Bernhard Nett

Trust and Social Capital: Revisiting an Offshoring Failure Story of a Small German Software Company

While work organization and social capital are known to be important factors for offshoring success, there is little empirical evidence on how these aspects evolve in the course of offshoring projects. In the literature, trust has been discussed as a personal disposition to abstain from control in a given situation, and was found to remain surprisingly stable in some cases. By analyzing the relation between control and trust in the course of a failed offshoring project, we want to add to the discussion on social capital as a factor for successful offshoring. The results of our long-term ethnographic study are somewhat paradox: in our case, ongoing conflicts motivated attempts to strengthen control, although personal trust and social capital remained strong. Despite the fact that the confidence of the partners in their offshoring project was weakened over time, the trust among the partners prevailed. However, social capital was not only unable to save the offshoring project—it also seemed to hinder the conflict resolution in some regards. Therefore, we argue that while social capital is an important factor, it should not be regarded as a context-free asset, but rather (in Bourdieus perspective) as a risky investment.

Operational and Strategic Learning in Global Software Development

In this paper, distributed software development is discussed. With increasing globalization, distributed software teams have become fairly common. Usually, companies that offshore their software development expect a reduction of costs and access to new markets. However, distributed teams often face problems related to globally distributed works spatial, temporal, and cultural barriers. This paper also illustrates some of the challenges in organizational learning faced by small and medium enterprises engaged in offshore software development.

Innovating the field level of microfinance: a Pakistan case study

Microfinance Institutions (MFI) are sought to combine transparent sustainability with poverty reduction. Apart from this commonality, they can be as different as their markets, cultures and technologies. While much design for MFIs, nevertheless, concentrates on standardized processes around the head quarters we started with studying an individual case from a bottom-up perspective, including its customer relationship. We focused our ethnographic study at the Khushhali Bank, Pakistan, on work practices and how they are influenced by technology. In our case, too, lacking awareness about non-monetary performance is a hurdle for sound innovation. Technological innovation can be attractive when it is combined with measures to support community building and learning.

Operational and Strategic Learning in Global Software Development - Implications from two Offshoring Case Studies in Small Enterprises

Small to medium-sized software enterprises (SME) increasingly participate in offshoring activities. Detecting market niches and deploying highly flexible software development approaches are seen as key competitive abilities of SME. Therefore, it is of major importance to learn how offshoring affects these capabilities which are closely related to organizational learning. We present case studies from two German companies that engage in offshoring of software development. By comparing the cases with each other, we highlight the different structures the companies chose for their development work and how these structures were enacted in practice. Furthermore, we show how related practices affect strategic and operational aspects of Argyris et al.’s (1985) conception of single- and double-loop learning. Our case studies show that organizational learning is a problem for SME engaged in offshoring and that an inability for double-loop learning can even lead to failures in case of organizational restructuring.

Knowledge Management-in-action in an EUD-oriented Software Enterprise

This paper aims at answering the question: How do “third generation knowledge management concepts” help to understand relational practices in blended contexts of face-to-face interaction and virtual communication? In order to address this question, we firstly explain Scharmer’s Concept of Self-transcending Knowledge and Snowden’s Knowledge-Ecology-Approach ‘Cynefin’ to develop a heuristic for third generation knowledge management (KM). The heuristic highlights the critical role of relational practices for KM and will be applied to identify and discuss selected relational practices stemming from four Swiss organizations. We conclude by reflecting on the adequateness of third generation knowledge management concepts to explain these practices.End User Development (EUD) aims at the enabling of end users to adapt, modify or extend software and has become an important keyword for soft- ware designers. Discussing premises for the success of EUD, several authors have stated that processes of knowledge development and diffusion play an important role. Current research discusses such Knowledge-Management issues mostly in the client organization. But if we want to bring an End User perspective into de- sign practice, we have to take into account how producers manage their costumer- related knowledge and bring it into action. Therefore, the study presented here de- scribes the results of a related Business Ethnography, which was carried out in a small enterprise of the German software branch. The paper explains how this eth- nographic action research helped to identify practices, potentials and problems in the enterprise to acquire, secure and use knowledge about the end users of its products. Preliminary findings demonstrate that EUD is not only a technical, but also a Knowledge-Management challenge for software enterprises.

Conducting a Business Ethnography in Global Software Development projects of small German enterprises

Context: Studying work practices in the context of Global Software Development (GSD) projects entails multiple opportunities and challenges for the researchers. Understanding and tackling these challenges requires a careful and rigor application of research methods. Objective: We want to contribute to the understanding of the challenges of studying GSD by reflecting on several obstacles we had to deal with when conducting ethnographically-informed research on offshoring in German small to medium-sized enterprises. Method: The material for this paper is based on reflections and field notes from two research projects: an exploratory ethnographic field study, and a study that was framed as a Business Ethnography. For the analysis, we took a Grounded Theory-oriented coding and analysis approach in order to identify issues and challenges documented in our research notes. Results: We introduce the concept of Business Ethnography and discuss our experiences of adapting and implementing this action research concept for our study. We identify and discuss three primary issues: understanding complex global work practices from a local perspective, adapting to changing interests of the participants, and dealing with micro-political frictions between the cooperating sites. Conclusions: We identify common interests between the researchers and the companies as a challenge and chance for studies on offshoring. Building on our experiences from the field, we argue for an active conceptualization of struggles and conflicts in the field as well as for extending the role of the ethnographer to that of a learning mediator.

The Challenges of Microfinance Innovation: Understanding ‘Private Services’

The organization, technology and operation of microfinance have undergone much change and differentiation. Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel-prize winner first demonstrated the possible empowerment of poor people by means of microfinance. Even so, certain cases have indicated that this empowerment does not necessarily occur and that microfinance can even be damaging. In this paper, we describe a case study which describes some of the value clients do receive from an initiative of this kind but notes that this value sometimes lies in unofficial, ‘private’, advice and help. To this end, we conducted an ethnographic study in a microfinance institution (MFI) in Azerbaijan. We found a special pattern of interaction between MFI-staff members and customers, which both regarded as beneficial. Since, from the point of the organization, it was not recognizably part of their work, we call it a “private service”. We think that the identification of similar private initiatives may help to identify new possible synergies between the operation, organization and technology in the microfinance sector. All of them are decisive for the identification of promising human–computer interaction patterns and the design of supportive computer applications.

Offshoring in kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen der Softwareindustrie

ZusammenfassungenUm ihre Wettbewerbsvorteile nicht zu verlieren, sind kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) der Softwareindustrie beim Offshoring auf ein hohes Maβ an Flexibilität angewiesen. Die häufig für Offshoring empfohlene Formalisierung der Softwareentwicklung ist daher für KMU nur mit Einschränkungen möglich. Um die praxisrelevanten Probleme deutscher KMU im Kontext von Offshoring besser zu verstehen, untersuchen wir diese mittels qualitativer empirischer Forschungsmethoden. Wir zeigen anhand einer Einzelfallstudie, dass KMU im Rahmen von Offshoring häufig gezwungen sind, ihren Offshore-Entwicklern mehr Autonomie einzuräumen, als ursprünglich gewünscht wurde. Die geografische Verteilung von Kompetenz und Wissen erfordert dabei ständige informelle Abstimmungsprozesse zwischen den Teams. Diese sogenannte Artikulationsarbeit kann — als Pendant zu formellen Formen von Koordination — offenbar durch formale Koordinationswerkzeuge (etwa Fehlerdatenbanken) unterstützt, aber nicht ersetzt werden. Für KMU der Softwareindustrie kann es daher beim Offshoring notwendig sein, auf ein synergetisches Verhältnis zwischen formeller Koordination und informeller Artikulationsarbeit zu achten, statt die Entwicklung ein-seitig zu formalisieren.

Integrated Organizational and Technological Development (OTD): The Orgtech - Project

Abstract Implementing tele-cooperation technology in engineering firms often requires restructuration of work processes strenghening flexibility. Inter-organizational networks need responsible cooperation partners in each organizational unit involved. This often requires a decentralization of decision making towards semi-autonomous tele-cooperation agents, an emerging role for engineers in small engineering firms. While the establishment of related educational modules supporting their qualification for participation and their establishment on the labour market are now high on the agenda, important help for enterprizes, in the mean time, can be offered by the redesigned implementation scheme of the OrgTech project which can be found on the project’s new CD-ROM.

Wissensprozesse in der Softwarebranche. Kleine und mittelständische Unternehmen unter empirischer Perspektive

Die letzten Jahrzehnte waren von einem starken Bedeutungszuwachs der Informationsund Kommunikations(IuK) Technologie im sozialen und ökonomischen Leben insbesondere der Industrieländer geprägt. Software und Software-bezogene Dienstleistungen wurden dabei zu wesentlichen ökonomischen Faktoren. In Deutschland bildete sich in der Folge eine eigene Softwarebranche heraus, die inzwischen nicht unwesentliche Effekte auf Beschäftigung, Berufsbilder und Qualifizierungsbedarfe ausübt. Der auf den ersten Blick evident erscheinende Zusammenhang zwischen den entstehenden neuartigen Beschäftigungen und entsprechenden Qualifizierungsbedarfen erweist sich bei näherer Betrachtung als äußerst vertrackte, weil komplexe Angelegenheit. Dies hat unter anderem damit zu tun, dass vor dem Hintergrund globaler Konkurrenz nicht nur im Hinblick auf die Produkte, sondern auch auf die Produktion und deren Management versucht wird, die Entwicklungsund möglichen Verwertungsperioden (time to market) zu verkürzen.