Groupware and National Culture: a qualitative inquiry

This research examines the impact of collaborative technologies on group work processes for groups from Malaysia, which is traditionally known as a society with high Collectivism and Power Distance. Triandis (1994) defines collectivism as greater emphasis on the views, needs, and goals of the in-group rather than oneself. Hofstede (1980) defines Power Distance as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations accept that power is distributed unequally. The present study included two parts. The first part compared the supported groupwork of the groups from Malaysia as a representative of the ‘East’ culture with the supported groupwork of groups from Australia as a representative of the ‘West’ culture. The second part compared the supported and unsupported groupwork for groups from Malaysia. The first part used three different tasks with different degrees of structure and examined the possibility of observation of the cultural differences based on the qualitative analysis of the groupwork discussions in a supported environment. The second part examined the impact of GSS on groupwork for groups from Malaysia. The study used a qualitative content analysis to reveal the cultural values involved in their group work processes. The findings suggest a clear difference between the groupwork conducted in two different group work environments (supported and unsupported)