1 Introduction

Culture has been defined as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another” [1]. From Hofstede’s study, four cultural dimensions are identified: masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and individualism/collectivism, which are adopted by many cross-cultural studies. These identified dimensions facilitate cross-cultural researchers to explain human behavior in various disciplines. In Information Systems studies, culture has also been identified as an influencing factor concerning the IT behavior of the people. Leidner and Kayworth [2] conduct comprehensive review of IT/information systems culture for the studies till the fall of 2004. By analyzing eighty-two papers which examine IT culture in national and organizational levels, they develop the theory which indicates the effects of cultural conflict on system conflicts. In addition, culture has been largely investigated on the national level by conducting studies across countries [3]. In the last decade, information systems undergo radical changes due to the globalization and the introduction of social media. IT behavior of users across nations may converge by using the same information system platform (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, ERP, etc.) and this convergence perspective is mentioned previously [4] and partially investigated (e.g., [5]).

In this paper, we review the most recent culture studies in core Information Systems journals. We focus on cross-cultural studies which examine IT users across nations/countries. By analyzing these recent studies in Information Systems, we try to observe the current effects of culture on Information Systems. In the next section, we develop the literature review by introducing the review strategy and summarizing the studies. After presenting the papers, we discuss on research gaps.

2 Literature Review

The development of criteria for studies to be included, search strategy, and analysis scheme are required for literature review [2]. Concerning the studies to be included in our literature review, we chose senior scholar’s basket of six journals in Information Systems (MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association of Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems and Information Systems Journal) which include the core research in Information Systems field. For the search strategy, in order to search for appropriate literature and ensure we have included all literature, we used three keywords “cross-cultural”, “cross-nation” or “cross-country”. Then, abstracts of the articles were examined to determine whether they were related to cross-cultural research, whether the studies targeted IT users across nations and whether the cross-country studies focus on cultural elements, instead of economics (e.g., developing countries vs. developed countries, etc.). Finally, we identified 16 published articles from 2005 to October 2014. Concerning the analysis method, we initially obtained the research objective, methodology, and key findings of each article (Table 1). Then we identified the relevant themes of the articles.

Table 1. Cross-Cultural Literatures
Full size table

The 16 articles that we reviewed include 5 articles from Journal of Management Information Systems, 4 articles from both MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Journal, 2 articles from European Journal of Information Systems and 1 article from Information Systems Research. The following themes were observed: cross-cultural individual user behavior and cross-cultural IT management. Each theme is discussed in detail below. Before proceeding to the discussion, we summarize the methodologies employed by prior studies except Leidner & Kayworth’s comprehensive literature review (Table 2). As the tables show, survey is the most employed methodology for examining the individual user behavior across nations and case study is widely used for investigating cross-cultural IT management.

Table 2. Methodologies of the articles by themes
Full size table

2.1 Theme 1: Cross-Cultural Individual User Behavior

Diverse methodologies are used to examine the individual user behavior across nations, such as mixed methods (field experiment and survey) (e.g., [6]), think-aloud usability test (e.g., [7]), and survey (e.g., [8]) and various information technologies used by users across nations are compared. Clemmensen [7] conduct pilot study to illustrate how to conduct cross-country usability testing (e.g., topic, sample, data collection and analysis) by using the samples from Denmark, India and China. Tan et al. [6] compare the consumer response for the commercial messages disseminated via Email and SMS (Short Message Service) in Switzerland and China. Consumers from these two countries exhibit different attitudes towards these two technologies. Chinese consumers perceive greater value for the commercial messages via SMS and are more likely to redeem and forward the coupon in the message. However, Swiss consumers perceive the messages via Email more valuable and are more likely to forward them. Besides Email and SMS, another communication technology, instant messaging, is also examined. Cross-cultural dimensions affect information privacy concerns and desire for online awareness which influence the actual use of instant messaging [3]. Uncertainty avoidance has been found to positively affect information privacy concerns and desire for online awareness in collectivism sample (Chinese users instead of American users). Privacy issue also affects online community behavior of users, since users may be reluctant to disclose personal and private information in online community. British working professionals have been found to have higher self-disclosure score in online community compared with French ones, who have higher score on horizontal individualism [8]. Concerning the use of antispyware to protect personal privacy, South Korean users exhibit stronger relationship between subjective norm and behavioral intentions than American users [9]. Regarding the trust and privacy concerns, Kim [10] finds that in online commercial transactions, transference-based determinants are more positively related to consumer trust for South Korean consumers (compared with American consumers) who have collectivist-strong uncertainty avoidance-high long term orientation-high context culture. In addition, the impact of peer consumer endorsement on trust perception is stronger for Hong Kong subjects than Australia subjects [11]. Besides the cross-cultural studies between America and Asia, cross-cultural study on privacy and trust issue has also been conducted between America and Europe. Dinev et al. [12] find that the relationships between institutional trust, privacy concerns and e-commerce use are weaker for Italian users than American ones.

2.2 Theme 2: Cross-Cultural IT Management

Besides the culture influence on IT behavior of individual users, culture also affects IT management across nations, such as project management, outsourcing and collaboration. Concerning software project management, the presence of a blaming-shifting opportunity has a significant effect on American subjects’ willingness to report negative news on software projects than South Korean ones [13]. Regarding project outsourcing, project outsourcing decision and effectiveness are affected by culture across nations. Cultural distance between client and vendor is found to increase client extra cost by examining German company’s offshore project to Indian vendors [14]. Cultural adaptation is found to be positively related to vendor silence mitigation which could reduce the extra cost [15]. Project technical complexity is positively related to outsourcing likelihood for American managers only and project requirements specifiability is positively related to outsource likelihood for Japanese managers only [16]. Levina and Vaast [17] investigate outsourcing projects from United States and Western Europe based multinational firm to Russia and India. It has been found that differences in country contexts give rise to a number of boundaries that inhibit collaboration effectiveness. Apart from project outsourcing, Zhang et al. [5] find that there is a lack of cultural difference in the factors leading Chinese and American born global firms to develop IT capability, which indicates the convergence of IT management culture. However, the decision making in a group via IT is still affected by culture. In culturally heterogeneous groups, majority influence on collectivistic minorities is stronger than that on individualistic minorities. Minorities in Face-to-Face unsupported groups experience a higher level of majority influence than Face-to-Face computer-mediated communication groups and distributed computer-mediated communication groups [18].

3 Discussions

Based on the review, we observe that cross-cultural (specifically cross-nation) studies in Information Systems have been well developed in the last decade. For the theme of cross-cultural individual user behavior, trust and privacy issues have been examined extensively across nations. Various communication technologies (e.g., SMS, Email, and Instant Messaging) are compared. However, there is a lack of study on cross-cultural comparisons on social media technologies. For the theme of cross-cultural IT management, project outsourcing is widely examined. European and American companies outsource IT projects to Asian countries and cultural elements affect the outsourcing effectiveness. The culture convergence perspective is also examined in IT management [5], which can be investigated in the future in a greater extent. Concerning the cultures investigated, Asian and American cultures are commonly used to compare IT behavior of users. Cross-cultural studies for intra-European nations and nations between Europe and America are needed for the future research.

4 Conclusion

Culture has been identified as influencing factor for IT use and management. The main objective of this paper is to review cross-cultural studies in the last decade in Information Systems and present a comprehensive overview of the existing knowledge in this research field. From the review, we perceive the future research topics which are not examined in the past. Moreover, we try to have a systematic view on the convergence of the culture in Information Systems field.