ITP
15,4
306
Information Technology & People,
Vol. 15 No. 4, 2002, pp. 306-320.
# MCB UP Limited, 0959-3845
DOI 10.1108/09593840210453106
Situating culture in the global
information sector
Judith Y. Weisinger
Management Department, College of Business and Economics,
New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA, and
Eileen M. Trauth
School of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State
University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Keywords Cross-cultural management, Research, Information technology, Globalization,
Workforce, Ireland
Abstract Presents a theoretical approach to understanding the local culture of firms in the
multinational information sector. Called situating culture, this approach holds that cultural
understanding is locally situated, behavioral and embedded in everyday, socially negotiated work
practices. The application of this theory is provided through cases from the workplace cultures of
US multinational IT firms operating in Ireland. These examples show how the local culture of a
global IT firm represents the interaction of industry, corporate and national contexts. It results in
locally situated work practices and distinct socially negotiated realities that ultimately impact
behavior in these settings. The theoretical approach of situating culture contributes to a better
understanding of contextualism in the cross-cultural IT environment. This understanding, in
turn, has implications for future cross-cultural IS research as well as for cross-cultural
IT practice.
Introduction
Accompanying the technological developments of recent decades and the
overall trend toward globalization with respect to both business and IT, has
come the potential for increasing standardization and homogeneity of IT
products and services. For example, Schroeder (1989) reflected the
``conventional wisdom'' that a standard logic for MRP obviated the need for
each company to reinvent this logic. More recently, enterprise systems such as
SAP have been developed in the hope of achieving increased organizational
control through information technology in both domestic and cross-cultural
settings. By logical extension, it could be expected that this movement would
include the global homogenization of IT work as well. Meadows (1996)
explored this notion in his discussion of globalizing software development.
However, against this trend is another body of literature which argues that
diversity persists in the ways that the local cultures of individual organizations
around the globe adapt standard practices, rules, technologies, etc. (Fleck, 1994;
Grant, 2000; Kidd and Yau, 2000; Kumar and van Hillegersberg, 2000; Markus
et al., 2000; Soh et al., 2000; Walsham, 2001). This idea of localized knowledge
has also been explored in Escobar (1995) who asserts that the taken-for-granted
notion of economic development is socially constructed to reinforce and
reproduce existing Western power structures (i.e. the construction of ``less
developed countries''). He advocates local knowledge stemming from the
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