Situated cultural approach versu predefined cultural archetypes models

Abstract

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). A normative literature review has been carried out in this paper to provide IS researchers with 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).). In this paper, the author provides a criticism of predefined cultural archetypes models and highlight the problems of using such approach in studying culture within IS discipline. The author demonstrates a comprehensive framework of situated culture approach to study culture within IS discipline, as alternative approach to avoid the criticism of predefined cultural archetypes models. This is achieved via an articulation of Structuration Theory. The author argues that using a practice lens for studying the use of technology by Orlikowski (2000), contributes to identifying the mediated shared structures between actors through understanding the actions of the actors within IS phenomena. Then, using a Structurational analysis approach by Walsham (2002) contributes to identifying the cultural dimensions that are embedded in the identified mediated shared structures.