MANAGING THE IMPACT OF DIFFERENCES IN NATIONAL CULTURE ON SOCIAL CAPITAL IN MULTINATIONAL IT PROJECT TEAMS – A GERMAN PERSPECTIVE

How can management handle relationship problems arising from cultural differences in multinational IT project teams? This paper uses a social capital lens to better understand the negative impact of cultural differences in IT project teams. In contrast to many previous works we do not consider cultural differences as a whole but explore the role of the different national culture dimensions. This allows for a more detailed view on cultural differences in a team context and thus contributes to a better understanding about which dimensions of national culture drive relationship problems and which management measures can help to dampen the negative effects. Based on several exploratory cases (6 multinational IT projects in 4 companies, headquartered in Germany), the authors identify three patterns showing typical problems in team social relationships which arise from differences in particular dimensions of national culture. Pattern-specific as well as general management measures, employed to address the culture-driven negative effects, are identified as well

Ethnic entrepreneurs and online home-based businesses: an exploratory study

This exploratory, qualitative study considers how online home-based businesses offer opportunities for ethnic entrepreneurs to ‘break out’ of traditional highly competitive and low margin sectors. Previous studies have found a positive association between ethnic minorities’ high levels of entrepreneurship and home computer use in ethnic groups. Despite these associations, previous studies have overlooked the particular opportunities offered by home-based online businesses to ethnic entrepreneurs. The study adopts mixed embeddedness as a theoretical lens to guide interviews with 22 ethnic entrepreneurs who have started online home-based businesses in the UK. We find online home-based businesses offer ethnic entrepreneurs novel opportunities to draw on their ethnic advantages and address the constraints they face. The unique affordances of this type of business allow entrepreneurs to develop the necessary IT skills by self-learning and experimentation and to sub-contract more difficult or time consuming aspects to others. The findings also show that, consistent with the theory of mixed embeddedness, whilst the entrepreneurs are influenced by social, economic and institutional forces, online businesses allow them to exert their own agency and provide opportunities to uniquely shape these forces

Understanding eParticipation services in indonesian local government

Published version of a chapter in the book: Information and Communication Technology. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55032-4_32This study aims at understanding how local government from a developing country, in this case Indonesia, implement and manage eParticipation services. In doing so, we combine institutional theory and stakeholder theory to build a sharper analytical lens. From an interpretive case study in the city of Yogyakarta, we reveal the institutionalization process of the services since their inception and identify major stakeholders and their salience. Based on our findings, we propose implications for practice and suggest implications for further research. Future work, based on a multiple case strategy including several eParticipation cases from other parts of Indonesia, will further explore the findings reported here

Mapping phases of poly(vinyl alcohol) and poly(vinyl acetate) blends by FTIR microspectroscopy and optical fluorescence microscopy

Fluorescence optical microscopy (FOM) of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc) blends in compositions 9/1, 1/1, and 1/9 (w/w) show that these blends present phase separation in the solid state. Each domain of the solid samples was identified by FOM as PVA-richer domains by green fluorescence of fluorescein and PVAc-richer domains by the blue fluorescence of anthracene. The dimensions, shapes, and distributions of these domains were dependent on the initial composition of the polymeric mixtures in the solution. Specific interactions between both homopolymers were studied using FTIR microspectroscopy, which allowed us to obtain spectra for both PVA-richer and PVAc-richer domains. These spectra demonstrated that partial miscibility could occur only for blends with a higher PVAc content and, in these cases, we observed interchain hydrogen-bonded carbonyl groups. Fluorescence microscopy of blends with this partial miscibility exhibited small interconnected domains produced by coalescence of droplets during the polymer phase separation process. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.69464565