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ECIS560: Introduction to IS and E-Commerce

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Government interference in computer market. IS Concerns vary by country ... British know about Jackson Methodology... unknown in US. Belgians more 'process-oriented' ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: ECIS560: Introduction to IS and E-Commerce


1
ECIS560 Introduction to IS and E-Commerce
  • Global IT Management

2
Categorizing nations
  • Advanced Countries
  • United States
  • European countries
  • Australia
  • Newly Industrialized Countries
  • Singapore
  • Developing Countries
  • India
  • Lesser Developed Countries
  • African countries

3
Advanced countries US top 5 issues
  • 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

4
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

5
Advanced countries Australia top 5 issues
  • Improve IT strategic planning
  • Building a responsive IT structure
  • Aligning IS and corporate goals
  • Effective use of data resources
  • IS for competitive advantage

6
Newly Industrialized Countries Singapore top 5
issues
  • Measuring and improving IS effectiveness
  • Managing end-user computing
  • Keeping current with new technology
  • Integrating data, office automation, and
    telecommunications
  • Training

7
Developing countries India top 5 issues
  • Understanding contribution of IS
  • Human resources for IS
  • Quality of input data
  • Educating senior managers about IS
  • Developing user-friendly systems

8
Lesser Developed Countries African top 5 issues
  • Obsolescence of hardware
  • Obsolescence of software
  • Proliferation of mixed vendor shops
  • Availability of skilled MIS people
  • Government interference in computer market

9
IS Concerns vary by country

Infrastructure Issues
Operational Issues
Management and Control Issues
Strategic Issues
Under-developed countries
Developing countries
Newly Industrialized
Advanced countries
(from Palvia and Palvia, 1996)
10
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

11
Dimensions Influencing Key IS Issues
National Culture
Key IS Issues
Technological Status
Political/Legal Environment
Economic Structure
12
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

13
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

14
Economic structure
  • Level of economic advancement influences the IS
    issues that are important
  • Usually indicated by GDP

15
IS Concerns vary by countryGDP

Infrastructure Issues
Operational Issues
Management and Control Issues
Strategic Issues
Under-developed countries
Developing countries
Newly Industrialized
Advanced countries
(from Palvia and Palvia, 1996)
16
Cultureisnt 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.

17
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

18
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

19
Dimensions of Culture
  • Hofstede
  • Power Distance
  • Individualism/Collectivism
  • Masculinity/Femininity
  • Uncertainty Avoidance
  • Confucianism/Dynamism
  • Hall
  • Space
  • Material Goods
  • Friendship
  • Time
  • Agreement

20
Hofstedes 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

21
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

22
Individualism/Collectivism
  • Extent to which individual sees themselves as
    part of a group
  • Individualistic Cultures
  • Expected to have opinions
  • Stress personal achievements
  • Independence
  • Individual rights
  • Collectivist Cultures
  • Harmony
  • Welfare group

23
Implications for IS Management?
  • Systems Design
  • Inherently group effort
  • Process designed for conflict
  • Incentive Schemes
  • Reward individual or group?

24
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

25
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

26
Confucianism/Dynamism
  • Recent addition to cultural dimensions
  • Here-and-now vs. future
  • Confucian traits
  • Thrift
  • Persistence
  • Diligence
  • Patience
  • Patriarchal authority

27
Halls 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

28
Halls 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

29
Halls 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

30
High Vs. Low Context Cultures
Japanese, Chinese, Mediterranean, Latin, Indian
High context (Implicit details)
American, German, English, Scandinavian
Low context (Explicit details)
31
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

32
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)

33
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

34
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

35
Global Information Systems
  • Information Technology (IT) facilitates the
    global transformation of business
  • Crossing border poses challenges to technology
    managers
  • geographic
  • legal
  • cultural
  • temporal
  • need radical changes to existing technology
    infrastructures and management

36
Types of global enterprises
  • Devised by Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989)
  • International
  • Global
  • Multinational
  • Transnational

37
The International Strategy
  • Subsidiaries leverage parent competencies
  • Coordinated federation

38
Global
  • RD, manufacturing done at HQ
  • Strategic decisions are centralized
  • Central hub

39
Multinational
  • Multidomestic
  • Aims at local responsiveness
  • Knowledge developed/retained at subsidiary level
  • Decentralized federation

40
Transnational
  • Shared decision-making
  • Complex coordination
  • Centers of excellence
  • Dispersed resources
  • Integrated network

41
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

42
The Global IT Strategies
  • Intellectual Synergy
  • Headquarters Driven
  • Independent IT Operations
  • Global Integrated IT
  • IS managers strive for best fit between above
    strategy and perceived global strategy

43
Intellectual Synergy
  • 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

44
Headquarters Driven
  • All IT-related decisions made by headquarters
  • Goal is
  • To achieve efficiency
  • To avoid duplication of development effort

45
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

46
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

47
Empirical Findings
  • Data collected from 109 global companies
  • Moderate level of fit number of misfits
  • Misfits explained by problems with
  • Hardware/software vendor support quality
  • Telecommunications support
  • Senior management support for IT
  • Pressure for cost savings
  • Subsidiary resistance

48
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

49
Factors Affecting Global Software Teams
  • Catalyst factors
  • Sustaining factors
  • Size factors
  • Vision factors

50
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

51
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

52
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

53
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

54
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

55
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

56
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

57
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

58
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

59
Sustaining factors
  • Distance from distractions
  • Away from the maddening crowd.. No distractions
    of a world headquarters
  • European site called Santas little helpers
  • Foreign team members live near their homes, with
    their families. High loyalty and work ethic

60
Sustaining factors
  • Experience
  • Remotes sites have climbed the learning curve
  • Experience at distant sites can be leveraged into
    centers of excellence

61
Size Factors
  • Scale
  • Single location IS shops can soon become too
    large and unwieldy
  • Baans expansion to other countries was based on
    size issues
  • Microsoft moved away from its single center ethos
    for same reason

62
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 hierarchicalmore network-like structure

63
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
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