Contextual factors, knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services: An investigation in China

Copyright @ 2011, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Reuse of this article has been approved by the publisher.In this paper, the authors explore the influences of two major contextual factors—supplier team members’ cultural understanding and trust relationship—on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services. The authors discuss a joint investigation conducted by a cross-cultural research team in China. Cultural understanding is measured by individualism with guanxi and mianzi, two Chinese cultural concepts, and trust relationship is measured by adjusting trust, a notion reflecting the uniqueness of the Chinese people. Knowledge processes are characterized by knowledge sharing. Performance is measured by the outcomes of global sourcing, which is represented by product success and personal satisfaction. Data are collected in 13 companies in Xi’an Software Park, with 200 structured questionnaires distributed to knowledge workers. The results of quantitative data analysis indicate that cultural understanding influences trust relationship greatly, as well as knowledge sharing and performance in global sourcing of IT services. Trust relationship significantly impacts knowledge sharing, whereas trust relationship and knowledge sharing have no impact on performance. This study suggests that special aspects of the Chinese context have significant direct impacts on knowledge processes while no direct and immediate impacts on performance in global sourcing of IT services.National Natural Science Foundation of China, Program for Humanity and Social Science Research, Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University in China and Brunel University's Research Development Fund

Offshore Business Processing Outsourcing by Australian Enterprises to Service Providers Located in India

The primary research question for this PhD was: “What are the key factors that contribute to the success of offshore business process outsourcing (OBPO) by Australian and international organisations to service providers located in India and the Philippines?” A qualitative research design in the positivist paradigm was adopted, involving longitudinal case studies of five client companies. A primary contribution was identification of critical success factors for management of OBPO at the individual company level

Global and regional sourcing of ICT-enabled business services: upgrading of China, Hong Kong and Singapore along the global value chain

Offshoring, as part of globalisation, first started decades ago with manufacturing processes disintegrated along the global value chain and dramatically redistributed to low-cost regions. The next global shift of work involving ICT-enabled business services has arisen since the 1990s, especially featuring the success of India’s supplier role. The possibilities for the Global South to move up the value ladder are well demonstrated by the achievements of the newly industrialised economies in East Asia in the first shift and of India in the second. In the services sector, however, potential for upgrading is conditioned by quality-based elements, such as trust, culture and language, which vary both between producing and market areas. Flows are increasingly multi-directional, requiring attention to the neglected issue of demands from fast-growing Southern economies. So how do locations and firms in the Global South attempt to upgrade in the regime of rising services offshoring? The Indian experience especially in serving Anglophone markets in the Global North has been widely documented – but not that of East Asian economies, with their distinct characteristics and strong historic, ethnic and cultural ties with each other. This study examines the upgrading possibilities and constraints of China, Hong Kong and Singapore along the global services chain. For cross-case analysis, it focuses on three specific sets of services, including information technology, finance and accounting, and customer contact services. The concepts of global value chain, competitive advantage and capabilities are applied to reconstruct the phenomenon of services offshoring from both the demand and supply perspectives in the selected locations, and synthesise the dynamics between locational characteristics and firm strategies. A series of distinct upgrading strategies are identified, involving mixes of manufacturisation, knowledge-intensification and deepening relational capabilities to exploit both regional advantages of language/cultural proximity and established global links

Emergent culture in global IS/IT outsourcing

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University on 6/4/2011.The research addresses the emergent nature of culture in global Information Systems / Information Technology (IS/IT) outsourcing relationships. Considering the broadly recognized role of culture in Global Outsourcing (GLOS), it builds on existing literature and it identifies three research issues that support the need to address culture in a global IS/IT relationship as emergent. These issues involve: a. A literature “gap” and low research granularity of existing research, b. The tendency to examine culture in IS/IT as either national or organizational, with no adequate research examining the dynamic nature of culture in GLOS collaboration, and c. The unique nature of GLOS culture, which is not stable but emergent. In order to address emergence, the thesis applies a cultural systems perspective, which is used to describe the emergent GLOS culture as related to a GLOS cultural system. An initial model is thus developed, according to which GLOS culture emerges from a GLOS cultural system, and the GLOS cultural system results from the combination of cultural characteristics of separate organizations within the GLOS context. This GLOS cultural system is related to Attitudes and Behaviors (A&B), the Environment, Interactivity, and Control. Using the philosophical perspective of interpretivism and a qualitative methodology, two pilot studies and a series of case studies were conducted. Due to its increasing reliance on outsourcing strategies, the automotive industry was used as the industry-based setting of the research and, more specifically, the phases related to the production of Electronic System (ES) of coaches and buses. Each phase involves the relationship between the client (AC) and one of its three suppliers (AS1, AS2, AS3), all residing in different countries (three across Europe and one in Asia). The analysis of the two pilot cases (GC, DS) helped finalize the interview agenda, which was then used in the four in-depth case studies that describe the relationship between AC and each individual supplier (AC-AS1, AC-AS2, AC-AS3). A thematic analysis was applied to the interview data, leading to an extended version of the initial model. According to the new extended model, the GLOS cultural system, through Mechanisms and Processes, expresses an emergent GLOS culture, which is related to extended versions of the concepts discussed in the initial model. More specifically, in the extended model, emergent GLOS culture is related to Attitudes, Behaviors, and Cognition (ABC), Context, Interactivity, and Regulation. The extended model also extends the concept of the initial model, further reflecting the emergent nature of emergence of the GLOS culture. Therefore, it associates Attitudes, Behaviors, and Cognition (ABC) with the dimensions of we-they and abstract-expressed, Context with the dimensions of environment and definition, Interactivity with the dimensions of relationship and exchange, and Regulation with the dimensions of control and feedback. The contribution of the extended model is demonstrated through validation by professionals and original participants in the study. The model also expresses the uniqueness of each GLOS collaboration and analyzes emergent GLOS culture in terms of specific cultural attributes, as they emerge within the GLOS relationship. Furthermore, it provides an in-depth description of the nature of emergent culture in global collaboration, and its contribution is discussed from a theoretical, practical, and methodological perspective. The thesis also addresses lessons learned, research limitations, and proposals for further research. Overall, the thesis offers an in-depth approach to understanding culture in GLOS relationships. Building on the concept of emergence, as addressed in existing literature, the study extends the discussion of culture beyond the national – organizational level and it offers a list of cultural attributes (themes) related to emergence. Using empirical industry-based evidence from countries selected across various economic and sociopolitical level, and an industry (automotive) that demonstrates a growing interest in outsourcing strategies, it discusses an emergent approach to culture, focusing exclusively on IS/IT GLOS. The emergent GLOS culture extends beyond mere summation of cultural characteristics of collaborating organizations. It allows for dynamism and adjustability, and, at the same time, it offers a new way of capturing, addressing, and explaining the uniqueness of the culture of every GLOS relationship

Language, conflict and identity: The Hispanic experience

This thesis is an attempt to create a theoretical model which could be applied to the study of any situation where a history of ongoing migration and asymmetrical power relationships in constant flux between two or more groups, nation states, or other entities is present. It is the conception and application of a theoretical framework with which to view transnational identity on a different level, one focusing on the historical antecedents of current situations, pan-identities, and language as the main identity marker among transnationals

The Political Ecology of Early Childhood Lead Exposure at the New York African Burial Ground

Nearly 25 years ago federal officials unearthed over 400 skeletal remains in Lower Manhattan. The site of the excavation was the New York African Burial Ground (NYABG), a 17th- and 18th-century cemetery for the city’s mostly enslaved African population. Today, the burial ground serves as a reminder of New York’s 200-year experiment with slavery. It is the first National Monument to honor enslaved African New Yorkers. This recognition is a testament to the resolve of African American descendants and their allies who, through political activism, would see these ancestors afforded in death some of the respect denied them in life. Descendant community activism also paved the way for the site’s interdisciplinary investigation, the NYABG Project. Recovering complex diasporic biohistories from the NYABG was a major scientific undertaking made more challenging and rewarding by the project’s high standards of public inclusion and accountability. Co-developed by community members and scholars, the NYABG Project now stands as a model of critically engaged biocultural anthropology. This dissertation study draws upon and continues the work of NYABG researchers. It is a reconstruction of early life lead exposure via laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) of dental enamel. With its high inorganic content, enamel provides a stable chemical record of an individual’s diet, nutrition and pollution events, which in turn reflect political, economic and cultural factors. For this population, relatively high levels of skeletal lead suggest time spent in the Americas while low levels more likely indicate birth in Africa prior to forced migration. Here, lead concentrations in enamel that forms during the first several years of life are measured, mapped microspatially, and rendered as chronological age profiles. Mean differences and distribution/age profiles are compared for 44 NYABG children and adults in order to determine their African or American birthplaces and related health and cultural experiences (e.g., lead poisoning and dental modification). For some individuals, comparative analysis of later forming teeth was undertaken to explore the possibility of migration during childhood. Enamel-lead concentrations range from 0.39 μg g-1 (i.e., the instrument limit of detection or LOD) to 14.7 μg g-1, suggesting a range of exposures in which some individuals spent their childhoods in high-lead environments. The most striking finding is that mean enamel-lead concentration for young children (5.88 μg g-1) is over five times that of adults (1.11 μg g-1), a significant difference reflecting these groups’ mostly American versus African geographic origins, respectively. Other findings raise questions at the intersections of natality, health and culture. For example, contra most reports, do relatively high lead concentrations for some individuals indicate that cultural dental modification persisted in the Americas? This study is the first quantitative LA-ICP-MS analysis of human lead exposure in early America. LA-ICP-MS has proven critical for assessing overall lead burden as well as age-related changes in the sources and nature of exposure. The methodology developed for this study has enabled a rich assessment of African diasporic environmental biohistory, health and culture during slavery. As with the “rediscovery” of the NYABG, this is a moment and a tool for discovering new history and new dimensions of the human experience, then and now

Neolithic Diversities : Perspectives from a conference in Lund, Sweden

Papers from a conference in Lund, Sweden. The title of the conference was "What's new in the Neolithic". The book brings together the latest research on the Neolithic of northern Europe. In the study of the distant human past, certain events and periods have come to represent decisive passages from one human state to another. From a global perspective, the characteristic feature of the last ten thousand years is that people in different parts of the world, and at different points in time, started to grow plants and domesticate animals. The rise and dissemination of agriculture were crucial factors for the continued existence of humankind on earth. The incipient agriculture is often regarded as the very beginning of human culture, as it has traditionally been perceived in western historiography, that is, as control over nature and the “cultivation” of intellectual abilities. As a result of the increasing national and international interest in the northern European Neolithic (4000–2000 BC), combined with large-scale archaeological excavations which helped to nuance and modify the picture of the period, senior researchers and research students formed a Neolithic group in 2010. The Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University served as the base, but the group also included collaborators from Linnaeus University and Södertörn University, and from the Southern Contract Archaeology Division of the National Heritage Board in Lund and Sydsvensk Arkeologi in Malmö and Kristianstad. Meetings and excursions in the following two years resulted in the holding of an international conference in Lund in May 2013 entitled “What’s New in the Neolithic”. Invitations to this conference were sent to two dozen prominent Neolithic scholars from northern and central Europe. This publication gives aspects of innovative research on the European Neolithic

Exploring cultural boundary spanning functions that bridge across national and cultural boundaries in MNCs

In multinational corporations (MNCs), cross-cultural interactions and collaboration are unavoidable. Cultural boundary spanning (CBS) is a behavior that has been shown to reduce conflict and ensure project success. It is a behavior that bridges internal and external organizational boundaries. This study examined if and how CBS functions (behaviors) change across national and cultural boundaries in MNCs. These boundaries were characterized by four demographic groups of people found within MNCs: (a) parent country nationals, (b) host country nationals, (c) third country nationals, and (d) parent country national expats. The findings of this research suggest that any of these demographic groups can perform CBS. Variances in the use of CBS functions between the groups were also identified. These variances seem to be influenced by the strength of the individual’s social networks and the interdependent leadership culture within the MNC

Community Formation in the Spanish Colonial Borderlands: San José de las Huertas, New Mexico

This work is centered on the archaeological site of San José de las Huertas, occupied from 1765-1826 and excavated in 2002-2004. In my historical study of this 18th-century village, I draw upon archaeological evidence, archived documents, and oral historical accounts in order to explore processes of community formation and maintenance as they are revealed through the reciprocal relationship of structure and agency, otherwise known as structuration. Since the performance of social identity is a consequence of community creation, its investigation provides one means through which structuration may be accessed. Through the analysis and integration of the various lines of information, my research contributes to our understanding of the complex relationships that connect objects and places to people and community. Located in the northern Borderlands of New Spain, Las Huertas was one of several outpost communities established in the mid-1700s to deter American Indian raids on the capital and principal settlements of New Mexico. As a buffer settlement, the village was founded by people with diverse and complex personal histories. The landless colonists who established the community were comprised of families who considered themselves to be culturally Spanish as well as those who were labeled as genizaros (war captives taken from various native groups who were then placed as servants in the homes of Spanish settlers and missionaries). As such, the crafting of a local community and its accompanying identity amidst a diverse mix of ethnic, class, gender, and kinship relations was an important part of negotiating daily life on this frontier, where remote communities faced many challenges and hardships that were particular to their locations. The range of data sources utilized by this project illustrate that the community of Las Huertas was constructed through social discourses of difference and similarity among informed and strategic social actors as they navigated different contexts: that of the community itself, in their dealings with colonial administrators, in their contacts with the Pueblo and Spanish-American settlements that neighbored the village, and when nomadic peoples attacked their homes and property. Kinship, age, gender, and religion comprised the principal vectors of social identity crucial in community formation, while status and ethnic affiliation (as defined by casta categories) seemed to be of greater concern to colonial officials and clerics. Las Huertasanas' associations with their neighbors also tended to be shaped through kin networks, in addition to economic transactions. But it was membership within the community of Las Huertas that served to contextualize social identities as they were enacted in all situations