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Analyzing and Managing the Impact of Cultural Behavior Patterns on Social Capital in Multinational IT Project Teams

A Case Study Approach

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Abstract

This paper contributes to a better understanding and to mitigate negative consequences of cultural diversity in multinational IT project teams. Our research explores how culture-specific behaviors impact social capital among team members and how firms can manage the strains. In the existing IS culture literature, culture-specific behaviors are – if at all – traced back to single culture dimensions. In contrast, the approach proposed in this article goes one step further suggesting that it is necessary to combine several culture dimensions to better understand a certain culture-specific behavior and consequently be able to better manage resulting relationship problems in multinational settings. Conducting exploratory case studies in six multinational IT projects, two exemplary cultural behavior patterns (face maintenance in India and post-communism in the Czech Republic) are identified, and management actions to avoid project performance problems are derived. The results contribute to a better understanding and management of the negative impact of culture-specific behaviors in IT project teams and corroborate that research based on culture dimensions, such as those conceptualized by Hofstede or House et al., is valuable for understanding multi-country IS projects. The findings in particular suggest that aggregating these dimensions to cultural behavior patterns improves their explanatory power and consequently the management’s capability to mitigate the negative consequences of cultural diversity.

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Notes

  1. It is our goal to analyze the impact of culture-specific behaviors in multinational teams and not in cross-company teams. Consequently, our analysis will focus on the concept of national culture and not on the concept of organizational culture for analyzing the impact of cultural differences.

  2. Figure  1 looks a bit similar to a causal model, but we want to clarify that we follow a purely exploratory approach. This conceptual framework does not reflect a derived theory to be tested but serves as the starting point of our exploratory case analysis. Furthermore, we used social capital as our dependent variable rather than project success in general, because, first, as outlined in Sect. 2.2, many studies have already shown a positive relationship between these two variables and, second, social capital represents the more precise and appropriate variable for analyzing the impact of cultural issues on project team internal relationships, since it is the “natural” mediator (or: main explanation factor) between cultural aspects and project success.

  3. In doing so, the authors took into account whether a management action was only suggested by the interviewee (or whether s/he was unsure about its effectiveness) or if it was actually and successfully applied.

  4. Combinations of qualitative and quantitative approaches for transcript analysis can frequently be found in case study research. Comparable examples from the offshoring domain are Dibbern et al. (2008, pp. 346–347) or Kotlarsky and Oshri (2005, p. 44).

  5. Beside face maintenance, we found another India-specific behavior pattern raised by our German as well as Indian interview partners. However, it has been rated as less important compared to face maintenance. High in-group collectivism of Indians also means a very strong relationship to the wider family circle which, for instance, can result in Indian team members traveling thousands of kilometers overnight in case of (not even serious) illness of a more or less closely related family member and staying there until the ill relative feels better, while completely neglecting any urgent project deadline etc. As a consequence, some distrust exists on the German side if important deadlines or milestones are imminent since it is always possible that an Indian team member disappears without prior warning. Thus, high in-group collectivism of Indian team members hampers the creation of social capital (relational dimension) because of a “sudden disappearance” behavior pattern. Mr. D1 comments as follows: “If there is any problem in the wider family, they are gone. From one day to the next. They say they need a four week time-out and then they just leave. […] As a consequence, skepticism on our side is rising the closer a deadline comes. […] Yes, possibly this could also result in declining confidence on our side.” However, our German interview partners did not employ any management action to handle this issue: “In my view there is nothing you can do. […] You have to get used to it” (Mr. D1).

  6. We also want to emphasize that our findings must not be understood as blaming Indian or Czech team members as solely responsible for the relationship problems that were reported, nor do we claim that the Indian- or Czech-specific behavior is inappropriate or adverse. The German/Swiss side may indeed also show certain behaviors which contribute to relationship issues; we briefly elaborate on this in Sect. 5.

  7. The result from this comparison could be labeled as “Cultural Distance” between the respective countries (Kogut and Singh 1988).

  8. Scores for evaluating the different culture dimensions are scaled from 1 to 7.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Systems and Services, University of Bamberg, Feldkirchenstr. 21, 96052, Bamberg, Germany

    Alexander von Stetten,  Daniel Beimborn &  Tim Weitzel

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  1. Alexander von Stetten
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  2. Daniel Beimborn
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Correspondence to Alexander von Stetten.

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Accepted after three revisions by Prof. Dr. Heinzl.

This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: von Stetten A, Beimborn D, Weitzel T (2012) Auswirkungen kulturspezifischer Verhaltensmuster auf das Sozialkapital in multinationalen IT-Projektteams – Ein Fallstudienansatz. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi:10.1007/s11576-012-0322-6.

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von Stetten, A., Beimborn, D. & Weitzel, T. Analyzing and Managing the Impact of Cultural Behavior Patterns on Social Capital in Multinational IT Project Teams. Bus Inf Syst Eng 4, 137–151 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-012-0214-8

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