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Cross-Cultural Issues in Global Information Systems Development
Abstract
As global information systems development practice has become more and more prevalent and diversified, it demands great academic and practicing efforts to address a wide variety of issues (Herbsleb and Moitra, 2001; Lacity and Willcocks, 2001; Carmel and Agarwal, 2002; Sahay et al., 2003; Hawk and Kaiser, 2004). Different from traditional on-site information systems development work, globally distributed information systems development work is situated within different complex socio-cultural contexts, and is mainly conducted by global virtual teams through virtual environments supported by networking technologies. Individual team members of global virtual teams may have diverse national, organizational, and professional backgrounds, which may influence their identities, behaviors, attitudes and values. On one hand, cultural diversity could be used as a resource to enhance creativity and flexibility, and thus might be beneficial for team performance (Adler, 1991; Harrison et al., 2000; Hartenian, 2000; Maugain, 2003; Trauth et al., 2006). On the other hand, cultural diversity may become a barrier to building trust, sharing and transferring knowledge, and thus affect team performance in a negative way (Cameral, 1999; Herbsleb and Moitra, 2001). Therefore, how to make sense of cultural diversity and its impacts on the work practices of global information systems development, and how to effectively manage cross-cultural work practices are becoming very important issues.
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