The realignment of offshoring frame disputes (OFD): an ethnographic ‘cultural’ analysis

Abstract

In Information Systems (IS) research on cross-cultural issues, cultural categories are typically introduced as analytical labels that explain why and how organizational groups in different parts of the world act and think differently. However, broad cultural categories can also be discursively mobilized by organizational members as strategic adaptive resources. Drawing on an ethnographic study of offshoring frame disputes (OFD) in an Indian subsidiary unit of a large Western information technology (IT) organization, this paper explores how members actively invoke a series of beliefs about Western culture and implicitly position them as the binary opposite of Eastern (or Indian) culture. The findings demonstrate how the mobilization of such beliefs eventually plays a vital role in the reconciliation of four different types of OFD. Drawing on this analysis, I build a social–psychological process model that explains how frame extensions trigger a cognitive reorganization process, leading to the accomplishment of OFD realignment. The paper argues that discursively invoked binary cultural categories help maintain non-confrontational definitions of situations and sustain working relationships in IT offshoring environments. Furthermore, interpretations linked to cultural notions seem to reflexively take the offshore–onshore power differentials into account.

Keywords:

• frame disputes
• ethnography
• offshoring
• culture
• India

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Laurie Cohen, the three anonymous reviewers and the associate editor for their insightful and constructive comments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M N Ravishankar

About the Author

M.N. Ravishankar is a Professor of Globalisation and Emerging Markets in the School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, U.K. His research interests span culture and its interface with strategy, offshore outsourcing of work and IT-enabled transformations in emerging markets. His research articles have appeared in journals such as Information Systems Research, Journal of Information Technology, Information Systems Journal, Journal of Vocational Behaviour and Omega. He currently serves as Associate Editor of Information Systems Journal.