Gender-based differences in culture in the Indian IT workplace

Global outsourcing increases the complexity of managing IT projects. Gender adds another level of difficulty when managing IT projects. Understanding country and gender—level differences may improve chances for success. This paper provides opportunities to better understand underlying country and gender differences of Indian IT workers. We used Hofstede’s value surveys module to analyze gender differences and cultural preferences of 107 Indian IT workers. After correcting for problems with outliers, none of the mean differences between men and women were significant at the 95% level; at the 90% level, we found differences in uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation only. Our results suggest that women and men working in the IT industry may have more similarities in terms of national culture than differences by gender. To overcome possible differences in uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation, IT outsourcers to India should ensure adequate professional development opportunities, mentoring programs, and clearly explained career path opportunities. Further, a focus on policies and management strategies that capitalize on the national culture of India, including group work to take advantage of collectivist tendencies, and clearly defined hierarchical systems to take advantage of masculine orientation and high power distances, may allow foreign companies to attract and retain men and women, where in many cases, national culture trumps gender differences. Future research should collect more data from women and investigate the effect of regional differences on cultural perceptions.

全球外包增加了管理信息技术项目的复杂性。在管理信息技术项目时，性别又增加了另一层困难。了解国家和性别层面的差异可能会提高成功的几率。本文为更好地理解印度信息技术工作者潜在的国家和性别差异提供了契机。我们使用霍夫斯泰德的价值观调查模块分析了107名印度信息技术工作者的性别差异和文化偏好。在对异常值问题进行修正后，男女之间的均值差异在95%的置信水平上均不显著；在90%的置信水平上，我们仅发现不确定性规避和长期导向方面存在差异。我们的研究结果表明，在信息技术行业工作的男女在民族文化方面可能具有更多的相似性，而非性别差异。为克服在不确定性规避和长期导向方面可能存在的差异，印度的信息技术外包商应确保提供充足的职业发展机会、导师指导计划以及清晰阐释的职业晋升路径机会。此外，注重利用印度民族文化的政策和管理策略，包括利用集体主义倾向进行团队合作，以及利用男性化导向和高权力距离明确界定等级制度，可能会使外国公司吸引并留住男性和女性员工，在很多情况下，民族文化胜过性别差异。未来的研究应从女性那里收集更多数据，并调查区域差异对文化认知的影响。