Does Culture Matter? Ramblings on cultural sensitivity in offshoring
He described how different it was to work in a “truly multicultural” team in Canada, which surprised me, given that in his former job, he had worked for several clients in the US and Europe. He said this current experience of being an immigrant colleague was ‘different’ from being an expat from his (former) company. I guess, in his case, the dynamics of being a “consultant” versus being a full-time employee of an IT department also was weighing in though that is not the aspect of software culture he was talking about. This made me reflect: there must be something to be said about experiencing working in a multicultural team; as opposed to just reading about it.
A perennial topic in offshoring and outsourcing aspects of managing across cultures and working with people from different backgrounds is also a topic I had dwelt in extensively in a chapter of my book.
Though almost a year old, Paul Tija’s article in “Global Services” makes for an interesting read, though it does not mean that I entirely agree with the viewpoints. For instances Tija states that “Indians tend to be too optimistic about time and schedules. If an Indian is asked how much travel time is needed to reach a certain destination, the answer will probably be inaccurate and will not include the possibility of encountering traffic jams.” I wonder if he is just taking journalistic liberty in stretching the much lamented traffic woes of Indian cities with schedules and meeting deadlines. Surely he too must credit Indian software engineers with enough smarts to be able to predict their schedules in a traffic condition known to them? I am not the only one wondering about the viewpoint in the article.; Sanjay Kalra, a Bay Area technologist blogs “While many of these are cliched issues, and have been overcome to some extent, I still think that for Western managers it is a good idea to be aware of cultural idiosyncrasies and actively work to overcome them.” In all fairness, Tija does not spare Europeans either, when he states “Some Dutch even say that it is easier to work with Indians than with Belgians.” (again, on this, I will reserve my judgement)
Aspects of Cultural Sensitivity in offshoring continue to be studied by both practitioners and academics. Though the viewpoints will continue to emerge, there is hardly a short-cut to experiencing it first hand?
