The importance of situating culture in cross-cultural it management

An approach to understanding cross-cultural information technology management issues that focuses on the implicit aspects of culture that acknowledges that cultural understanding is locally situated, grounded in actual behaviors, and embedded in everyday, socially negotiated work practices is described and applied.

Abstract

An approach to understanding cross-cultural information technology (IT) management issues that focuses on the implicit aspects of culture is described and applied. It is based upon a theoretical framework called situating culture which acknowledges that cultural understanding is locally situated, grounded in actual behaviors, and embedded in everyday, socially negotiated work practices. To show how this theoretical framework can be used in cross-cultural IT management, it is applied to an examination of the interplay among multiple contextual influences-the national cultures of the host and home countries, the IT industry culture, and the organizational culture of a particular firm-in examples of the cross-cultural IT workplace drawn from the published literature. Management implications of applying the situating culture approach in the cross-cultural IT workplace are then provided.