtual team is defined as
• A team in which individual members are separated
  by a national boundary while actively
  collaborating on a common systems project

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Factors Affecting Global Software Teams

• Catalyst factors
• Sustaining factors
• Size factors
• Vision factors

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Catalyst factors

• Specialized talent
• programming talent the Watts study showed
  fastest programmer was 30 times quicker than
  slowest
• Global labor shortage in 1999, 40 of IS shops
  are hiring immigrants 16 are outsourcing

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Catalyst Factors

• Acquisitions
• Increasing global mergers and acquisitions
• Baan (based in Netherlands) acquired Canadian,
  US, Spanish, and British companies and merged
  them with existing sites in India and Brazil
• Acquisitions have led to project teams suddenly
  having to collaborate

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Catalyst factors

• Reduction in development costs
• Looking for low cost labor
• India is acknowledged giant of offshore
  programming earn 25-30 of US counterparts
• Others include Philippines, Russia, China
• US workers drawn to more glamorous systems jobs
  someone still has to do the dirty work

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Catalyst factors

• Globalized presence
• Global businesses must establish themselves as
  global players
• Transnational strategies suggest centers of
  excellence
• Often takes the form of software development
  centers around the world

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Catalyst factors

• Reduction in time-to-market
• Follow-the-sun development
• Exploit time zone differences to create a 24 work
  schedule on a given project
• Turns a disadvantage into an advantage

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Catalyst factors

• Proximity to customer
• Systems development is a interaction-intensive
  process
• Needs face-to-face communication
• Needs constant communication
• Best to have a part of the development team local

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Sustaining factors

• Once the initial desire to set up dispersed
  virtual teams spurs their use, what sustains them
• Dispersed projects usually first on chopping
  block
• Natural need to simplify get rid of these
  complex teams

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Sustaining factors

• Development rigor
• Smaller, co-located teams use informal mechanisms
  for development
• Dispersion often leads to greater formalism of
  coordination and control
• Specific standards
• Specific methodologies
• Specific quality control issues

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Sustaining factors

• Internal freshness
• Diversity brings innovation
• Global teams have cultural synergies
• E.g. global software manager called architectural
  review meeting with systems managers from 6
  countries their views profoundly changed the
  specs of the system

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Sustaining factors

• Distance from distractions
• Away from the maddening crowd.. No distractions
  of a world headquarters
• European site called Santas little helpers
• Foreign team members live near their homes, with
  their families. High loyalty and work ethic

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Sustaining factors

• Experience
• Remotes sites have climbed the learning curve
• Experience at distant sites can be leveraged into
  centers of excellence

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Size Factors

• Scale
• Single location IS shops can soon become too
  large and unwieldy
• Baans expansion to other countries was based on
  size issues
• Microsoft moved away from its single center ethos
  for same reason

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Vision factors

• Two visions of the future
• Location transparency
• Virtual organization
• Virtualness already exists
• Gartner group predicts 140 million people will be
  telecommuting by 2003
• Virtual organizations are team-based
• Less hierarchicalmore network-like structure

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Managerial Techniques

• Select global software manager with mix of
  technical and managerial skills
• MERIT qualities
• Multi-culturalist (switch between cultural
  styles)
• E-facilitator
• Recognition promoter (promotes team within
  organization)
• Internationalist
• Traveler