Chapter 2: Globalization and Global Software Work

2.1 Introduction

Global software alliances (GSAs) are work configurations in present-day processes of globalization. GSAs involve the restructuring of work arrangements across time and space based on the underlying assumption that the experience of the ˜here and ˜now of software development can be largely superseded by action at a distance. GSAs represent the state of the art in software development because of the inherent potential they provide organizations for standardizing, measuring and coordinating distributed resources, including HR and resources of time and space. GSAs reflect Mowshowitz s (1994) vision of a future paradigm of management based on the principle that the ˜best and ˜cheapest HR can be ˜switched as required and assembled from around the globe and coordinated through the use of ICTs and standardized methodologies and processes. These underlying principles provide the basis for popular claims that software development can ˜follow the sun with round-the-clock operation by exploiting time-zone differences allowing cycle-time reductions in handling work between sites located in different parts of the world. Such a vision of GSAs as an arena in which the ˜switching of resources takes place is no longer merely a speculative phenomenon of the future, but one that is being actively attempted by firms globally, with varying degrees of success.

The aim of this chapter is to understand the mutual interconnection between processes of globalization and global software work (GSW). We start by outlining a conceptual stance on the nature of this interconnection, which then permits us in the next section to examine its implications for the structure, processes and nature of risks that underlie GSW. Against the background of this globalization “GSA relationship, we set out to introduce the case studies discussed later in the book that provide further insight into the nature of the relationship.