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Hofstede And Cellplus Technology

CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND TEAMWORK:
A CASE STUDY OF A MAURITIAN ORGANISATION Yuan Liu Fay Sudweeks Murdoch University School of Information Technology Murdoch University Perth, Western Australia Email: lyr@rocketmail.com School of Information Technology Murdoch University Perth, Western Australia Email: sudweeks@murdoch.edu.au Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore the interaction of culture and technology in teamwork in a developing country. An organisation in Mauritius was surveyed and analysed using Hofstede’s cultural framework. The framework appears to be useful in explicating the reticence of Mauritians in using communication technologies extensively in teamwork. Keywords Organisational culture, teamwork, ICTs, diffusion of technology, Mauritius INTRODUCTION Mauritius is a developing country, but in terms of technology it has been catching up with developed countries rapidly in the last decade. With the introduction of personal computers and the Internet into households, Mauritians are joining the global village. Given the isolated location of Mauritius in the middle of the Indian Ocean, ICTs have opened a window into the rest of the globe. However, despite this rapid uptake of technologies, Mauritians have a conservative approach to communication technologies and appear to use them only when necessary. In other words, the preferred mode of communication for Mauritians appears to be traditional face-to-face (FTF) communication whereever possible. Although computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been effective in crossing social, organisational, cultural and geographical boundaries (e.g. Kiesler and Sproul, 1992; McGrath and Hollingshead, 1994), FTF communication remains the medium of choice for Mauritians, especially when crossing cultural boundaries. Even though CMC has been found to be efficient and effective in teams (Mabry and Sudweeks, 2003), the Mauritians feel that when working with heterogeneous cultures, a mutual protocol...