Transcript Document

ECIS560: Introduction to IS and
E-Commerce
Global IT Management
Categorizing nations
• Advanced Countries
– United States
– European countries
– Australia
• Newly Industrialized Countries
– Singapore
• Developing Countries
– India
• Lesser Developed Countries
– African countries
Advanced countries: US top 5
issues
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Aligning IS and corporate goals
Instituting cross-functional systems
Organizing and utilizing data
Reengineering the business processes
through the use of technology
• Improving IS human resource
Advanced countries: Europe top
5 issues
• Instituting cross-functional systems
• Improving IS human resource
• Reengineering the business process through
the use of technology (tied for 3rd place)
• Cutting IS costs (tied for 3rd place)
• Creating an information architecture
Advanced countries: Australia
top 5 issues
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Improve IT strategic planning
Building a responsive IT structure
Aligning IS and corporate goals
Effective use of data resources
IS for competitive advantage
Newly Industrialized Countries :
Singapore top 5 issues
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Measuring and improving IS effectiveness
Managing end-user computing
Keeping current with new technology
Integrating data, office automation, and
telecommunications
• Training
Developing countries: India top
5 issues
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Understanding contribution of IS
Human resources for IS
Quality of input data
Educating senior managers about IS
Developing user-friendly systems
Lesser Developed Countries:
African top 5 issues
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Obsolescence of hardware
Obsolescence of software
Proliferation of mixed vendor shops
Availability of skilled MIS people
Government interference in computer
market
IS Concerns vary by country
Infrastructure
Issues
Operational
Issues
Underdeveloped
countries
Developing
countries
Management and
Control Issues
Newly
Industrialized
Strategic Issues
Advanced
countries
(from Palvia and Palvia, 1996)
Based on the Issues….
• Number of country specific factors
influence issues rankings
• The issues themselves are often a reflection
of the economic development of a nation
• Global IS managers must be aware of the
specific country issues and the factors that
influence them
Dimensions Influencing Key IS
Issues
National Culture
Technological Status
Political/Legal Environment
Economic Structure
Key IS Issues
Technological Status
• Pagers in Angola?
• Telephone lines in South America
• Economic status affects this factor
– Gulf countries became economic powers in the
1970s and only recently started investing in
infrastructure
Political and Legal environment
• Political transformation in Eastern Europe
has impacted businesses, and in turn, IS and
IT
• EU laws will require great changes in
existing systems and procedures
• Restrictions in Internet use in various
countries affects Electronic Commerce
Economic structure
• Level of economic advancement influences
the IS issues that are important
• Usually indicated by GDP
IS Concerns vary by country
GDP
Infrastructure
Issues
Operational
Issues
Underdeveloped
countries
Developing
countries
Management and
Control Issues
Newly
Industrialized
Strategic Issues
Advanced
countries
(from Palvia and Palvia, 1996)
Culture…isn’t everyone basically
the same?
• Japanese prefer fax to email…
• Israelis are not big users of word-processing
packages
• Indian programmers are too polite…
• In Spain, the “OK” symbol is considered
vulgar
• Malaysian programmers may be fluent in
English but have no idea of slang terms….
What is Culture?
• “…culture is defined as an integrated
system of learned behavior patterns that are
characteristic of the members of any
society. It includes everything a group
thinks, says, does, and makes – its customs,
language, material artifacts, and shared
systems of attitudes and feelings “
- Czinkota, et al (1996), p.298
Researchers agree that…
• Culture is learned and shared from
generation to generation
• Cultural norms may be acquired through
parents, schools, religious organizations,
and social organizations
• Elements of culture include both verbal and
non-verbal language, religion, values and
attitudes, perceptions, and protocols
Dimensions of Culture
• Hofstede
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Power Distance
Individualism/Collectivism
Masculinity/Femininity
Uncertainty Avoidance
Confucianism/Dynamism
• Hall
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Space
Material Goods
Friendship
Time
Agreement
Hofstede’s Dimensions of
Culture
• Conducted between 1967-1978
• Collected over 100,000 surveys from IBM
employees around the world
• Single, consistent control group
• National differences emerge despite strong
corporate culture
Power distance
• Also referred to as Revering Hierarchy
• Extent to which subordinates expect and
accept the fact that power is distributed
unequally in a firm
• Some cultures see large gaps between
hierarchical levels
• Panama scores highest, Israel lowest
Individualism/Collectivism
• Extent to which individual sees themselves as part
of a group
• Individualistic Cultures
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Expected to have opinions
Stress personal achievements
Independence
Individual rights
• Collectivist Cultures
– Harmony
– Welfare group
Implications for IS Management?
• Systems Design
– Inherently group effort
– Process designed for conflict
• Incentive Schemes
– Reward individual or group?
Masculinity/Femininity
• Taking care of business
– “toughness” in meeting goals
– “softness” in taking care of people and quality
of life
• Japan ranks as highly masculine
• Scandinavian countries rank low
• Implications?
– Work hours
Uncertainty Avoidance
• Attitudes towards risk, ambiguity,
predictability, and control
• “High avoidance” cultures place emphasis
on stability
• “Low avoidance” countries embrace change
and innovation
• Japanese high on Uncertainty Avoidance
• Hong Kong low on Uncertainty Avoidance
Confucianism/Dynamism
• Recent addition to cultural dimensions
• Here-and-now vs. future
• Confucian traits
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Thrift
Persistence
Diligence
Patience
Patriarchal authority
Hall’s Dimensions of Culture
• Space
– Close-talker?
– Queues
• Materialism
– Danish CEO admired for driving old car
– Americans fight for corner office with biggest desk
– Japanese manager may sit with other employees to
downplay role of status and material goods
Hall’s Dimensions
• Friendships
– Some western cultures make and lose friends
quickly (due to high mobility)
– Other cultures may take longer to develop
relationship but long-lasting
– Holds for businesses as well … relationship
first, then business
Hall’s Dimensions
• Time
– Monochronic cultures
• See time as linear
• Events taken one at a time
• Stress on punctulaity and deadlines
– Polychronic cultures
• See time as non-linear, simulataneous, unlimited
• Plans constantly change
• Delays less important
• Germans considered monochronic, French are
polychronic
High Vs. Low Context Cultures
High context
(Implicit details)
Low context
(Explicit details)
Japanese, Chinese,
Mediterranean, Latin, Indian
American, German, English,
Scandinavian
Opinion 1: Culture Does Not
Matter
• Cougar et.al (1990)
– Compared motivation and personal growth
needs of systems analysts
– Compared US, Austria, Singapore, Israel
– Found great similarities between all countries
– Suggests overpowering effects of professional
culture
Culture not important….
• 1996 study of software development tool
preferences between Europe, Japan, US…
no significant differences
• 1989: Danish and Canadian analysts had
similar design values
– First technical values
– Second, economic values
– Sociopolitical values (concern for users)
Opinion 2: Culture matters
• Mostly anecdotal evidence…
– French better at object-oriented design
– Japanese better at metrics
– British know about Jackson Methodology…
unknown in US
– Belgians more “process-oriented”
– Americans code first and design later
Consider Japan
• Quality assurance
– Japanese fixed all bugs… regardless of severity
• Meaning of requirements
– Americans see the requirements as a contract
negotiation… Japanese do not charge for minor
changes
• Designers
– Americans tend to take a top down approach… Japan
takes bottom up approach
Global Information Systems
• Information Technology (IT) facilitates the global
transformation of business
• Crossing border poses challenges to technology
managers
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geographic
legal
cultural
temporal
• need radical changes to existing technology
infrastructures and management
Types of global enterprises
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Devised by Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989)
International
Global
Multinational
Transnational
The International Strategy
• Subsidiaries leverage parent competencies
• Coordinated federation
Global
• R&D, manufacturing done at HQ
• Strategic decisions are centralized
• Central hub
Multinational
• Multidomestic
• Aims at local responsiveness
• Knowledge developed/retained at subsidiary
level
• Decentralized federation
Transnational
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Shared decision-making
Complex coordination
Centers of excellence
Dispersed resources
Integrated network
Jarvenpaa and Ives (1993)
• Built on work by Karimi and Konsysnki
• Based their work on Information Processing
Theory (Galbraith 1973)
– Good fit when information processing
capacities of firm match requirements of
environment and technology
• Jarvenpaa and Ives develop typology of 4
global IT management configurations
The Global IT Strategies
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Intellectual Synergy
Headquarters Driven
Independent IT Operations
Global Integrated IT
IS managers strive for best fit between
above strategy and perceived global strategy
Intellectual Synergy
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Includes several global systems
Each likely to be tailored for individual use
Each run independently by the subsidiary
Subsidiary-HQ IS relationship characterized
by
– Personal contacts
– Cooperation
– Shared learning
Headquarters Driven
• All IT-related decisions made by
headquarters
• Goal is
– To achieve efficiency
– To avoid duplication of development effort
Independent IT Operations
• Independent systems initiatives in each
subsidiary
• Focus on local responsibility
• Few, if any, common systems through the
firm
• Fosters sense of systems ownership
Global Integrated IT
• Strives for worldwide integration of IT that
supports core competencies of firm
• Dispersed resources
• Numerous common systems
• Applications for non-core areas run locally
Empirical Findings
• Data collected from 109 global companies
• Moderate level of fit… number of misfits
• Misfits explained by problems with
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Hardware/software vendor support quality
Telecommunications support
Senior management support for IT
Pressure for cost savings
Subsidiary resistance
Definition
• A global virtual team is defined as
– A team in which individual members are
separated by a national boundary while actively
collaborating on a common systems project
Factors Affecting Global
Software Teams
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Catalyst factors
Sustaining factors
Size factors
Vision factors
Catalyst factors
• Specialized talent
– “programming talent” … the Watts study
showed fastest programmer was 30 times
quicker than slowest
– Global labor shortage … in 1999, 40% of IS
shops are hiring immigrants… 16% are
outsourcing
Catalyst Factors…
• Acquisitions
– Increasing global mergers and acquisitions
– Baan (based in Netherlands) acquired
Canadian, US, Spanish, and British companies
and merged them with existing sites in India
and Brazil
– Acquisitions have led to project teams suddenly
having to collaborate
Catalyst factors…
• Reduction in development costs
– Looking for low cost labor
– India is acknowledged giant of offshore
programming… earn 25-30% of US
counterparts
– Others include Philippines, Russia, China
– US workers drawn to more glamorous systems
jobs… someone still has to do the dirty work
Catalyst factors…
• Globalized presence
– Global businesses must establish themselves as
global players
– Transnational strategies suggest centers of
excellence
– Often takes the form of software development
centers around the world
Catalyst factors…
• Reduction in time-to-market
– Follow-the-sun development
– Exploit time zone differences to create a 24
work schedule on a given project
– Turns a disadvantage into an advantage
Catalyst factors
• Proximity to customer
– Systems development is a interaction-intensive
process
– Needs face-to-face communication
– Needs constant communication
– Best to have a part of the development team
local
Sustaining factors
• Once the initial desire to set up dispersed
virtual teams spurs their use, what sustains
them
• Dispersed projects usually first on chopping
block
• Natural need to “simplify” … get rid of
these complex teams
Sustaining factors
• Development rigor
– Smaller, co-located teams use informal
mechanisms for development
– Dispersion often leads to greater formalism of
coordination and control…
• Specific standards
• Specific methodologies
• Specific quality control issues
Sustaining factors
• Internal freshness
– Diversity brings innovation
– Global teams have cultural synergies
– E.g. global software manager called
architectural review meeting with systems
managers from 6 countries… their views
profoundly changed the specs of the system
Sustaining factors
• Distance from distractions
– Away from the maddening crowd.. No
distractions of a world headquarters
– European site called “Santa’s little helpers”
– Foreign team members live near their homes,
with their families…. High loyalty and work
ethic
Sustaining factors
• Experience
– Remotes sites have climbed the learning curve
– Experience at distant sites can be leveraged into
centers of excellence
Size Factors
• Scale
– Single location IS shops can soon become too
large and unwieldy
– Baan’s expansion to other countries was based
on size issues
– Microsoft moved away from its single center
ethos for same reason…
Vision factors
• Two visions of the future
– Location transparency
– Virtual organization
• “Virtualness” already exists
• Gartner group predicts 140 million people will be
telecommuting by 2003
• Virtual organizations are team-based
• Less hierarchical…more network-like structure
Managerial Techniques
• Select global software manager with mix of
technical and managerial skills
• MERIT qualities
– Multi-culturalist (switch between cultural styles)
– E-facilitator
– Recognition promoter (promotes team within
organization)
– Internationalist
– Traveler