Track chairs:

Prof. Dr. Armin Heinzl
Prof. Dorothy Leidner, Ph.D.

Track description:

As information systems as well as IT services are socio-technical in nature, the success of developing, deploying and utilizing information systems and IT services (IS/T) depends significantly on its cultural context. Culture relates to the organizational, professional and national attitudes, values, goals, and practices of the actors involved. With respect to culture, two major trends have emerged in the past decades: global standardization for achieving synergies and economies of scale versus exploitation of local talent to foster innovation. The first trend tends to neglect cultural diversity; the second one explicitly embraces it.

In the development phase, professionals from different nations with differing cultural backgrounds have continuously increased their level of cooperation in order to develop new systems and services. The success of nearshoring or offshoring projects largely depends on managing the cultural diversity of the professionals involved. In the deployment phase, the cultural assumptions of the system deployed may be significantly different from the cultural require ments of the client organization. In the use phase, the business or service processes supported are often cross-cultural as well, i.e. the cultural diversity of the actors in the business process or service eco-system needs to be taken into account as well.

Research submitted to this track should explicitly address the implications of culture for IS/T. In particular contributions are appreciated which focus on the following issues:

• Application and extension of theories and models which address cultural aspects in IS research and IT service management
• Cultural diversity in IS and IT service adoption
• Cultural issues in global virtual teams of developers or users
• Cultural differences in developing, deploying and utilizing IS and IT services
• Consequences of neglecting cultural aspects in IS and IT service development, deployment, and use
• Examples of managing the conflict between global synergies and local innovation from the perspective of large corporations
• Best-practice examples of culture specific practices in non-Western countries
• Shaping the notion of cultural intelligence, i.e. how software and service organizations explicitly account for cultural diversity in their client or developer base
• The relationship between culture and research methodology

Methodologically and epistemologically, the track is open to all approaches and perspectives. Preference will be given to studies which are theoretically grounded, which focus on cross-cultural comparisons or involve subjects who are currently working in a cross-cultural context.