Cross Cultural Research: EUC Perspective

3 Globalization is the key to survival in the 90’s. More and more companies are venturing overseas for new markets, manufacturing facilities or investments. Companies are globalizing through acquisitions, partnerships or joint ventures. Globalization, though lucrative, adds complexity in terms of organizational structure, management strategies and allocation of resources. Decision making becomes complex due to many unknown and uncontrollable factors. This is especially trying for information technology (IT) managers who must make technology transfer, architecture and management decisions within the constraints of international standards (which usually vary from country to country). IT managers face many complex tasks and end-user computing (EUC) support is one of them. We discuss cross-cultural research within the context of EUC. There is an abundance of literature regarding EUC classification, computing requirements, task structure and individual differences related to a single country environment, name.l.y the US (or the western world). The common inference is that even within a single country environment, end-users at different managerial levels require different IT support. This is due to different task requirements and individual differences in terms of decision making styles, preferences and familiarity with technology. In a multinational environment end-user support requirements are further compounded by many known and unknown factors like culture, norms, traditions and individual expectations. For example, a company headquartered in the U.S. could assemble products in Korea from raw materials from Brazil, transport it through Japan Air for consumers in China. This involves at least five different countries: Korea, Brazil, Japan, China and the U.S.A. An attempt to provide end-user support may require knowledge of five different languages, cultures, laws, politics and level of computer sophistication in addition to factors for single country support. Though social scientists, anthropologists and psychologists have studied human behavior in different settings in different countries, this is something new for business managers, especially IT managers. For researchers, also, international EUC creates numerous problems in terms of cost, distance, measurement and research methodologies. Single country measurement and methodologies need to be modified to account for differences in languages, samples, cultures and/or politics. Cross-cultural research requires commitment in terms of time, travel, cost and patience.