Global Services | Does Culture Matter?

Global Services | Does Culture Matter?

This new magazine called Global Services from the CMP stable has some interesting information for IT professionals in USA and Europe who are actively involved with offshoring or outsourcing IT services. There's a good list of top IT services providers in the February issue.

The article that captivated me though was this one that deals with age-old myths about cultural differences - specially in context of India. The author says "India is the most important offshore destination, and a quick glance at the profile of an Indian IT professional would reflect him being highly skilled and adept at communication in English. However, it has been found that personal communication with the foreign teams has not always been an easy task."

While many of these are cliched issues, and have been overcome to some extent, I still think that for Western managers it is a good idea to be aware of cultural idiosyncrasies and actively work to overcome them. I know that unlike in the 90's when it was popular for Indian companies to provide cultural indoctrination to their employees working on-site in the USA, now it is becoming common for US companies to provide cultural sensitivity training to their managers involved in offshore projects. Seems like we have come a full circle :-)

Have you had any interesting real-life experiences related to multi-cultural work environments? Do share your views by commenting here...

technorati tags: india,, offshore,, outsourcing,, software, development,, culture,, multi-cultural,, inter-cultural,, language