You may have a look at the Hofstede model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions_theory

Thanks

Another set of dimensions is House et al's GLOBE model. Neither are to my thinking very good.

Thanks. Will take a look

Thanks, Wioletta.

I personally think the idea of national cultural stereotypes is potentially very misleading and would encourage a more inductive and open-ended approach. Why do you think you need a model to start with? Is it not enough to acknowledge possible socio-cultural distance and take it from there?

I agree with Par. The concept of a "national culture" is problematic. See Myers, M. D. and F. B. Tan (2002). "Beyond Models of National Culture in Information Systems Research." Journal of Global Information Management 10(2).

There is an interesting debate on this: Baskerville, R. F. (2003). "Hofstede never studied culture." Accounting, Organizations and Society 28(1): 1-14. Hofstede replied with Hofstede, G. (2003). "What is culture? A reply to Baskerville." Accounting, Organizations and Society 28: 811-813.

I'm not sure what your research entails, but using these scales are all problematic.

While we are talking about nations culture, I would like to remind, that this topic is directly concerned with humans. Therefore, we will not find fixed theories that handles with this. But we still need to do further work. Hofsted and house; presented good work in this area, and Douglas also.. This means that researchers can continue from their results, and find temporarily solution for some cases.

I done a good work in this area, if you like just email me please.....

Par, many thanks for your important comment. In fact, I started out with an inductive grounded theory approach in mind. However, I had to change my mind due to time and resource constraints. Above all, gaining entry into organizations for grounded theory research proved very difficult.

Micheal, thanks for the suggestions. My doctoral (cross-cultural) research attempts to understand how cultural factors affect ( if at all) the ability of organizations to effectively use IS/IT to achieve goals. Myers and Tans paper is very useful, I will take a look a Baskerville's paper as well.

Many thanks Ismail.

I think Hofstede's national cultural dimension is still relevant to research in particular in information systems. Several work has demonstrated effect of these dimensions on IT use and even in knowledge management. For some of us who have experience working in different culture, it is very easy to see the practical relevance. One of the things that you want to consider is potential for theory development in a multilevel analysis where both organizational and individual level analysis may be relevant to your research problem. Srite et al. (2006) MISQ paper for instane give some discussion on this. That work in particular is interesting and I am currently working on similar issue both in a different domain. Here, you will see that even for people within the same country there is potential to distinguish different behaviors based on how their reaction as measured by the cultural dimensions. I encourage you to look at the Srite et al. (2006) paper. I believe that multidimensional analysis is useful tool for new theory design especially in cultures that are different from where more theory exists and or multicultural environments or virtual teams where cross-cultural issues are very relevant.

Many thanks, Francis. Will take a look at Srite's 2006, paper.

I have to agree with Francis. My own research in the area of Global Software Development bares testament to that fact. I also found the work of T. E. Hall and Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner of value. While this is the case It is also important to stress when considering culture that it is a sensitive subject and not the depiction of wooden stereotypes. Cultures are made up of individuals who are not all the same. That said there are common characteristics that distinguish one culture from another. Therefore as P. R. Harris and R. T. Moran state in their book on managing cultural differences in this context there are general activities, issues and approaches that need to be recognized and cannot be ignored.

Thanks Casey. Opinion seems to be divided. Some argue that culture dimensions stereotype nations and therefore IS researchers should adopt different approaches to culture research (e.g Myers and Tan, 2002). However, on a practical level, culture dimensions are very useful.

If you want to review my research in the area check out my relevant publications on http://www.valcasey.eu/Publications.html or you can find them in Google Scholar

I appreciate the link. Will take a look. Thanks.

Valentine, I have identified some papers among your publications that are relevant to my research. Eg Culture in global software development, Imparting the importance of culture to global software development, and Leveraging or Exploiting Cultural Difference? Thanks

Srite and Karahanna's 2006 paper seems problematic to me. What they are really investigating is the the respondents' perceptions of what should be not what is. So they are not really investigating the effects of culture but rather the relationship of the respondents' opinions to their dependent variable.

I have found that both Hofstede and GLOBE are very susceptible to population differences and thus tend not to replicate across different populations. Hofstede's measures have been shown to have issues e.g. Spector, P. E., C. L. Cooper, et al. (2001). "An International Sudy of the Psychometric Properties of the Hostede Values Survey Module 1994: A Comparison of Individual and Country/Province Level Results." Applied Psychology: An International Review 50(2): 369-281. Hofstede however has a reply: Hofstede, G. (2002). "The Pitfalls of Cross-National Survey Research: A Reply to the Article by Spector et al. on the Psychometric Properties of the Hofstede Values Survey Model 1994." Applied Psychology: An International Review 51(1): 170-178.

Also, in my research in Germany, China and US I found that I could not replicate GLOBE's results despite careful handling of the variables. What I was able to show was that the response patterns were different in China from the US and Germany. Couldn't explain however why they would be different. See my dissertation for this issue.

I believe that these scales have issues with their psychometric properties, e.g. GLOBE's measures are formative and they are treated as reflective by GLOBE.

I agree with you that doing case study research is extremely difficult in terms of finding a research site especially for a time constrained doctoral student. However, I believe that it is the best way to approach it. Culture seems to be really an ideological social structure that you really have to live within in order to understand it. See Archer (1988) Culture and Agency, The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. I found this to be truly helpful in understanding culture.

Thanks ever so much, Michael Cuellar. The use of cultural dimensions is popular in research . However, cultural dimensions are criticized for perceiving culture as static and falling neatly onto a particular set of predefined dimensions of validity. Myers and Tan (2002) suggest that culture should seen as dynamic, temporal and emergent.

I am still considering different options, including Anthony Giddens' Structurational Theory, suggested by Walsham (2002) as a theoretical approach to analyze culture. I will consider Archer's (1988) work on Culture and Agency, The Place of Culture in Social Theory.

If you're considering structuration theory, here's a couple of interesting articles:

Archer, M. S. (1982). "Morphogenesis versus Structuration: On Combining Structure and Action." The British Journal of Sociology 33(4): 455-483.

Mutch, A. (2007). Concerns with "Mutual Constitution": A Critical Realist Commentary. Issues and Trends in Technology and Human Interaction. B. C. Stahl. Hershey, PA, IRM Press: 230-244.

Cheers! Michael

Hi,

Check out the work of Isabelle Walsh, might be in french though

Thanks for the suggestion, Gwendolyn. I had the opportunity to meet Isabelle Walsh at EM Strasbourg in 2012 at the AIM Workshop on IT, Culture and Globalization. Will check her work out.

If you are trying structuration theory, I would suggest you have a look at Adaptive Structuration theory, particularly the updated piece from 2004: Poole, M. S., and DeSanctis, G. 2004. “Structuration Theory in Information Systems Research: Methods and Controversies,” in The Handbook of Information Systems Research, M. E. Whitman and A. B. Woszczynski (eds.), Hershey, Pa: Idea Group. I suggest this piece, because of the persistent criticism of structuration theory in IS work that it cannot be used for prediction, or as one prior president of AIS told me: "structuration is not a theory" The 2004 piece helps explain how to operationalize structuration and make predictions - for example could be applied to culture. A subsequent work with my co-authors also expands on this notion and may be useful: Bostrom, R. P., Gupta, S., and Thomas, D. M. 2009. “A Meta-Theory for Understanding Information Systems within Socio-Technical Systems,” Journal of Management Information Systems (26), pp. 17–47.

Thanks Dominic for drawing my attention to adoptive structuration theory. Just retrieved the papers two papers you suggested. Cheers!

Some other articles on Structuration that you will need to look at especially in terms of adaptive structuration theory: Orlikowski (2000) takes on adaptive structuration theory calling it not faithful to structuration theory. Then Jones and Karsten (2008) in MISQ review the uses of structuration theory in the IS literature and give a perspective on AST. Poole replied to this also in MISQ 2008 taking exception to Jones and Karsten's article and attempting to correct their presentation. Jones, et al (2004) is also a useful summary of Structuration Theory.

There is also an entire series of articles in the Scandinavian Journal of IS, beginning with Rose, Jones and Truex (2005) which take on structuration theory. What is really interesting about this is that in Orlikowski (2005), Orlikowski appears to throw in the towel and concede the point that structuration theory doesn't deal well with with the IT artifact. That just blew my mind! Especially since she was one of the key people introducing structuration theory to the IS literature!

Seems like you will be doing a lot of heavy reading!

Best wishes on selecting a theoretic approach!

Orlikowski, W. J. (2000). "Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations." Organization Science 11(4): 404-428.

Jones, M. and H. Karsten (2008). "Gidden's Structuration Theory and Information systems Research." MIS Quarterly 32(1): 127-157.

Rose, J., M. Jones, et al. (2005). "Socio-Theoretic Accounts of IS: The Problem of Agency." Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 17(1): 133-152.

Orlikowski, W. J. (2005). "Material Works: Exploring the Situated Entanglement of Technological Performativity and Human Agency." Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 17(1): 183-186.

Jones, M., W. J. Orlikowski, et al. (2004). Structuration Theory and Information Systems: A Critical Reappraisal. Social Theory and Philosophy for Information Systems. J. Mingers and L. Willcocks. Chichester, John Wiley & Sons: 297-328.

Hi Michael, I appreciate the reading list! It contains some of the best papers on structuration theory in IS. I have read Orlikowski’s (2000) and Jones and Karsten’s (2008) papers, I will find the rest. The heavy reading will help bring clarity on the best way forward. Cheers!

You may also want to have a look at two recent award-winning PhD theses from Sweden that both use structuration theory. Could give you some ideas maybe.

Anders Olof Larsson, Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, "Doing Things in Relation to Machines – Studies on Online Interactivity"

Annika Andersson, Informatics department, Örebro University, "Learning to learn in e-Learning: constructive practices for development"

More info at, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Börje_Langefors_Best_Doctoral_Dissertation_Award

Hej Pär. I have been able to find the theses you suggested. I hope to learn a number of ideas on how proceed with structuration theory. Tack så mycket!

Godfried, if you found the theses, could you please share the URLs.

Hi John

Find the URLS below

http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:512270

http://oru.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:310100

You should explore the concept of Human Action. Then you can forget about all these wobbly national characteristics studies that really have no scientific significance. Here is an abstract about Human Action: https://mises.org/daily/5899/

And here is the full book online: https://mises.org/page/1470/Human_Action_HTML

what about the old Hofstede?