Paper Info
Title
Extended abstract: Comparing cultural models in the context of teaching global software engineering
Abstract
The rise of globalization has driven new challenges to software engineering education. The industry scene today involves international acquisitions, project offshoring, and strategic alliances, which create the need for globally oriented students who can understand and function within the new business paradigm. This, subsequently, has brought about a burgeoning interest in cross-cultural research in global software engineering (GSW) education. Recent research points out that today's web-enabled platforms have eliminated geographical borders allowing the world to collaborate in multiple domains including education, research and development, innovation, production among others. In this context, research on cross-cultural dimensions is rapidly gaining momentum. Recently, GSW courses are being introduced at academic institutes as part of computer science and software engineering degree requirements. Collaborative GSW courses are mainly concerned with studying methodologies, tools, infrastructures, and other factors that influence distributed software development by culturally diverse teams. Cultural issues are among the factors that may affect the outcomes of GSW courses. Influences could be in productivity, trust, communication methods, and leadership of distributed teams. In the past 30 years, a considerable amount of literature has examined the definition and characteristics of culture, mostly from a person-task perspective, which is the extent to which cultures focus on human interaction as opposed to tasks to accomplish. The most referenced research of all literature on cultural dimensions in the context of GSW is that of Greet Hofstede, Project GLOBE, Trompenaars and Hampdeen-Turner, and Hall. Hofstede identified six major dimensions on which cultures may vary. Project GLOBE extended Hofstede's work to examine universally endorsed, universally unendorsed, and culturally contingent behaviours across the different cultures. Both studies are considered landmarks i- cross-cultural research because they have taken cross-cultural research to an advanced level by exploring cultures that were never considered in the previously American-dominated literature of cultural research. However, more efforts are needed to identify drivers of productivity in culturally diverse teams within context-specific settings. This paper attempts to identify contextual factors that support or inhibit productivity within distributed teams, especially those located in regions that are under-researched, like the Middle East.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1109/IPCC.2014.7020397
Professional Communication Conference
Keywords
Field
DocType
computer aided instruction,computer science education,cultural aspects,educational courses,globalisation,software engineering,teaching,gsw education,greet hofstede,hall,hampdeen-turner,project globe,trompenaars,web-enabled platforms,academic institutes,business paradigm,collaborative gsw courses,communication methods,computer science degree requirements,cross-cultural dimensions,cross-cultural research,cultural issues,cultural models,culturally diverse teams,distributed software development,distributed teams,geographical borders,global software engineering education,globalization,globally oriented students,human interaction,international acquisitions,leadership,productivity,project offshoring,software engineering degree requirements,strategic alliances,trust,cultural dimensions,global software development,software engineering education
Offshoring,Globe,Software engineering,Knowledge management,Human interaction,Cultural diversity,Engineering,Globalization,Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory,Cultural models,Social software engineering
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
2158-091X
0
0.34
References 
Authors
2
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Amir Zeid1112.22
Rehab El-Bahey2101.78