Understanding Technology Appropriation in Intercultural Global Work

了解跨文化全球工作中的技术挪用

• 批准号: 1219869
• 负责人: Pamela Hinds
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1219869&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Understanding; Technology; Appropriation; Intercultural; Global

The relationship between the design and use of collaborative technologies for global work is understudied. Although we know that cultural contexts shape how people perceive and use technologies, technologies that facilitate coordination and collaboration across national boundaries seem to demand that workers use the technologies in compatible, if not similar ways. The goal of our study is to build theory of how people appropriate a technology in different cultural contexts and how different ways of appropriating a technology affect collaboration across national boundaries. The research pivots on a quantitative and qualitative longitudinal field study of a knowledge sharing system in close collaboration with an architecture and design firm that is designing and deploying a knowledge sharing system across 17 locations in 10 countries. We will interview and observe workers in three countries as they use this new knowledge sharing system. In six additional locations we will also use diaries, surveys and digital traces automatically generated by the system to document usage patterns and workers' evolving attitudes toward and appropriation of the technology. The project will advance our understanding of the possibilities and problems that arise when deploying collaboration technology for global use. It will extend knowledge of how work practices, particularly those intertwined with technology use, converge or diverge when workers span national boundaries and cultural contexts. It will also advance our understanding of and, therefore, enable theory development about the factors that promote convergence or divergence of use and how these are interwoven with differences in cultural expectations about and understandings of productivity and client satisfaction. Little is currently known about how to best structure and manage globally distributed work. The default has generally been to impose "best practices" across locations, but this has met with limited success because "best" does not necessarily translate across cultural contexts. Our research will provide guidance so that organizations can make more principled decisions regarding the organization and management of global work and, as a result, sustain higher performance. This work will also contribute to public and student awareness of the opportunities and challenges in global work.

全球工作协作技术的设计和使用之间的关系尚未得到充分研究。 尽管我们知道文化背景决定了人们如何看待和使用技术，但促进跨国界协调与协作的技术似乎要求工人以兼容（甚至相似）的方式使用这些技术。我们研究的目标是建立关于人们如何在不同文化背景下使用技术以及使用技术的不同方式如何影响跨国界合作的理论。该研究的重点是与一家建筑和设计公司密切合作，对知识共享系统进行定量和定性纵向实地研究，该公司正在 10 个国家的 17 个地点设计和部署知识共享系统。我们将采访和观察三个国家的工人使用这一新的知识共享系统。在另外六个地点，我们还将使用系统自动生成的日记、调查和数字痕迹来记录使用模式以及工人对技术和技术使用的不断变化的态度。该项目将加深我们对部署全球使用协作技术时出现的可能性和问题的理解。 它将扩展人们对工作实践的了解，特别是那些与技术使用交织在一起的工作实践，当工人跨越国界和文化背景时，如何趋同或分歧。 它还将增进我们对促进使用趋同或发散的因素的理解，并促进理论发展，以及这些因素如何与对生产力和客户满意度的文化期望和理解的差异交织在一起。目前对于如何最好地构建和管理全球分布的工作知之甚少。默认情况通常是在不同地点实施“最佳实践”，但这取得的成功有限，因为“最佳”不一定能够跨文化背景。 我们的研究将提供指导，使组织能够就全球工作的组织和管理做出更有原则的决策，从而维持更高的绩效。 这项工作还将有助于提高公众和学生对全球工作中的机遇和挑战的认识。