Cultural determinants on information technology

Abstract

Theway we develop and implement information technology is affected by our cultural values. A body of research of cultural impacts on IT product design, IT project implementation, IT-enabled process change and IT-enabled organizational change has demonstrated that information technology is deeply dependent on the environmental context and social human factors from a cross-cultural perspective. However, most research were based on Hofstede’s unrivaled theory of culture, which were criticized by many IS researchers as too limited and simplistic. To our knowledge, there still lacks a comprehensive investigation which includes all possible determinants of culture that have impacts on information technology. In this study we identify a set of dimensions of culture from the most known culture theories through quantitative and inductive analysis to form a research framework of culture and a classification of cultural impacts on information technology, which provides an agenda for systematically researching the cultural impacts on information technology.