East vs. West: Culture and Distributed Development

CowboyRobot writes "ACM's Queue has an article entitled, Culture Surprises in Remote Software Development Teams that reviews differences in cultures and explores the impact they have on distributed software development teams. From the article: "In Western societies, decisions are made on the basis of input from those involved. In cultures with greater hierarchies, group members assume an authority will decide and they are only to enact the decision." Some stereotypes and some common sense, but I recognized myself in the descriptions of the 'typical American'."

Comments

Re:Where Does Europe Fit In This?

[zoney_ie]

Not so amusing when you're a European!

Still, it does mean that all the things we in Europe don't like about Western civilisation, we can deride without reference to ourselves. Blame it all on the Americans. That's what the US gets for claiming to be the origin of so much "Western civilisation". (Of course, technically it's all Europe's fault - in the historical sense)