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

Internal and contextual factors, knowledge processes and performance: From the Chinese provider's perspective

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Expert Systems with Applications. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.This paper explores the influences of two internal factors, i.e. supplier team’s IT-based skills and communication with client’s team, and two contextual factors, i.e. supplier team’s understanding of client’s culture and collaboration with client’s team, on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services from the Chinese provider’s perspective. Knowledge processes are characterized by knowledge sharing, knowledge-based coordination and expertise management, and performance is measured by product success and personal satisfaction. Data have been collected in 13 companies in Xi’an Software Park, with 26 in-depth, semi-structured interviews held with top and middle managers, and 200 structured questionnaires distributed to knowledge workers who are involved in global sourcing projects. The results indicate that supplier team’s IT-based skills, communication with client’s team, cultural understanding of client’s culture and collaboration with client’s team are positively associated with knowledge process and performance. Also, knowledge sharing, knowledge-based coordination and expertise management are found to be crucial for those influential factors to function positively and contribute to the performance. The findings of this study suggest that the effects of key factors on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services appear to transcend the social and cultural differences; however, contextual factors seem to have more significant influences on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services.National Natural Science Foundation of Chin

Cultural diversity and information and communication technology impacts on global virtual teams: An exploratory study.

Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent environments and a competitive global economy. Among these challenges are the use of information and communication technology (ICT), a multicultural workforce, and organizational designs that involve global virtual teams. Ad hoc teams create both opportunities and challenges for organizations and many organizations are trying to understand how the virtual environment affects team effectiveness. Our exploratory study focused on the effects of cultural diversity and ICT on team effectiveness. Interviews with 41 team members from nine countries employed by a Fortune 500 corporation were analyzed. Results suggested that cultural diversity had a positive influence on decision‐making and a negative influence on communication. ICT mitigated the negative impact on intercultural communication and supported the positive impact on decision making. Effective technologies for intercultural communication included e‐mail, teleconferencing combined with e‐Meetings, and team rooms. Cultural diversity influenced selection of the communication media

Culture and conflict management style of international project managers

The management of culture has become increasingly important to many organisations and business disciplines, particularly multicultural and international project management. Cultural differences often result in varying degrees of conflict and require careful consideration. This study surveys 116 Project Managers using the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument to determine their approach toward managing conflict. Indian, French and UK Project Managers’ conflict management style are correlated with Hofstede’s description of their cultural characteristics. We find that significant links between the cultural dimensions of Individualism and Masculinity with the propensity for Project Managers to adopt a Competitive style of conflict management. We also find Uncertainty Avoidance correlates with a tendency for Project Managers to adopt an Avoiding approach to conflict management. Other relationships are found between Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and conflict management styles in Project Managers but their meaning requires further study

Webs of culture: Applying intercultural communication theory to understand distributed decision-making processes

The overarching research question in this paper is: What is the influence of high-versus-low context cultural orientations on effective participation in globally distributed collaboration using email? Two subsidiary research questions follow: (1) What discernable patterns of cultural variation are evident in the email messages, and (2) What is the effect of cultural variation on the contribution of Civil Society during the following stages of the decision-making process: (a) problem identification, (b) proposal making and generation of ideas, (c) response to ideas and deliberation, and (d) solution.To answer these questions, we will apply Edward Hall’s (1976) intercultural communication theory as the primary lens.Specifically, we will employ a cultural dimension called “context” which explains the variations in terms of high-context-versus-low context.Other literature in this domain will also be used to explore the various aspects of cultural impacts.The main objective of this paper is to propose a research design that uses content analysis to look at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) public archival email messages.From this source material, we will apply intercultural communication theory in order to provide descriptive statistical analysis and in-depth descriptions for each of the decision-making stages described above, from a cultural stance.At the completion of this study, we hope to be able to demonstrate specific impacts that high context and low context cultural backgrounds have on globally distributed collaboration, and to suggest some fertile areas for future research such as how to minimize the different cultures’ drawbacks and maximize their positive advantages to facilitate globally distributed collaboration

Decisions in software development proyects management: an exploratory study.

Given the importance of software in today's world, the development of software systems is a key activity that requires complex management scenarios. This article explores the implications of hard decisions in the context of software development projects (SDPs). More in deep, it focuses on the emotional consequences of making hard decisions in IT organisations. Complex SDPs involve a great variety of actors. This fact entails morale, feelings and emotions, which play an important role for communication, interaction and, ultimately, decision making. The aim of the article is twofold. First (Study 1), to identify which are the most important hard decisions in SDPS. Second (Study 2), to study the influence of emotions on decision-making processes (Study 2). Findings show the complex emotional consequences and difficulties that managers must face in hard decision-making processes.Publicad

Challenges to effective collaboration in cross-cultural virtual teams

Multinational organisations are increasingly adopting geographically distributed cross-cultural virtual teams to accomplish projects. As organisations seek to exploit the benefits of such teams, they may confront a number of challenges. This research explored challenges to effective partnership in cross-cultural virtual teams through an in-depth case study of the Ghana subsidiary of a multinational organisation in the telecommunications industry. It is an interpretive study based on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews. The study finds that temporal, linguistic, and cultural issues present significant challenges to effective teamwork. The paper discusses implications of the findings for the effective management of cross-cultural virtual teams

Managerial interventions in multicultural virtual teams: A review and synthesis of the literature

Teams distributed across cultural, geographic and temporal boundaries, also known as multi-cultural virtual teams (MVTs), have been prevalent in international organizations. To provide guidance for MVT managers and support accumulation of prior experience, we establish a management model based on the extended adaptive structuration theory (EAST) and verify the model with 55 empirical studies from leading publications in related fields. The findings contribute a comprehensive set of empirically verified managerial intervention in MVTs and suggest that managers can improve MVT outcomes through manipulating five sets of struc-tural characteristics (i.e., organization, team, individual, technology and task) before and dur-ing the task process. Based on the findings, we generate a holistic view of managerial inter-vention, which explains the mechanisms of managerial intervention in MVTs