This wednesday, August 18th, at 14:00, Dr. Maged Ali will give a presentation on cultural aspects of Information Technology. The study of culture is rooted in sociology, social psychology, and anthropology. In particular, cultural anthropology seeks to understand the similarities and differences among groups of people in the contemporary world. Within the last 20 years, the practical relevance of researching cultural issues, and especially comparing phenomena across cultures, was questioned (Ferraro, 1990). However, the importance of cultural issues is becoming increasingly evident in many applied disciplines; these include the management of information technology (IT) (Davison and Martinsons, 2003).
Dr. Ali will summarize through a normative literature review the milestones of studying culture in IS discipline. Although there are many different models of national culture, most IS research has tended to rely almost solely on Hofstede’s cultural model (Keil et al., 2000; Straub, 1994; Tan et al., 1995; Watson et al., 1994; Myers and Tan, 2002; Kirkman et al.2006).). This is perhaps not surprising, given that Hofstede’s typology of culture has been one of the most popular in many different fields of management (Myers and Tan, 2002). Dr. Ali argues that there are a lot of criticisms of Hofstede’s model and that apply equally well to most of the other predefined cultural models. Dr. Ali provides an alternative approach to investigate cultural influence on IS phenomena through situated culture. This is achieved via an articulation of Structuration Theory and the provision of an approach to study cross-cultural phenomena within IS discipline. Dr. Ali claimsz hat using a Structurational analysis approach contributes to identifying the cultural dimensions that are embedded in the identified mediated shared structures.
Everyone is welcome and there is no need to register in advance.
Date: 18/08/2010
Hour: 14:00
Place: IME/USP - Auditório Jacy Monteiro - Bloco B