Eileen M. Trauth

Odd girl out: an individual differences perspective on women in the IT profession

This paper develops a theoretical perspective on gender and information technology (IT) by examining socio‐cultural influences on women who are members of the information technology profession in Australia and New Zealand. In‐depth interviews with both practitioners and academics give evidence of a range of socio‐cultural influences on the professional development and working lives of women IT professionals. The paper rejects the essentialist view of women and their relationship to IT that has been put forth in the information systems literature arguing, instead, the primacy of societal and structural influences. The particular contribution of this paper is a theoretical perspective of individual differences which is presented to characterize the way individual women respond in a range of specific ways to the interplay between individual characteristics and environmental influences. This perspective contributes to a better understanding of women’s involvement in the IT sector and suggests areas for proact...

Understanding computer-mediated discussions: positivist and interpretive analyses of group support system use

This research considers whether interpretive techniques can be used to enhance our understanding of computer-mediated discussions. The case study considered in this research is the use of a group support system (GSS) to support employee discussions about gender equity in a university. Transcripts of the four discussions were analyzed

Retaining women in the U.S. IT workforce: theorizing the influence of organizational factors

The challenge of meeting the demand for information technology (IT) workers is addressed by examining three important organizational factors that affect womens retention in the IT field. Much of the research on gender and IT assumes a unilateral effect: all organizational factors affect all women in the same ways. An alternative view that is explored in this research is that within-gender differences offer rich insights into the gender imbalance in the IT profession. The individual differences theory of gender and IT enabled us to examine variation in organizational influences on women through analysis of transcripts from in-depth interviews conducted with 92 women in the IT workforce in the U.S.A. The results show that three organizational factors – work–life balance, organizational climate, and mentoring – affected the womens career development in a range of ways. Our findings shed new light on what has been interpreted by other researchers as contradictory findings because our theoretical starting point is the assumption that women are not all the same, that within-gender variation is expected and that it provides an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of gender relations in the IT field. Using this theory we were able to identify opportunities for the development of interventions by linking the themes embedded in the three workplace factors to the constructs of the theory. The individual identity construct revealed the ways in which a womans demographic and professional characteristics affect her career choices. The individual influences construct focused attention on the ways in which differences in personality, abilities, and influential people shape ones career. Finally, the environmental influences construct characterized contextual influences on womens participation in the IT profession. Our findings show that both research and interventions directed at increasing the retention of women must be flexible enough to respond to the variation that exists among women and within IT workplaces.

Understanding the under representation of women in IT: toward a theory of individual differences

Among the research challenges in studying the under representation of women in the IT field is that of developing appropriate theory to provide a basis for understanding and explanation about this gender imbalance. At present, there are two dominant theories in the gender literature that are used to explain the participation of women in the IT profession. The essentialist perspective dichotomizes gender based upon the presumption of significant inherent differences between women and men. This view finds the causes of gender under representation in biology. The social construction perspective focuses on the social construction of IT as a male domain, which is interpreted as incompatible with the social construction of female identity. This view finds the causes of gender under representation in the IT sector. The research discussed in this paper is directed at the development of a new theory that focuses on individual differences among women as they relate to the needs and characteristics of IT work and the IT workplace. This view finds the causes of gender under representation in the socio-cultural environment that shapes each womans gender identity and her professional development, and her individual responses to these influences.

A Multicultural Analysis of Factors Influencing Career Choice for Women in the Information Technology Workforce

This article presents an analysis of cultural factors influencing the career choices of women in the IT workforce. The authors employ individual differences theory of gender and IT as a theoretical lens to analyze a qualitative data set of interviews with 200 women in four different countries. The themes that emerged from this analysis speak to the influence of cultural attitudes about maternity, childcare, parental care, and working outside the home on a woman’s choice of an IT career. In addition, several additional socio-cultural factors serve to add further variations to gendered cultural influences. Further empirical support of emergent individual differences theories of gender and IT endeavors to theorize within-gender variation, with respect to issues related to gender and IT, as well as point to areas where educational and workplace interventions can be enacted.

Situating culture in the global information sector

Presents a theoretical approach to understanding the local culture of firms in the multinational information sector. Called situating culture, this approach holds that cultural understanding is locally situated, behavioral and embedded in everyday, socially negotiated work practices. The application of this theory is provided through cases from the workplace cultures of US multinational IT firms operating in Ireland. These examples show how the local culture of a global IT firm represents the interaction of industry, corporate and national contexts. It results in locally situated work practices and distinct socially negotiated realities that ultimately impact behavior in these settings. The theoretical approach of situating culture contributes to a better understanding of contextualism in the cross‐cultural IT environment. This understanding, in turn, has implications for future cross‐cultural IS research as well as for cross‐cultural IT practice.

Cultural influences and globally distributed information systems development: experiences from Chinese IT professionals

Global information systems development has become increasingly prevalent and is facing a variety of challenges, including the challenge of cross-cultural management. However, research on exactly how cross-cultural factors affect global information systems development work is limited, especially with respect to distributed collaborative work between the U.S. and China. This paper draws on the interviews of Chinese IT professionals and discusses three emergent themes relevant to cross-cultural challenges: the complexity of language issues, culture and communication styles and work behaviors, and cultural understandings at different levels. Implications drawn from our findings will provide actionable knowledge to organizational management entities.

The importance of situating culture in cross-cultural IT management

An approach to understanding cross-cultural information technology (IT) management issues that focuses on the implicit aspects of culture is described and applied. It is based upon a theoretical framework called situating culture which acknowledges that cultural understanding is locally situated, grounded in actual behaviors, and embedded in everyday, socially negotiated work practices. To show how this theoretical framework can be used in cross-cultural IT management, it is applied to an examination of the interplay among multiple contextual influences-the national cultures of the host and home countries, the IT industry culture, and the organizational culture of a particular firm-in examples of the cross-cultural IT workplace drawn from the published literature. Management implications of applying the situating culture approach in the cross-cultural IT workplace are then provided.

Breaking and entering the male domain. Women in the IT industry

Interviews with Australian IT professionals (twenty-two women and two men) working in technical areas are referenced to explore how the masculinity of the IT industry is perceived by women working as IT professionals. The skills the interviewees see as important for success in this industry and which have helped them to pursue a satisfactory and fulfilling career are also discussed. Mentoring is suggested as a means of changing young womens negative perceptions or IT as a career, in order to improve female participation in IT education and the IT industry.

The implications of a critical agenda in gender and IS research

Abstract.  This paper explores the nature of the critical agenda and endeavours to advance the critical debate by considering a particular case in point: gender and information systems (IS) research. It does so by drawing upon Chuas classic framework of outlining philosophical assumptions underpinning research and also by building upon prior work of the authors on the interconnections amongst research topic, epistemology and methodology. Specifically, it presents an argument for the benefits of adopting a critical perspective when studying gender and IS research, illustrating the additional insights that can be generated. These benefits and insights can also be mined from other areas of IS research.