Post on 24-Jan-2023
First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
JIT 06-191
COLLABORATION ACROSS DISTRIBUTED SITES:
APPLYING WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY TO GLOBALLY-INTEGRATED WORK
Gary C. David1,*
E-mail: gdavid@bentley.edu
João Resende-Santos1
E-mail: jresende@bentley.edu
Donald Chand1
E:mail: dchand@bentley.edu
Sue Newell1
E-mail: snewell@bentley.edu
1Bentley College
175 Forest Street
Waltham, MA 02452
USA
* Corresponding author
First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
COLLABORATION ACROSS DISTRIBUTED SITES:
APPLYING WORLD-SYSTEM THEORY TO GLOBALLY-INTEGRATED WORK
ABSTRACT
The primary challenge of globally distributed work is minimizing the perceived social distance
such that people at distributed sites who might never meet one another can work together in a
collaborative way. This paper draws from World Systems Theory, originally developed by
Immauel Wallerstein (1974), to examine how the model of core and periphery can be used to
understand the structural impediments to developing these collaborative relationships. We use
this framework to examine the distributed site relationships in an IT/IS company which we refer
to as GLOBALIS. The paper demonstrates that national boundaries should not be considered as
the primary unit of analysis. Rather, it is important to look at all of the distributed sites in
relation to the central site, and how the arrangement of these locations within a global politico-
organizational framework can inform our understanding of the social relationships that emerge in
and through the work they do. By changing the unit of analysis from the specific sites to the
entire system, the paper provides a new approach to examining globally-distributed collaborative
work.
Keywords: World Systems Theory, Global Collaboration, Offshoring, Virtual Communities
INTRODUCTION
Companies trying to address the challenges of managing globally-distributed sites and teams
primarily have done so through an array of information and communication technologies (ICTs).
Increasingly, however, companies are coming to the realization that an advanced technological
infrastructure is only part of the equation leading to globally-distributed success. Another equally
(or perhaps more) important factor is the managing of social dynamics across sites. The “social
side” of distributed work perhaps is not a new realization. However, the question of social
dynamics generally is framed through the lens of cultural difference. Attempts to address cultural
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
“issues” thus take the form of cultural training aimed at increasing an awareness of difference
and appreciation of diversity. While well-intended as a pro-active measure by management, such
an approach has two negative consequences. First, such training programs can give rise to
sophisticated stereotypes (Osland, Bird et al. 2000), which results in the reification of
stereotypical views through the presentation of materials underlining differences between
national groups. These sophisticated stereotypes thereby become the framing mechanisms
through which all group-based work is viewed and interpreted.
Second, by focusing attention on national boundaries, national boundaries becomes the most
salient factor framing the relationship. As a result, the sense is created that sites are separate and
discrete entities. In other words, by talking about the characteristics of the national cultures of
each site, people start to see these sites as stand-alone units whose behaviors and attitudes are
reducible to the units themselves. What this view misses is the importance of dynamics that
occur between sites, which in the end create a globally-distributed system of workplace
relationships.
Rather than focus on the individual sites as the unit of analysis, this paper argues for a re-
orientation to see the unit of analysis as the distributed organization itself. To conduct this
analysis, this paper draws from World Systems Theory, originated by Immauel Wallerstein
(1974). While Wallerstein’s approach focused primarily on the historical global economic and
social relationships among regions of the world within the structure of capitalism, this paper
demonstrates the applicability of this perspective to understanding the emergent social and
political relationships among globally-distributed sites within the same organization.
We use this framework to examine the distributed site relationships in an IT/IS company referred
to as GLOBALIS (for “Global IS”) in the rest of the paper. Based on the basic elements of
world-systems theory, we see a number of potential applications of the theory to the emergence
of globally-distributed IT/IS teams who are supposed to work in an integrated and collaborative
fashion. It is important here to emphasize that our analysis is directed toward organizations that
are constructing their own distributed solution centers, rather than relying on third-party vendors.
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
Third-party vendors by their very nature are on the periphery of the client organization. Their
role is not to become integrated to the point of complete inclusion into the client company.
Another important difference is the extent to which interactions among persons at the different
sites are mediated by a bridge team, or a group of workers who are employed by the third-party
vendor but are located in the client’s site. The role of this bridge team is to be the interface
between the workers at the client and vendor sites, thus playing the role of social brokers or
mediators. The integrated distribution model aims to have workers across site, but in the same
organization, work directly with one another as if they were located at the same site.
The paper demonstrates that national boundaries, while having some implication for social
relationships between sites, should not be considered as the primary unit of analysis. Rather, it is
important to look at all of the distributed sites in relation to the central site, and how the
arrangement of these locations within a global politico-organizational framework can inform our
understanding of the social relationships that emerge in and through the work that they do. By
changing the unit of analysis from the specific sites to the entire system, the paper provides a
new approach to examining globally-distributed collaborative work.
AN OVERVIEW OF WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY
This section provides a brief synopsis of world-systems analysis as formulated in political
science and historical sociology (see Wallerstein, 1974, 2005; Evans, 1979; Skocpol, 1977). The
discussion here also offers a brief summary of dependency theory which, like world-systems
theory, draws intellectual inspiration from Marxism and shares many of the same central
concepts. It is important to note, however, that there are different versions of world-systems
analysis and dependency theory. Wallerstein’s argument, as well as those who employ world-
systems theory, is exceedingly complex in its totality. We draw but one element from it: that in
order to fully understand the dynamic of collaboration within a distributed organization
(especially globally distributed organizations), you must treat the organization as a system rather
than focusing on the sites as discrete entities. Thus, we do not mean this analysis to be support
for or a refutation of world-system theory as it has originally been developed. Rather, we draw
inspiration from it as a basis for understanding globally-distributed collaborative work.
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
The Capitalist World-Economy as the Unit of Analysis
As Skocpol (1977:1075) notes, “Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World-System aims to
achieve a clean conceptual break with theories of ‘modernization’ and thus provide a new
theoretical paradigm to guide our investigations of the emergence and development of
capitalism, industrialism, and nation states.” World-systems theory borrows liberally from
dependency theory, its precursor originally formulated by Latin American sociologists and
historians in the early 1960s. Dependency theory was a kind of “protest” theory against the so-
called “modernization” theory of economic development dominant at the time. Dependistas
argued that “national” development cannot be understood without reference to the global
capitalist system of unequal exchange and exploitation. They too saw the world economy
functionally differentiated into core, semi-periphery, and periphery, each playing specified
functions and arranged hierarchically. The periphery was condemned to low cost, primary
materials production, which they sold to the core in return for high value added manufactured
goods. The long term (detrimental) consequences were obvious.
There are two foundational ideas in world-systems analysis that facilitate understanding of the
argument. The first is that world-systems analysis treats the entire world as a single (and the only
important) unit of analysis (thus the hyphen). The world-system is a self-contained social system,
with its own internal logic, mode of operation, unified and complete division of labor, and
internal exchange. Or, as Janowitz (1977:1091) observes in his analysis of Wallerstein, in world-
systems theory “it is necessary to analyze change in terms of the relations among nations, that is,
the ‘social system’ that is created by the linkages among nations.” An understanding of the
development of capitalism, industrialism, and even national-states is possible only by
considering these within the framework and operation of the world-system.
This is the theory’s first dissent from mainstream social science disciplines (political science,
economics, sociology, history), which it considers too wedded to individual states, societies, and
“national” economies. The capitalist world-economy can be treated an integrated system, a
whole, because it has a single division of labor. The world-economy is one large geographic
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
zone with a single division of labor and internal exchange. The world-economy consists of
multiple polities and cultures. Yet it is a world-economy whose pillar institutions and division of
labor are driven by, and serve the ends of, international capitalism.
The second key idea in world-systems analysis refers to the system’s single division of labor.
Namely, the world-economy is functionally and hierarchically separated into core, periphery,
and semi-periphery. The world-economy is a hierarchy; a politico-economic hierarchy of power
and rewards. Each of the three sub-strata, or geo-political zones, plays a defined economic-
political role in the world-economy and the internal exchange. In common understanding of
world-system analysis, core, semi-periphery and periphery have been associated with countries,
ranked according to their economic-military weight. Thus, the rich and developed countries (US,
Europe, Japan) are viewed as the core, and the Third World the periphery.
Wallerstein cautions that the concepts of core and periphery, however, more properly refer to
production processes, not countries. To be sure, in each category of production function, or
location in the division of labor, in the world-economy, we find countries (states) occupying
those positions. But since production processes change and shift as a result of technology, it is
better to associate core and periphery with production. Thus, some countries occupy a location of
core-like production, or periphery-like production, etc. Put differently, countries can move up or
down the ladder; they can change positions over time. Profitability and level of technological
innovation define, or determine, type of production -- and its location. Core-like production are
highly profitable, involve new technologies, innovation, etc. For Wallerstein, core production --
better yet, profitability -- is determined by level of monopolization. Thus, core production is
characterized by quasi-monopolies. And the core maintains tight grip on the technological
innovation. Only after production becomes less profitable, does the production (technology) shift
to the periphery. Periphery production is, in contrast, characterized by free markets (low profits,
high competition).
A System of Unequal Exchange
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
World-systems analysis is distinguished from mainstream theories of world politics and
international economics by its hallmark argument about the relationship between core and
periphery. Namely, the world-economy involves a process, or relationship, of unequal exchange
between core and periphery. The core produces and sells its higher value added, technology-
intensive products to the periphery, in exchange for the periphery’s lower value added goods.
The outcome is one where surplus value is transferred from the periphery to the core.
Furthermore, world-systems analysis claims that there is a direct inverse relationship between the
development of the core and periphery: the core’s development comes at the expense of, and
requires, the underdevelopment of the periphery. That is, the periphery’s structural role is to
provide for the development of the core. This creates a type of zero-sum game, where the gains
of one comes with the loss of the other. In this system, it is not possible for both to gain equally
or lose equally.
Core production is based on advanced technology and constant innovations. The core maintains
tight control over its leading edge technologies, however, and prevents its transfer to the
periphery. Leading technology gives the core its advantageous position of surplus appropriation
in the world-economy. It allows the core to become the “workshop” for the world, producing
high value added goods for the world market. Here Wallerstein appears to rely exclusively on
economic rationale for the core’s tight grip on its technology; the core has built-in profit
incentives to do so. More broadly, core production thus resembles quasi-monopolies -- protected
by a host of “legal” and institutional instruments (patents, political favors, etc). Each of the three
main zones of production in the world-economy has its own form of labor control -- skilled wage
labor in the core, share-cropping in the semi-periphery, and slave or forced labor in the periphery
in the early stages of its evolution.
Technological Diffusion in World-System Theory
World-systems analysis and dependency theory share with some mainstream neoclassical
economic theory the idea that production (technology) has cycles. The most familiar works in
neoclassical economic theory in this area is called the product life cycle theory, closely identified
with the works of Ray Vernon (1966, 1979). To simplify, products go through three stages:
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
1. Products (new technologies) are invented, produced and sold in the core;
2. Products are produced in the core, and sold in the periphery;
3. Products are produced and sold in the periphery.
However, the technology moves to the periphery only after it has become routinized, and savings
are possible only from cheap labor. For Wallerstein, a shift, or downgrading, does take place
over time, with production and technology moving to the periphery. That is, the quasi-
monopolies of the core become “self-liquidating;” they exhaust themselves, and their
profitability drops. Thus, production moves to the semi-periphery, and eventually to the
periphery in search of cost-savings from cheap labor.
In this process, the MNC’s position is guaranteed by: a) its quasi-monopoly status; b) its ability
to produce new products that no one else is producing; and c) monopolizing some new
technology or process. Thus, even though MNCs are global in operations and even production,
they keep the innovative side of the business at home in the core. New technologies, new
processes will not be relocated to the periphery. Secondly, though global in scope of activities,
strategic decision making is made in the core, not periphery. Local managers in the MNC’s
periphery production may be allowed to make operational decisions, but real decision making
power is reserved in the core (headquarters). In general, the MNC will gravitate toward
production and technologies designed for the core, and focus on low return, routine kinds of
production in the periphery.
World-systems analysis borrows from Marx the notion that political power serves and protects
economic interests. But it adds a twist. Note that Wallerstein is arguing that there is a single
capitalist world-economy, but it is also a social system that contains multiple “institutions” (i.e.,
national states) and cultural systems. Political power serves the needs of international capitalism.
Specifically, the international division of labor, including its system of unequal exchange and
expropriation, is maintained by political power -- by armies, international “rules,” etc.
Wallerstein argues that the evolution of the world-economy into core and periphery is paralleled
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
by the emergence of strong and weak states, or state machineries. In sum, the differential
strength of states in the world-economy is crucial to the operation of the system (unequal
exchange), and crucial to the protection of the interests of the dominant classes.
The first point we want to draw from world-systems theory is its attention to the world-system as
the social system of analysis. In terms of what defines a world-system, we expand beyond the
political and economic definition of Wallerstein to the definition provided by Chase-Dunn and
Hall (1993:856), who state “We use the term world-system to refer to the actual social context in
which people live and the material networks that are important for everyday life.” They go on to
say, “The main issues regarding the world-system are the types of interaction, the frequency of
interaction that constitutes systemness, and the distances over which interactions have important
consequences” (p.859). In this way, a world-system approach to offshore development focuses
on the nature of relationships across the solution centers that are created in and through the daily
interactions between personnel at all levels of the organization. Also, distance matters no matter
the location of the sites (Olson and Olson, 2000). Thus, even though a site is located within the
US, it still may have a “peripheral” relationship with the core site(s).
This relates to the second point that is drawn from world-systems theory: the concept of core,
periphery, and semi-periphery. In terms of technological sophistication, “Core countries
monopolize high-tech, high profit enterprises” (McCormick, 1990:126), while the periphery
countries are underdeveloped. Another important point to consider is the extent to which the core
maintains control of technology up until the point that the technology becomes routinized. It is
at this point that new technologies might be transferred, made possible by advances in
technology, to the periphery in order to take advantage of the cheaper labor markets.
While it makes little sense for companies to limit technological infrastructure for their distributed
sites, technological sophistication is not the only element that determines where a site is located
in the production chain. It is not the technology itself, but how the technology is used or allowed
to be used. For example, any word processor can be used to create a unique work of literature, or
conversely used to transcribe the work of someone else without any changes. Furthermore, even
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
though information technology may be meant to allow for the sharing of knowledge across an
organization, there is no guarantee that this will happen. Thus, while information sharing “is
based on electronic communication technologies, but it is not the technologies themselves which
count: what matters is the implementation of these technologies as culturally specific
accomplished social actions” (Knorr Cetina and Bruegger, 2001: 181). It is this point that we
examine in the following sections.
METHODOLOGY
Our study site, called GLOBALIS, is the IS organization of a large firm in the financial sector.
Its headquarters is in Boston, MA with multiple solution centers in the New England region.
Almost 15 years ago GLOBALIS established solution centers in Texas and Utah, and has had
two solution centers in Ireland for the last 10 years. Three years ago it launched its first solution
center near New Dehli, India and a year and a half ago began a full-services solution center in
Bangalore. Although GLOBALIS has considerable experience in establishing geographically
distributed solution centers and is well aware of industry’s best practices for dealing with issues
and problems of geographic dispersion, e.g., distance and time zone differences, cultural
differences, loss of communication richness, etc., its leadership is interested in gaining a better
understanding of how its workers engage in globally distributed collaborative work.
The project involved a multi-layered data collection process in order to develop a multi-
dimensional view of the projects and the subjects of the study. Over the past three years, our
team began observing the development of the GLOBALIS global delivery process in order to
provide GLOBALIS management an understanding of how its global workforce collaborates.
For the past twelve months our research team has been performing an ethnographic analysis of
four project teams using a workplace studies paradigm (see Luff, et al., 2000). This included
interviews, site visits, observations of video conference and conference calls, and frequent
discussions with and presentations to GLOBALIS personnel regarding the team’s findings. Thus,
the project was carried out in a quasi-Participatory Action Research (see Whyte 1990)
framework in that it was hoped that the findings of the project would be beneficial to workers,
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
management, and the organizations in terms of developing better relationships among distributed
personnel resulting in higher quality work and a better global strategy.
Interviews were conducted with personnel at all levels of the project. These interviews occurred
in both individual and group format and most of the interviews happened in person. These
interviews were not tape recorded, but individual notes were kept by research team members
present for the interviews. These separate notes were then discussed and compared. These
interviews were semi-structured and conversational in nature, and they covered a range of topics
related to GLOBALIS, such as:
1. How project success is viewed and defined;
2. A comparison of planned use versus actual use of standardized software
development and project management processes;
3. How communication and information technologies are used;
4. What are the knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing processes;
5. What are the key challenges and how those challenges are addressed;
6. What, if any, are the processes to encourage the formation of social and personal
relationship.
Each interview lasted approximately one hour in length, and overall over forty organizational
employees were interviewed.
In order to get a more fully developed sense of the worksites, we made repeated visits to the
onshore and offshore sites associated with the project. During these visits, we also observed the
nature of the work associated with the project, especially meetings and other situations where
people from the various sites interact with one another. The Ireland sites were visited in 2003 for
one week, and again in 2006 for another week. The India sites were visited over ten days in
2006. During the course of the project, the sites in the New England area were visited
intermittently in order to attend meetings, conduct interviews, and deliver reports. No other sites
in the US were visited.
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
GLOBALIS IN THE WORLD-SYSTEM CONTEXT
GLOBALIS likes to speak of developing a global workplace community in which each member
can contribute on equal footing. Toward this end, the company has tried to develop a global
delivery system meant to structure the integration of their distributed sites. Company
management also has tried to achieve a similar feel of the distributed sites by having similar
paint colors on the walls, floor layouts, company symbols, etc. As company executives have
repeatedly said to company personnel, “You can be in Bangalore and you could think that you
are in Boston.” This, of course, is not entirely true, but it speaks to the attempts of the company
to develop a unified workplace at least in appearance.
GLOBALIS has tried to use this “one company” approach to overcome its lack of name
recognition in the global marketplace. While GLOBALIS is very well-known in the US, it is less
recognizable overseas. This has created difficulties in GLOBALIS attracting talent to its
organization, especially since well-known companies like Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, IBM,
and the like are able to leverage their name to draw those who are looking to add such luminaries
to their resumes. To combat this, GLOBALIS has tried to sell itself to potential hires as a place
in which they will be working on complex projects, will develop their skills, and can build their
careers within the organization. The organization also tries to promote contributions by
distributed site personnel by promoting a team concept in the distributed projects. This means
actively working against a vendor-client mentality between the sites in which the distributed
locations see themselves as serving the central location.
At the same time, despite these explicit statements there are many subtle messages sent by the
organization and its personnel regarding how the distributed sites fit into the larger global
system. In the end, it is these messages that speak louder to workers and managers than the
proclamations of the organization and its leaders. Furthermore, it is these message and action that
create the core/periphery perception within the organization.
Ultimately, if the goal of an organization is to leverage the advantages of a distributed
workforce, it is important that their global strategy and the implementation of it allow for this to
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
emerge through the development of its sites. In the next section, we discuss how the case of
GLOBALIS fits into this model, as well as how other globally-distributed organizations can be
viewed. We do this by provided a series of vignettes meant to illustrate these points. These
vignettes are based on our conversations with GLOBALIS personnel at a variety of
organizational levels, written and oral presentations to GLOBALIS management, and
observations of the workplaces during our sites visits.
Asymmetrical Interactions through Communication Technologies
GLOBALIS does not follow the third-party vendor model, opting to try and create a type of
integrated distribution. Thus, the work at GLOBALIS is not always modularized within sites,
meaning that pieces of a project are not done at individual sites with the final assembly being
done somewhere else (as can occur in manufacturing processes). This creates the need for
constant communication and coordination among the distributed sites. Thus, there is the
expectation that persons from different sites in essence will be working together to complete a
project. The use of information and communication technologies was meant to provide an
opportunity for distributed personnel to engage in a meaningful way in the conducting of work at
GLOBALIS. While the goal of the technology is to allow for team-based collaboration, but as
our observations indicated, this is not always the case. We refer to this issue generally as creating
“asymmetrical interactions”, meaning that the situated conditions of the encounters, as well as
the way in which the encounters are carried out, are not the same for everyone.
This was most clearly demonstrated in the regular video and tele-conferences held at
GLOBALIS. During our project we were able to observe video conference calls that took place
between all the sites. The most obvious asymmetry is the time at which the calls took place.
While much has been made of the time zone differences, not much has been discussed in terms
of the impact of being at different parts of one’s day has on the ability to work in an integrative
manner. For the most part, our location for these meetings was the main GLOBALIS office in
Boston. The meetings took place 8:00am Eastern Standard Time, which meant that it was
1:00pm in Ireland and 7:00pm in India. More importantly, this would mean that it was 7:00am in
Texas and 6:00am in Utah. This meant that while the people in the Eastern Standard Time zone
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
were are the beginning of their normal work day, people in Utah would have just woken up.
Likewise, personnel in India would have to stay at work later than they typically would on a
normal workday. While seemingly a minor inconvenience, this is an initial item that contributes
to what ends up being a series of asymmetries.
While the meetings we attended were meant to provide a general report on employee allocations
and project status, they would become a more open discussion of future directions, strategies,
and project possibilities. We found that a shift took place during these moments. During the
report phase of the meetings, people at the distributed sites would report on the status and
progress of their projects. This often would be accompanied with papers that were previously
distributed to everyone in attendance. The person running the meeting from the Boston office
would call on people to begin their presentations. Typically speaking, people at the Boston site
would interrupt the presentations of the personnel at distributed sites to ask questions or ask for
clarification. In this way, conversational turns were dominated by the Boston site, creating
another asymmetry.
Furthermore, whenever the conversations would transition to become brainstorming sessions, the
conversation would generally center on the room in Boston, where around ten people would be
seated. While the other sites could hear and see what was going on, they were by no means able
to engage in these conversations as easily as people in the Boston site. Conversational turns
would be exchanged within the Boston location, with gaze being directed at those people who
were seated at the table. Thus, the people at the distributed sites were not as able to engage in
these important discussions as they occurred, but would have to pick up on these themes “off-
line”, which means after the meeting had taken place and through some other communication
medium.
We also had the occasion to witness video conferences from sites outside of the central site, once
from Ireland and once from India. Both instances revealed interesting patterns of communication
that were occurring underneath the primary interaction of the meeting. For instance, during our
observations in Ireland, we were able to witness personnel in Ireland text-messaging an Irish
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
colleague who happened to be at the core site when this meeting occurred. While the meeting
was taking place, this “subversive” communication was occurring simultaneously. When we
relayed this story to other people in the organization who worked at distributed sites, they told us
that they routinely engage in this type of activity to send messages to another “under the radar”
so to speak. Also, while the meeting is taking place people at the distributed sites often will put
their speakers on “mute” in order to avoid being heard by the site in Boston (or any other site for
that matter). This allows people to talk about a topic without the content being available for
everyone at the meeting. The core site, of course, does not have this luxury as it is the site that is
“driving” the meeting and is responsible for the business of the meeting being accomplished.
Finally, our observations of the India site demonstrated that, despite the communication
technology, much of the information was not getting through to the people in the India office.
Anecdotally speaking, about 40-50 percent of what was said during the brainstorming moments
of the meeting was picked up on by the India site. Beyond that, the Indian personnel were not
able to enter into the conversational stream as well as people who were co-located in the central
site. Thus, the video conference was good for basic reporting of organizational activity, but when
it became more of an open-ended conversation about important directions for the organization,
the distributed sites were at a disadvantage.
Distribution of “Knowledges” in GLOBALIS
The results of our study indicate that there are four areas of knowledge and that in each case this
knowledge is distributed hierarchically, limiting the extent to which the organization can achieve
its goal of being an integrated organization. In today’s organization, knowledge is the new capital
and primary resource. The lack of knowledge in the distributed “periphery” sites in each of these
areas means their development in the production chain will be impeded. By the “core” site
maintaining their ownership of these types of knowledge, they in essence will be able to maintain
their own monopoly over the production process. We do not mean knowledge in an abstract
sense. Rather, we refer to knowledge in the following ways:
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First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Services, Knowledge and Innovation Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007
1) Domain knowledge refers to knowledge of the functionality of the system and the context
in which the system being designed will be used. Programmers are not typically subject
matter experts, and the further the team member is away from the context of use, the more
difficult it will be for them to function in an autonomous way.
2) Product knowledge refers to the knowledge associated with a system or product that
develops over time. Newly opened solution centers will be staffed with personnel who may
not have any previous experience working with a particular product, thereby putting them at
a disadvantage vis-à-vis those team members at other sites who have experience. Thus, these
new personnel may not be able to put forward recommendations as effectively, and may not
be familiar with opportunities for innovation, both of which can be the sole domain of those
at the core site.
3) Organizational process knowledge refers to knowledge of the processes and/or
methodologies employed in the organization for the production cycle. Because of this lack of
knowledge, workers at newly developed solution centers have to spend much of their time
learning “how things are explicitly supposed to be done.” Again, this can hinder their
individual and site development.
4) Network knowledge refers to knowledge of the social and expertise networks. Knowing
who to contact is fundamentally important in any organizational context since it is rare that
an individual will have access to all the knowledge needed to complete assigned work tasks.
If a site that has these types of knowledge can retain it, or at least impede its dissemination, then
it will be at a decided advantage relative to sites that do not possess it. In this way, knowledge
can be the resource that determines the ability of sites to develop, and contributes to a
hierarchical distributed workplace.
In many ways, the distributed sites are at a structural disadvantage when it comes to the
possession of the requisite “knowledges” to facilitate the development of their sites. Part of this
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disadvantage is based on factors outside of individual control, while another part is related to
unwillingness to knowledge share with the distributed sites. This problem is increased when
considering the offshore sites versus the onshore distributed sites.
In terms of domain knowledge, the sites outside of the US can be disadvantaged by a lack of
understanding of the context in which the applications and products they work on will be used.
In typical offshore outsourcing arrangements, offshore workers generally are not familiar with
the vertical / application domains, technical platforms and technology environments, standards,
and work culture of the customer/client firm. But in an offshoring model such as the one
employed by GLOBALIS, we found that the quality management process and expectations,
development standards knowledge and company culture knowledge was diffused across all its
distributed sites. Yet, transfer of application domain knowledge and systems knowledge
remained problematic.
1) Domain Knowledge Transfer
While the transfer of knowledge generally is thought to be a technology issue (e.g. more
bandwidth equals better collaboration), it became clear during our research that it is more of a
relationship and experience issue. For example, one of the four projects we tracked was a nine
months long human resources and payroll application project that GLOBALIS developed for an
external customer. It was the largest projected attempted by GLOBALIS. The business analysts
and systems testers were located at a site outside of Boston, the project management and half of
the development team resided in one of the Ireland sites, and the other half of the development
team was recruited and located in Bangalore, India. The Irish team has prior domain knowledge
on the project, and understood the requirements of the project quite well. The Indian employees,
many of whom were new to the organization (and some new workers in the field) had no domain
knowledge. Thus, the issue of transferring knowledge and building up the Indian team’s
capacities became a paramount issue. Despite this challenge, the project was successfully
completed on time and within budget, and exceeded the quality standards of GLOBALIS.
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A major component of the project was to focus on the interpersonal skills of the team members,
and attention to relationship development across the sites. During an interview with the Irish
management team of the project, we were told how they conducted interviews with prospective
Indian team members using conference calls. Besides the obvious issue of distance, the other
main reason for doing so was to ascertain the person’s ability to interact through technology.
People that were found to be “easy to talk to” over the phone were rated higher than those who
were not. In fact, when asked what they rated higher, technological competence or interactional
competence, the management team said they would rather have someone who could talk easily
with others because the technological competence could be taught more easily. The managers
also initiated a rotating buddy system where workers at the distributed sites in Ireland and India
would be teamed together to get to know each other. Thus, the project was rooted in a type of
virtual workplace community. This community allowed for the development team in Ireland to
transfer their domain knowledge more easily to their Indian counterparts, who had no prior
domain knowledge. This provided an interesting example of how shared knowledge within a
virtual workplace community could provide very positive results.
2) Organizational and Product Knowledge Gap
While the previous exampple shows how a relationship-based integrated environment can help
contribute to collaborative work, there were more examples of how the distributed sites were
disadvantaged when working with the central sites. For developers, it can be very important to
understand how an organizational process works in order to build software systems that support
this processes. This leads to one of the main problems identified in the software development
literature: that IT people do not understand the business processes they are developing software
to support so that the requirements analysis is flawed, meaning the system will be poorly
designed.
We found that the employees at the distributed sites are particularly disadvantaged in this respect
as they have no contact with the actual users of the software, except through intermediaries
typically based at HQ. We had numerous interviewees at the Ireland and India sites telling us
about their frustrations in not really understanding the underlying business processes that they
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were supposedly working on. This is exacerbated by the fact that the company’s products are not
available in either India or Ireland so that these employees remain largely ignorant even of the
final product that they are developing software to support. People who we interviewed at the
main site told us that people at the distributed sites only needed to know the part of the project
that they were working on to do their job effectively. However, people at the distributed sites
said that it would be helpful if they could fully understand the context in which the product
would be used.
This gap in organizational process knowledge was exacerbated by how new the distributed
workers generally were in the GLOBALIS organization itself. Workers who are newly hired into
the organization are also at a disadvantage in terms of not having the detailed familiarity with the
products on which they are working. This can lead to an inhibition in terms of offering
suggestions or modifications to the product. In situations where there is a new team member, this
problem can be diffused since other team members can have the necessary experience to engage
constructively on the product. However, since the Indian sites are much more recent than the
other sites, this can be a wide-spread problem there. In tracking another project, we saw the
impact of this incongruence first-hand. In our discussions with team members in India, one team
in particular was tasked with working on a product that was approximately 10 years in
development. Some of the persons with which they working had been engaged with this product
from its inception, giving the sense that the product was like one of their children. The Indian
team members were hesitant to critique the product for the same reasons that one might be
hesitant to critique the performance of another person’s child. Beyond this hesitancy was a
general lack of familiarity with the product and the intricacies of the code. Together, this meant
that the persons at the Indian site in particular were not able to engage in the production of the
product in the same way was others on the team.
3) Network Knowledge Gap
Related to all of this is the importance of network knowledge in the production process. Any new
hire or new person to a project team is at a disadvantage in terms of knowledge. However,
having the necessary networks in place to fill these knowledge gaps can allow for the person to
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quickly develop into a more competent member of the team. A lack of these networks likewise
can impede development. This can be compounded when a site lacks access to these networks, as
we have seen with some of the distributed sites in GLOBALIS.
In one situation, we heard from Irish workers that they had difficulty contacting their American
counterparts in the New England area because an unwillingness to answer their phone calls or
emails. All workers had a “caller ID” function that showed who was making the call. If the call
was international in origin, workers would not answer. The workers in Ireland then used other
relationships with American workers to circumvent this obstacle. They literally had to call the
American workers that they knew (had a network with) ask them to transfer their calls to the
other American workers who would not pick up the phone in order to make contact. A similar
strategy was used by Indian employees. When they were not able to raise their American
counterparts in the New England area on the phone, they would call Irish workers with whom
they had a relationship and ask them if they had the needed information. Generally speaking,
workers at the distributed sites (especially those outside of the New England corridor) relied on
each other to fill network gaps, creating a network of support among “periphery” sites.
Another aspect of network knowledge is not knowing when to call. An example of this involves
a set of instructions given to an Indian team being managed from a site in the US. The project
manager told his Indian workers “Call me at anytime if anything happens.” To an inexperienced
and uncertain team member, such instructions are extremely vague, with no concrete sense of
what constitutes “anything happens.” Also, while “anytime” seems to denote the person can be
contacted at any moment in a day, whether a person can be awoken from a sleep, for instance, is
dependent on the severity of the “anything” that “happened.” Thus, determinations of major and
minor “anythings” must be made such that one can feel it is appropriate to call at anytime. When
the fact that there is little trust between the workers is factored in, this can be an extremely
difficult exercise for offshore personnel. Related to this is a lack of knowledge of who to call.
Even though coverage can be explicitly provided in terms of a call list, other informal networks
are useful to find the needed information for a particular problem. Workers, especially recently
hired ones, might be hesitant to contact their project managers with a question or problem in fear
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of creating a sense of incompetence. If alternative networks are available, the workers can get the
required information without putting their reputations at risk. Not having those knowledge
networks puts workers at sites outside of the main location at a disadvantage in terms of
development.
Network knowledge then becomes important as a requirement for one to perform one’s task in a
manner that can be seen as competent. Not having access to these networks impedes
performance. Furthermore, distance is a barrier to forming these relationships because it is not
only through work that relationships are developed. The spaces before and after meetings,
walking to and from the building, standing in an elevator, sitting in the lunch room, hearing idle
chatter, etc. all provide opportunities to develop personal relationships, which can then transform
into professional networks. Not having the opportunity to develop these networks means that
workers, and indeed sites, can remain on the outside looking in.
Task Complexity, Project Ownership and Routinization of Work
One of the major complaints from persons at the offshore distributed sites was the level of
complexity of the tasks they were given was relatively low. From the perspective of team
members in Ireland and India, there was a perception that they were only given work that their
US colleagues did not want (i.e., very low level, mundane work) or work that was problematic in
some sense. For example, the first project to be owned by a team in Ireland was a security
project. The researchers were told by team members that when they first took the project over,
there were significant problems with the project as the clients were not at all happy with the
service that was being delivered. In this case they nevertheless managed to turn the project
around and improve customer satisfaction by putting in a tremendous effort to build a center of
excellence around security knowledge. It was then assumed that all future security work would
come to Ireland.
However, the COO of the Irish organization recalled how he had been dismayed recently when
he had found that some new security work had been assigned to a team in a US location, rather
than to the Ireland office. This deepened the sense of “otherness” by creating the perception that
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distributed sites only receive the “low hanging fruit” or “grunt work” that American workers did
not want. There was the sense among the Irish workers that as long as work was either not
wanted by the American sites, or was in such disarray that it was a no lose proposition,
ownership of projects could be sent overseas. However, once that work stabilized and was
wanted by the American sites, it could be brought back. This feeling of only being worthy of low
level and low skill work decreased worker satisfaction and commitment in the off-shore sites.
Within the organization, we were told repeatedly that personal relationships were important in
the decision regarding not only where work was sent, but also where the project was “owned.”
Sometimes this was referred to as “politics,” meaning that backchannels were used to influence
the decision making process (thus giving the practice a negative connotation). Other times the
phrase “personal relationships” was used, meaning that the movement of work is facilitated by
prior knowledge and trust (giving the practice a positive connotation). It was very difficult to
ascertain the extent to which these claims affect the distribution of work. Regardless, we heard
this point enough to notice the impact it can have on the global working relationship.
Essentially, the sense that work is driven by factors that are surreptitious is very divisive in the
global environment, undercutting attempts to develop a cohesive global workforce. We were told
that GLOBALIS as an organization is a competitive environment, where competition between
business units is encouraged. While competition brings with it certain advantages, there are also
a number of disadvantages associated with competition where the rules are perceived to shift on
the basis of connections. We were told repeatedly that the sites stand more to gain by working
together than against one another. At the same time, the culture of the organization can result in
the emergence of working against rather than working with. Of course, it is very difficult to
create a unified workforce when members of this workforce are working under the assumption
that they need to compete with one another.
Project Innovation, Accountability, and Blame
In our conversations with GLOBALIS personnel, problems that occurred in a project were
commonly framed in the context of the entire site. Thus, if a problem was perceived to occur at
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one of the Indian sites, “India” was said to be a problem. The same can be said for the other
distributed sites as well. The extent to which the other sites were seen to comprise a separate
“out-group” correlated to how the problems were framed and attributions made. Of course, this is
a two-way street, with the distributed sites seeing the central site as comprising its own out-
group. But, the ramifications for the distributed sites are much greater. In other words, power is
not evenly distributed such that failures will be handled in the same way no matter where they
occur. Given the importance for the distributed sites, especially the newer sites in India, to create
a positive image in terms of their competency, any attribution of blame assigned to the entire site
can be very detrimental to its development.
Furthermore, we were told that within the organization, “You are free to innovate and take risks,
as long as you don’t fail.” Such a philosophy is conducive to neither innovation nor risk taking
no matter where a person is situated geographically. However, the consequences of “failure” can
increase depending upon where a person is located. Important in this is how perceptions of a
group can affect the evaluation of their work. In our interviews with GLOBALIS personnel at
distributed sites, we were told that there was a hesitancy to take risks because of the potential
harm that could be done to the whole site. There was this sense of hesitancy at a variety of levels
in the organization. This created a type of conflict within persons. Namely, while they wanted to
innovate and show what they could do, they were concerned that any failures would be more
harshly met than if one was located in closer proximity to the main site. This was exacerbated by
the age and experience discrepancies that existed between sites, where the sites located in Ireland
and India were much younger and less experienced on average than the US sites.
Research on social attribution indicates that when people see each other as members of a shared
group (or in-group), they are more likely to extend the benefit of the doubt regarding any social
transgressions (see Pettigrew 1979). For instance, Taylor and Jaggi (1974) found that in-group
members evaluated the same behaviors very differently when committed by fellow in-group
members or by out-group members. Therefore, competency is not just about how well a job is
done; it is about how well a job is perceived to be done as well. The natural distinctions in a
distributed organization are based on the location with which one is affiliated. When these sites
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are located in another nation, the boundaries are seen as being more fixed and rigid. The more
different the site and nation is perceived to be, the larger the perceived social distance between
sites. This ultimately means that the gulf between sites, and as a result the ways in which
accountability and blame are formulated, become more drastic in terms of being based on group-
level perceptions.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have provided an overview of how world-systems theory can be applied to
offshore development within a single organization. In doing so, we have demonstrated that the
core/periphery model provides a new understanding into organizational dynamics and
performance in a globally-distributed yet integrated framework. The primary challenge of
globally distributed work is minimizing the perceived social distance such that people at
distributed sites who might never meet one another can work together in a collaborative way,
with all being part of the core. This is at odds with the prevailing conditions created by
contemporary globalization which are more likely, as in GLOBALIS, to consist of a core and
periphery. Some of the conditions that pull towards this core/periphery dynamic include the ways
that globalization of work can increase. Our case study showed an increased uncertainty and
unease among workers who reside in the location from where the work is moving, with the result
that these core workers develop tactics to hold on to their power by undermining their periphery
team-mates, for example by not answering their phone. Likewise, there is uncertainty and unease
among the distributed locations that are not close enough to “headquarters” to sustain the
personal relationships seen to be necessary to get work of an increasingly complex nature,
reinforcing their role as periphery workers. Thus, uncertainty and unease prevail in a globally
distributed work environment and fuel the core/periphery separation.
Also related to the core/periphery concept is the division of labor that can exist within an
organization. Colclough and Tolbert (1992:14) speak of a technical division of labor, where the
distribution of tasks within an organization “is contingent upon industrial structure and social
relations of production in which corporate leaders decide how and where the production process
will be organized.” They also discuss the social division of labor, which “consists of the
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segmentation of the labor force along racial, gender, and ethnic lines.” The less power a group
has within an organization, the less power they will have to ask for and receive higher skill tasks
and ownership over work. Like in world-system theory, development is not a process that sites
have equal access to; it can be a very uneven process based on unequal distribution of
opportunity. Riain (2000:206) notes, “Globalization is as much a political question as an
economic one, and the politics of globalization are particularly crucial given their implications
for local political possibilities.” We can see the potential for development of distributed sites to
be political as much as economic as well.
There is also the issue of ownership of resources as an element in defining core versus periphery,
as well as impacting development. Along with knowledge being a resource that can be owned, so
can customer relationships and projects be owned. For offshore sites, they get their task
assignments from those sites that are able to interact directly with the customer. Also, project
ownership often comes with customer relationships. In both ways, ownership of customer
relations and projects is an important component in developing the skills and expertise, as well as
organizational legitimacy, of a site. Most frequently, both customer relationships and projects are
owned by sites that can be considered to be the “core” while the “periphery” sites are those that
provide services to the core in the maintenance of relationships and projects.
Finally, sites can have different levels of accountability in terms of how much blame is assigned
for project difficulties and/or how conflicts are handled between sites. Again, this is similar to
the dynamics between nations within a world-systems context. Borg (1992:262) argued, “(1) that
the status of nations within the world-system at a particular time is correlated with the primary
strategy they use for conflict management and (2) that the strategy used may affect the nation’s
subsequent rank.” Likewise, we can look at how such problematic instances are handled within a
global organization to determine how the sites are positioned relative to one another. Or, to
paraphrase George Orwell, while all team members may be equal, some are more equal than
others. The result of this is that while culpability may be shared for project difficulties, blame
often is not.
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Managing interdependence reciprocally implies some give and take and learning from and
adapting to the ‘other’. This implies moving beyond a “multinational” model to a “transnational”
model of distributed work. Bartlett and Ghoshal (1988:66) describes a multinational company as
one that “operates as [a] decentralized federation of units”, versus a transnational company that
has “the ability to manage across national boundaries, retaining local flexibility while achieving
global integration.” This means organizations have to evolve their global strategies beyond a
subservient subsidiary structure to a collaborative structure that is integrated vertically as well as
horizontally. The very phrases of “on-shore” and “off-shore” underline the separation of the
organization into different groups. Furthermore, to achieve more effective productivity, these
distributed units need to counter a competitive impulse in order to achieve cooperation and
decrease social distance despite the presence of physical distance (Bettencourt, et al. 1992).
Ghoshal (2005) has challenged the “radical individualism” that has been the basis of
management decisions, whereby competition and individual attainment was assumed to be the
foundation for organizational success. Global organization likewise must challenge these
assumptions which can be counterproductive in achieving integrated distributed work.
In essence, for global companies to achieve transnational integration, there needs to exist an
opportunity for equal exchange and reciprocal relationships. Norms of reciprocity imply that we
are obligated to future repayments of favors, gifts, invitations etc. received from others
(Gouldner 1960). Anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1967) found that “primitive” societies establish
reciprocal social relations and solidarity through gift exchange. This is different from a straight-
forward exchange, based on a market transaction, since the returned favor is not explicitly
specified. Rather, the favor implies a diffuse, generalized obligation for reciprocity sometime in
the future. In other words, it is important that some act results in the production of an in kind
subsequent act. Encouraging such reciprocal relationships in a distributed setting will require
attention to the development of a social community, just as it does in face-to-face settings. Yet,
as we have seen, the technology can get in the way of the development of social cohesion (as in
the video conferences described above) and reinforce, rather than negate, the core/periphery
perceptions. This suggests that in a distributed setting more, rather than less, attention needs to
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be given to fostering social relationships and encouraging the ‘small talk’ that is automatic in
non-virtual settings.
More importantly, distributed sites, especially those located outside of the national boundaries of
the core site, need to be provided the opportunity to develop in order to cast-off their periphery
status. As this paper indicates, lack of development is not just a matter of site-based deficiencies,
although they undoubtedly contribute. Managers and researchers need to look at the world-
system dynamics within the organization, including the explicit organizational structure and tacit
messages that give rise to the dichotomization of sites into more developed and less developed
(core and periphery). Failure to do so will lead to a loss in productive capacity, worker morale,
and competitiveness in the global market. Future research needs to examine this model in more
case scenarios, as well as the impact of organizational interventions meant to bridge social
distance and establish global workplace communities, both in their virtual and face-to-face
forms. Despite the challenges demonstrated here, we have seen tremendous potential, and in
parts the realization of this potential, for the development of globally distributed collaborative
work where all are part of the core. It is vital that organizations contribute to, rather than impede,
this development.
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