National Culture Influences in Cross-Cultural Software Development Teams: an analysis of social networks

Team dynamics and ingroup behaviour are critical factors in software development projects. In Western organisations, software development cultures promote rational values to be pursued at industry, development, and team levels of analysis. While Western values dominate the culture of software teams, increased globalisation has led to more IS being developed by teams with a cross-cultural make-up. In this paper, propositions regarding the interactions of software teams comprising members from Western and Chinese cultures are developed. These propositions highlight potential conflicts that may arise within cross- cultural development teams. A social network analysis of a small software development team is presented in order to investigate these propositions