Group Decision Support Systems in Multicultural Context: Potential Influence of Culture in Work Groups

Informações

Código: ESO1643
Divisão: ESO - Estratégia em Organizações
Tema de Interesse: ESO-B - Gestão Internacional

Autores

Carlos Leluau Rodriguez, Angela Freitag Brodbeck

Resumo

Work in groups whose members do not share the same physical location is becomingincreasingly important in today’s economy. Some of the factors behind this trend are theglobalization of markets, the problems in air transportation, the costs of specialized humanresources, the growing speed of decision-making processes, and the new developments ininformation technology (IT) that lowered the costs of communication. IT-mediatedinteractions among individuals that do not share the same national culture are becoming evermore common. This paper examines the use of Group Decision Supports Systems (GDSS) incross-cultural environments. It is suggested that the process of decision making willincreasingly require multiple and culturally diverse expertise, and that this expertise may beglobally dispersed. By theoretically discussing the cross-cultural use of GDSS, considerationswill be made about the possible influence of group members’ cultural values in the decisionprocess and its outcomes. A critique will be made of the little consideration, by theInformation Systems literature, of this potentially significant variable, and examples will begiven of situations amenable to cultural impacts. By proposing some testable hypotheses, thisarticle triggers the discussion of this little-researched topic and to offer directions for futureresearch.

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