Culture Fit

Considering the culture fit factor when thinking about ASPs as a strategic partner is vital. The duration of such large projects, necessitate a prolonged period of interaction between the ASPs and the personal organisation.

Anthropologists and cultural scholars have extensively explored culture from many aspects; this research tackles the associated theories and research.

Hall (1959) regards culture primarily as communication and built his theories and study around this concept, while Schwartz (1996) defines culture as a collection of attributes and impeded principles that act as guiding values for the identification of a culture. Hofstede (2004) analysed culture and categorised it according to five measure indices, namely: Power Distance Index, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance Index, and Long-Term Orientation. Much marketing and accounting research was based on these dimensions to understand more about a specific culture. The dimensions are as listed (Hofstede, 2004):

• Power Distance Index measures how power is distributed in a certain culture, where a higher number indicates that there are more non-powerful members of organisations who believe that power is distributed equally.

• Individualism refers to the level of integration of an individual in forming groups. Higher individualism indicates that the relation that ties individuals is loose, where each individual cares about him/herself and his/her immediate family.

• Masculinity alludes to masculine dominance where the male attitude prevails. Hofstede (2004) contends that mens’ values tend to be assertive and competitive, while women’s values are considered as being modest and caring. So the assertive trait is labelled masculine and the modest and caring trait is feminine.

• Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) refers to the degree of tolerance for the uncertain and ambiguous among societies. Alternatively, it evaluates to what extent the culture influences its people to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity and their effect with regards to feeling comfort.

• Long-Term Orientation (LTO) indicates a society related to thrift and perseverance, while Short-Term Orientation is associated with protecting one’s ‘face’, fulfilling social obligation, and tradition.

Another scholar of culture, Edward Hall, proposed the ‘silent language’ in 1959 and addressed cultural anthropology. While Hofstede’s research was conducted by quantitative methods, Hall used his observation to study culture. Contrary to general anthropologists who usually study a single culture, he focused on the interaction of people from different cultures. Hall attributed culture to communication and vice versa. He viewed communication as the main pillar in the constitution of culture. Relating some cultures on the basis of space and time was also tackled by Hall,where the space tolerance between society

158 (1976) revealed his theoretical perspective regarding differentiating culture with regards to ‘high’ and ‘low’ context. According to Hall (1976), high context cultures tend to have less written information and explicit communication.

Additionally, they tend to have long-term relationships and decisions are based on central authority, usually represented by a person. By contrast, low context cultures are rule-oriented with short-term interpersonal connection and activities and decisions concentrate on what is needed, accompanied by distributed authority.

However, Hofstede faced many criticisms from culture scholars regarding his indices and his research was not recommended.. Baskerville (2003) contended that Hofstede equated nation and culture with an existing limitation of his research through understanding the culture, using quantification as well as being an outside observer. So the deep understanding of culture was apparent in his research. In addition, in the world at the time of Hofstede’s study, there were two poles of power: Soviet Union and U.S. and there was no European Union at that time, which makes his indices weaker. Another issue regarding the indices is that he considered all Arabs to be one culture, which is not truly accurate. One can easily differentiate between the Arab Bedouins and the Egyptians for example.

Hofstede’s Long-Term Orientation index and the Uncertainty Avoidance Index are more related to this research context, since they explain more about the contract and collaboration perspectives within organisation. For example, the LTO of China is high, with medium UAI (Hofstede,1993) which makes it a viable option for collaboration. The latter view consents with Hall’s view regarding the traits of high-context culture. This has been affirmed by airlines’ executive

(SAD) “I have noticed that westerners think and decide slowly while Asian and Middle Eastern people tend to think and decide fast, but sometime do not reach mature decisions. You need to mix both to get the optimised formula.” Another senior manager (SAG) observed “European Consultancy Companies ..[..].. are very strict and sometimes unfair when they do business. They try to milk you out when they deal with you. They don’t want to show it is a win-win situation.

Flexibility, financial viability, and understanding of the culture are all good tools of course.” However, different cultures could act as a barrier when “bringing in multiple cultures, as you are bringing in multiple ways of doing work, methodologies, , priorities, competing priorities within the vendors themselves.

So managing all these is not easy, no matter how much effort is put into it ..[..]..

both sides need to understand the culture of each other, otherwise just like any other relationship even in life, things in partnership will not work if that understanding is not reached quickly” (Airline executive, SAF).

Furthermore, the research focus will be on the interaction between partners in IT collaborations. That explains why the ASP vendors manage to bring program directors from the same region that they will be working in, which is why they are “trying to bring people who are familiar with culture, like Sabre. They brought the director which was originally [from the same region] the person” as it has been asserted by an airline’s executive (SAA). Airline’s manager (SAN) added “this is a very serious factor and I think Sabre were good at this, they brought employees that share the same ethnics because they will know our cultural way of thinking much better than the others.” However, mixing companies from a different culture in one large undertaking such as MES could generate some risk, such as: “if you take a vendor from the east with their own

160 or values, this is a risk area..[..].. Culture may mean you sign the death certificate of your contract being accepted, even before the project starts. I’ll give you one example: we had a project and the person who came here thought he couldn’t understand the culture of the people here. .When he went back he made some allegations against the specific nation here. So what [vendor’s director] did was to fire this guy and he brought in another guy because he knew what was going to happen. This other person was better at understanding the culture and he aligned himself with the CEO’s views and I think the relationship was better than ever. […] I believe culture plays a big role in this kind of relationship” as supported by airline executive (SAB). On the other hand, another airline executive (SAC) lessens the effect of culture in such circumstances, stating: “the airline industry is like a community so this culture bit is not much of an issue as opposed to you implementing the government sector, because airlines have one community under IATA. They exchange information on an annual basis and they influence the factors of the aviation industry.” The latter notion believes that culture has less effect on the industry. In addition, the vendor manager (SPE) claimed: “From a cultural stand point, it was more of an adjustment here than what I have seen on the other continents. I don’t think that it was a huge problem but sometimes like the flexibility, capability was underestimated.”

A modest voice from another executive (SAD) stated:

Of course now we are in an open work. When you have a project we get different people from different parts of the world and they speak a different language. Sometime a word in certain backgrounds means something else in other backgrounds, for example ‘yes’ sometimes means not a complete ‘yes’. Sometimes a body gesture is not the same in the other part of the wold. These kind of challenges happen at the beginning of the project but over time they disappear, once people sit with each other and understand each other these things disappeared by

the time..[For that reason..] Most of these ASP have a mix of cultures, they bring different people from different backgrounds and this helps to make sure the decision is taken fast and well thought through.

According to Walker (2003) Asian companies show more flexibility when compared to Europeans. This kind of flexibility was shown during the contract between the airline and their partners. While the Indian company Wipro showed the most flexibility, the German Lufthansa demonstrated less. In addition, a considerable flexibility was shown by the American multinational enterprise Sabre. The effect of culture on the flexibility attribute was shown clearly during the implementation phase and post implementation. These Partners exhibit flexibility one way or another, the better the flexibility, the more sustainable the relationship between them. Nonetheless, it is necessary to discuss the kinds of partnership to have a clear view of the effect of the culture fit attribute on partners. For example, “we had one of the project managers in one of the projects without name. After a while we had to replace him because he was not able to understand the culture of this programme..[..]..I believe in learning each other’s culture, but differences in culture means I don’t have to be European to deal with a European company or the company doesn’t have to be Middle Eastern to deal with the Middle East” (Airline’s senior manager, SAL).

Nonetheless, an airline has to understand the vendors too, it will “definitely help a lot when the airline understands the culture of the company and you know what one thing to think about. It is not just the culture in the sense of how people think or behave or act. It is also the business culture, the company’s culture which is what is important for the company right?” (Vendor executive, SPD).

The literature examined the types of partnership and distinguished between

162 ones; mainly, tactic, strategic, and transformational partnership, where the tactic is the shortest and the transformational is the longest. The latter partnership has not only long-term partnership, but is also based on the value rather than the cost, with strategic implication as well as strategic partnership. For the sake of this research, the second long-term strategic partnership will be considered, as it expresses more clearly the researched case study.

Since human interactions are one of the bases of long-term partnerships, understanding culture fit becomes necessary. Sometimes this factor is ignored, as it has been asserted by an airline’s senior manager (SAG): “It is a strong factor that most of the time is ignored. I don’t think this is true if you want to change the culture, now this is important. If you want to change the culture, maybe you go with a company which has a better culture so that it would inject some discipline into your culture …[..]..Culture fit is not only important for the customers but it is also important for vendors because they are going to invest money, resources and reputation.” Existing literature on organisational culture difference has investigated how culture distance may negatively impact the relationship between partners in the domain of technology transfer, cross border knowledge, and alliance performance (Bhagat et al., 2002; Sirmon and Lane, 2004). By and large, the latter argument exhibits that the difference originated because workers in different organisations with dissimilar cultures tend to have different attitudes towards technology assimilation, values and norms. Gurung and Prater (2006) coincide with the latter view and noted the influence of cultural distance as being important when selecting strategic partners.

Apparently, the effect of dissimilarity in culture between organisations will tend to be less over a short period. However, long-term basis partnership is inclined

to have a stronger effect as these type of relationships involve a greater degree of interaction over a longer time period. Therefore, the fewer cultural differences that exist between partners, the better chance that the relationship will last longer. Continuous assessment of the partnerships becomes vital as it resolves any accumulative negative results from the cooperation between the partners (Mudambi et al., 2004)

Evidently, coordination of problems and handling complex communication might be one of the key challenges in a large partnership. Consequently, a thorough understanding of culture fit would allow both to communicate better, taking into consideration cultural view from the ASP side. Those ASPs who possess the understanding of their client’s culture sustain better during the deployment of MES. Differences such as business ethics, customs, traditions, and languages will accrue to constitute potential conflict between the two organisations.

Willcocks and Fitzgerald (1994b) were consistent with the previous view that IT outsourcing interdependent decisions involving more than one organisation with dissimilar cultures might become problematic.

Narayanaswarmy and Henry (2005) in their study considered culture as a principal factor affecting the choice of partners in outsourced projects that have different cultures. Phene et al. (2006) discussed the cultural fit issue in relation to international alliances, stating that it will be unlikely to yield innovative results if culture distance is in place. Furthermore, some scholars have examined culture fit from the implementation point of view of IS, such as ERP. Hong and Kim (2002) consider the organisation as a factor related to ERP successful implementation. Davidson (2002) also stressed the cultural misfit issue and

164 evidence of the influence of “culture fit” with regard to partnership, which has also been verified in this research.