The Management of Distributed Projects Across Cultures
Submitted by Sabine Reljic on Mon, 09/17/2007 - 00:00.
First, I have to provide some disclaimers: I had to read the article
slowly, with a pen, and sometimes re-read some passages. I have clearly
a few things to catch up with cross-cultural management literature.
and that's fine, that's why I join the team. To learn. So please, be
patient with me if there is some questions or concerns that I am
raising where you would consider there is no questions or concern to
have. So here we go (let's try "trust"):
- What do you think about their method of using
Hofstede's national level characteristics to understand individual group
members?
I was convinced by Evaristo's use of Hofstede's model to support his arguments. However, I was not convinced by the Hofstede's model completely. This leads me to questions a few of Evaristo' statements.
My first concern is about the reliability of the 1980s analysis of the world cultural dymanics by Hofstede and the usage of such tool for today's more global society (both humanly -people relocate more-, and technologically -communication and netiquettes have been discussed since).
Second, I have a fundamental doubt that national characteristics can be generalized to the individuals, especially if Evaristo is going to use them for cross-cultural projects. a) I think that national characteristics are more a product of political manipulation on the general population more than a geo-cultural influence from the people (although I have nothing to substantiate this except my own traveling and observing experiences). b) I would tend to believe (just an hypothesis right now) that individuals such as ourselves, would fall in the cracks of Hofstede's model as "exceptions" or "anomalies." The reason is that we self-selected to be part of this group, knowing the group's proposed goals. Those goals have somehow already helped in determining who (individualism/collaborative, etc) would be interested in participating. Also, should we assume that Minjuan and I are more collaborative and more feminine in our cultural characteristics according to Hofstede (i.e., because we are both from a more "social" -with differences of degree- countries, i.e., China and France)? How would some 12 and 15 years of being in the United States count toward possibly changing one's "original" tendencies? Does Hofstede's model allow for such variable in the individual's cultural make-up? All these questions are valid for all of the other members due to the extensive traveling or global awareness that most of the group has experienced (based on the posted bio)...hence, already influenced one's "native" country characteristics.
Third, Hofstede's model was certainly drawn from thousands or more samples of individuals across countries....the IMPDET team is made up of one individual from one country. I think that it would be a stretch, and possibly a danger, for us to draw cultural conclusions on each of our native origins. Not to completely dismiss Hofstede's model, I think that this is still a place to start....but maybe it is time to update the model to today's more wired and global world?
Fourth, (p65 last paragraph), "distributed projects have a natural tendency to flatten the perceived hierarchy, since direct managers become less visible"...how so? I thought that culture dictates relationships. So if my native culture has trained me to understand that decisions are made by the manager of the project, why/how does the technology force me to change that? The rest of the paragraph (continues p66) feels more like a westerner/US (i.e., more individualistic) bias on the part of the author.
(One non-content-related problem I had with the article in general is some general organization of ideas in paragraphs or APA formatting. I am under scrutiny right now -or rather a couple of articles of mine are- and APA being my doom so far, I got a little annoyed at some lack of APA formating, such as p60, paragraph 4, list of authors and dates is not alphabetized; or citing "Marks et al. (2001)" p60, end of paragraph 5, when "Marks et al." have never been cited before). Sorry for the nitpicking.
- We are kind of in the "transition process"
with this research group. How have you felt about the degree of ambiguity
regarding what exactly we will be doing? Would you prefer this group to be
either more flexible (defining your own role) or prefer a structure that
is more pre-determined with someone telling you exactly what is happening
and what your role is?
p63: "In the transition processes, the level of task structure or formalization is lowest", dealing with a lower structure, more uncertainty, and possible power distance issues. I am quite at ease with the current state of this research team. And based on this reading, it has become more evident (to me) that we are following a certain protocol for a successful cross-cultural distributed project team. We had to answer a few questions (not to mention the now obvious "trust" question), publish a bio, discuss a couple of personal items, heard each other's voices...So I would speculate (quite knowingly based on the goals established for the team) that we are our own participants in figuring out a possible argument or new model for multicultural collaborative teams.
In fact, I have indexed a couple of paragraphs as "IMPDET" such as p62 paragraph 3, and p66 paragraph 3. I even wrote "IMPDET challenge?" in the margin of paragraph 3 p66 last sentence: "...if in addition to distance across locations, the cultural heterogenerity of groups is high, it is harder to develop trust among stakeholders."
Right now, I feel on target, knowing what is asked of me (role and task). I think that this could be interpreted in me feeling safe right now, in the role of the learner...
- In your opinion, how much does culture really matter in
distributed teams? In what way?
I think that culture is extremely important. As I said earlier, Hofstede is a good place to start, but the world and societies have changed since the '80s. So I would not dismiss Hofstede's cultural model, but would be interested to see how we can alter it so that it is a better predictor of the current technologically-enhanced neo-web 3.0 world. Not to mention that our team is made of individuals already being "anomalies" (what are the global stats equivalent to "20% of Americans have a passport"? or geography literacy and global awareness? or terminal degree holders?). So "distributed teams" would also have to be "defined" as academic, business, etc...with most likely differing distinctive characteristics.
I think that culture matters in distributed teams because of being culturally awaress provides a "safe platform," i.e., allowance for misunderstanding, explanations not taken personally, egos a little more in check, appreciation for each other's knowledge of/gap in the language of mediation, etc.I think that Culture is very important in bringing creativity, new ideas, and other motivational elements to a distributed teams due to the different world views on problems/questions/tasks.
And it could also be a reason for a disastrous project (for all the reasons cited above). Hence trust.
Thoughtful Reading
You seem to be very good at not only reading material, but asking questions of it to digest it. Especially when coming across ideas for the first time. Thanks for your thoughtful post. And I know what you mean about spotting APA mistakes - I thought that comment was funny!
Some of my reactions were very similar to yours. Already you have probably seem how Javier has posted some things which I think address some of the traditional concerns with Hofstede (e.g. In his post he has included: a study which states that "national character does not reflect mean personality trait"; A criticism by Brendan McSweeney to Hofstede; Hofstede's reply to McSweeney).
This is a little section from my dissertation that helped me think about it all:
"Although work like Hofstede’s has made a valuable contribution in being one of the few empirically supported frameworks to conceptualize where some of the differences may lay between cultural groups, unfortunately, it is based on national differences. Maitland and Bauer (2001) argue that when based on national differences, theoretical dimensions of cultural variability are too easily used to make unfounded and unhelpful stereotypical assumptions about individual learners. While examining the diffusion of the Internet, Maitland and Bauer call this problem the “ecological fallacy”; that is, “the impulse to apply group or societal level characteristics onto individuals within that group” (p. 90). This is a mistake because the more generalized the descriptions of a group are (in order to get statistically significant quantitative data) the less likely these descriptions will apply to any one individual. I agree with Maitland and Bauer’s conclusion, “national level characteristics must not be interpreted at the individual level” (p. 90).
So, yes I also think Hofstede's work is helpful in some ways in making people aware that there are cultural differences and as a starting point for conceptualizing what some of them are - but always caution must be taken against the over-generalizations and stereo-typifications that are likely to occur.
Additionally you mentioned a couple of times how we in this group are most likely anomalies to his suggested ideas. I hope this doesn't get too tedious, but I thought this section from my dissertation also helped me to understand that really everyone is an anomaly in some ways:
"In addition to the general culture of whole societies (e.g. Chinese culture, American culture, Italian culture, etc.), there exist many sub-cultures (e.g. farmers, professors, architects, teenagers, etc.), each with their own unique set of terminology, values and norms. Looi (2003) points out that in this way, “a learner may belong to multiple cultures at the same time” (p. 47). He explained how there are personal sub-cultures (e.g. learning styles, attitude styles, preferences) and learning community sub-cultures (e.g. differences due to community, school, etc.), all under the general culture of the whole societies. Spronk (2004) also identified how academics and media form sub-cultures, which need to be taken into consideration especially with post-secondary online instruction. Indeed within any one culture there is much variability of individual differences and care needs to be taken not to unduly stereotype learners.
In the field of Multicultural Counseling, Arredondo, Toporek, Brown, Jones, Sanchez and Stadler (1996) describe how sub-cultures are created by identifying three dimensions of multicultural counseling competencies:
1. “A” Dimensions (Age, Culture, Gender, Language, Physical Challenge, Race, Sexual Orientation, Social Class)
2. “B” Dimensions (Geographic Location, Income, Marital Status, Religion, Work Experience, Citizenship Status, Military Experience, Hobbies/Recreational Interests)
3. “C” Dimensions (Historical Moments Time)
The “A” dimension represents immutable characteristics, the “C” dimension represents the major historical, political, sociocultural, and economic legacies – and both of these dimensions influence what happens to an individual in dimension “B”. The authors explain the purpose of the model is to demonstrate “the complexity and holism of individuals,” and that “despite the categories we may all fit into or that are assigned to us, the combination of these affiliations is what makes everyone unique” (p. 54). Similar to conceptions of our own identity, culture is dynamic and evolving."
That is one way to think about it anyway. I'm sure there are others.
At the same time, I am considering the possibility of each team member taking the test that indicates where each of us falls on Hofstede's dimensions, just out of curiosity (and perhaps research purposes). It might be interesting to see where each of us align in comparison to our native country, country of residence, and each other. What do you think of that idea? How might we integrate it into a specific research question? (And those questions are for anyone, not just Sabine).
Our own Hofstede's
Our own Hofstede's dimensions: I think that this is a great idea. I am very interested to see how my individual "culture" measures compared to my native country/residence country and how it might identify some interesting tendencies/characteristics of this group's dynamics.
Subcultures and dimensions: This is very interesting. Finding research or readings on how these subcultures and dimensions (A,B,C,D) transfer into or evolve in a computer mediated environment would answer a few questions for our multidisciplinary multinational group interactions. But also, it would be interesting to know in order to be able to develop or choose the relevant "conferencing" media for learning or teaching. I am thinking about distance learning /teaching and how much the choice of the media (audio and text, or video audio and text) can effect the student's perception of social presence and instructor immediacy (and how this possibly influences learning outcomes), but also how the culture (including subculture and dimensions) of the students and the instructor translate through the chosen media, how it influences the perception of immediacy and social presence (instructor to student). I have been reading Maria Schutt's dissertation (2007) in which she addresses the research question of CMC and social presence and instructor immediacy. The verbal and non verbal immediacy and social presence behavior cues are manipulated to answer her research question. But culture has not been considered as an item of research (quite justifiably....I can't imagine how time consuming it would have been to include such variables). Also, my research question is how would these verbal and non verbal behaviors be perceived when performed via an avatar (as in Second Life as the medium of communication), and how culture transpires through an avatar (if it does transpire). What are the questions then? choice of avatar (male, female, furry, ..)? gestures displayed by avatar? Obviously I am still in the process of narrowing down my dissertation research question, but the main ideas are here. And I have this nagging feeling that I've got some answers in front of me while reading everyone's post on this research group wiki.
Dissertation citations: Thank you for the references. And incidentally, congratulations for the great news (dissertation being published as a book)...I found out while trying to locate your dissertation.
Hi Sabine! Just a quick
Hi Sabine!
Just a quick comment after reading your post. I agree with you in many of the aspects you have pointed out about Hofstede (I am writing my post right now and there I would like to explain those in more detail). To get to the point, when you said:
In my opinion the author wanted to state the fact that hierarchy (aka, "the boss") is not as visible as in non-distributed projects and sideways are easier to develop.
I see.....but if I follow
I see.....but if I follow the author's argument -which is based on Hofstede's model- how did he come to that statement? unless he assumes that the more individualist groups/individuals would indeed develop sideway communications....which leads me to think that since the author has not specify the group he was talking about, that he faulted his assumption to a generalized statement on all national groups. Would not that be a flaw even in his own logic? Now, granted, I recognize that I am not familiar with Hofstede in detail. I'll get to the documents you provided soon, though. thanks.