Cultural universality versus particularity within e-CRM systems: a special case of information systems

Cultural factors are often identified as a crucial influence on the success or failure of Information Systems in general and Electronic Customer Relationship Management Systems (eCRM) in particular. Several researchers have suggested ways in which management can accommodate these factors or solve the problem they pose. This paper attempts to go one step beyond management measures and ask whether there is a theoretical foundation on which one can base the mutual influence of culture on eCRM. There is a lack of pervious literature on the impact of culture differences on eCRM systems. A normative literature review on the impact of culture on different types of Information Systems has been done to explore different cultural factors that might influence eCRM systems as an application of Information Systems. The authors highlight the cultures factors in macro and micro level that have been investigated in the literature of Information systems. At the macro level, it is necessary to consider the differences at a national level. The differentiating characteristics will include: organizational structures, function and process oriented views, supervisory control mechanisms etc. Micro level considerations will be at the individual level and will include human responses to organizational change, cultural acceptability of different organizational structures etc. The authors propose a framework of cultural concerns for management of eCRM systems within multinational environment organizations. This framework will be tested in future research and will be modified according to the results