| As an IT person, culture can be important to you. There are thousands of examples where cultural misunderstandings have killed deals, harmed working relationships, inhibited sales, or increased costs. You must be able to succeed everywhere. Understanding culture is part of success. When you become aware of potential cultural differences and realize their implications, you dramatically increase your ability to work with people across the globe. You will also enhance your competitive advantage by building stronger, more sustainable relationships. If you remain unaware of cultural differences, you can jeopardize business relationships and entire projects. Regrettably, IT culture is a subject that has been avoided. IBM uses the COM (Cultural Orientation Model) developed by TMC of Princeton, NJ. This model is based on common tendencies of people on a number of dimensions, or values, and has identified the dimensions as: -
Environment: How individuals view and relate to the people, objects, and issues in their sphere of influence. -
Time: How individuals perceive the nature of time and its use. -
Action: How individuals conceptualize actions and interactions. -
Communication: How individuals express themselves. -
Space: How individuals demarcate their physical and psychological space. -
Power: How individuals view differential power relationships. -
Individualism: How individuals define their identity. -
Competitiveness: How individuals are motivated. -
Structure: How individuals approach change, risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty. -
Thinking: How individuals conceptualize. Figure 1.6 illustrates this model. Figure 1.6. The Cultural Orientation Model. 
This approach will be valuable for corporations and IT departments as one of the first steps towards autonomic computing transition. What is needed is an autonomic cultural transition plan based on the elements described above. |
