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

This is not news

[KingOfBLASH]

The difference between east and west culture and the ramifications for the world have been in the news for a long time. For instance, the traditional religions in Asia have absolutely no problems with cloning or experimentation on embryos (which is basically verboten in western countries), so the majority of work in that field is in China or other countries which accept the future for what it is. The global marketplace is shrinking, and as we become more and more interconnected cultural differences will no doubt become more and more of an issue.

Culture and Nationality correlation is exagerated

[rcastro0]

The correlation between culture (as defined in the article) and nationality is very, ver often exagerated. At least that is my experience, after having worked/studied in plenty of multinational environments and with people of multiple nationalities.

Stereotypes do apply, but anti-stereotypes are plenty, as well. You will find the organized Greek, the warm German, the shy Italian, the Brazilian who does not like soccer and the American who knows world geography.

I have experienced much more consistent cultural environments going from ony company (corporate culture) to another, than crossing national borders. I have seen corporate environments absorb various nationalities, even operating in different countries, and retaining its own (original) corporate culture. And I have seen, as well, plenty of cultural clashes and disagreement over world view within more than one country.

The internet makes the dissociation between nationality/geography and culture even starker. /.ers, for example, have a cultural outlook more similar to one another than to the average of his/her national peer. Same applies to many other online communities.