1. 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. martin’s Press 1993.

2. 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”

3. 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.

4. 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

5. Cultural Issues in Global IT Management
Do Cultural Differences Affect Global Software Development and Management

6. 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
“I’m more American now than Indian”
Which of these cultural norms is the strongest?
What is the future of a true corporate culture?

7. 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?

8. People who speak:
3 languages: trilingual
2 languages: bilingual
1 language: American

9. In Heaven,
The Police are British,
The Cooks are French,
The Lovers are Italian, and
It’s all Organized by the Germans
In Hell,
The Police are French,
The Cooks are British,
The Lovers are German, and
It’s all Organized by the Italians.

10. Cultural Issues in Global IT Management
Key Cultural Dimensions
Data for these research was collected between
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).

11. Cultural Issues in Global IT Management
Result
Revering Hierarchy (or Power distance)
Individual versus Collectivism
Taking Care of Business
Risk Avoidance
Long term orientation.

12. 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

13. 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
India 77
West Africa
Indonesia 78
China 80
Russia 95
Rank and class are very important

14. 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

15. 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
Indonesia 14
Rank and class are very important

16. 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”)

17. 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
France 43
Russia 40
Netherlands 14
Paternalistic value

18. 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

19. 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

20. Cultural Issues in Global IT Management
Long Term Orientation (Confucianism dynamism)
Relative importance of here-and–now 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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