No sense of distance: improving cross-cultural communication with context-linked software tools

ABSTRACT

Many studies have established the difficulties inherent in both cross-cultural and distance communication. Distance work interferes with close collaboration and trust. Physical distance and lack of time zone overlap can exacerbate cross-cultural misunderstandings. Nevertheless, international collaboration over distance is becoming increasingly common in many fields. Scientific collaborations, in particular, are becoming larger and more international in scope. There has been much research in the area of understanding cultural differences, but not as much in how technology might bridge such communication gaps in international scientific collaboration. In an effort to begin to form guidelines for such technology development, we undertook an empirical study of how computer-mediated communication tools facilitated cross-cultural communication over distance and led to greater team effectiveness in an international astrophysics collaboration.

References

1. Aldering, G., et al., Overview of the Nearby Supernova Factory. Proceedings of the SPIE, 2002, 61--72.
2. Aragon, C., Poon, S., Aldering, G., Thomas, R. and Quimby, R. Using visual analytics to maintain situation awareness in astrophysics. Proc. IEEE VAST (2008), 27--34.
3. Birnholtz, J. P., Finholt, T. A., Horn, D. B. and Bae, S., Grounding needs: achieving common ground via lightweight chat in large, distributed, ad-hoc groups. Proceedings of SIGCHI Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 05 (2005), 21--30.
4. Erickson, T., Smith, D. N., Kellogg, W. A., Laff, M., Richards, J. T. and Bradner, E., Socially translucent conversations: social proxies, persistent conversation, and the design of "Babble". Proceedings of CHI 1999 (1999), 72--79.
5. Finholt, T. A. Evaluation of electronic work: research on collaboratories at the University of Michigan. SIGOIS Bull., 16 (2), (1995), 49--51.
6. Fono, D. and Baecker, R., Structuring and Supporting Persistent Chat Conversations. Proceedings of CSCW 2006, (2006), 455--458.
7. Halverson, C. A., The value of persistence: a study of the creation, ordering and use of conversation archives by a knowledge worker. Proceedings of HICSS 2004, (2004), 108--117.
8. Herbsleb, J., Mockus, A., Finholt, T. A. and Grinter, R., An empirical study of global software development: distance and speed. International Conference on Software Engineering, Toronto, Canada, 2001, 81--90.
9. Hofstede, G. Cultural differences in teaching and learning. Intl J of Intercultural Relations, 10 (3), 1986, 301--20.
10. Hofstede, G. Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values. Sage, Beverly Hills, CA, 1980.
11. Hofstede, G. and Hofstede, G. J. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. McGraw-Hill, New York, 2005.
12. Holden, N. (2002). Cross-Cultural Management -- A Knowledge Management Perspective. Harlow: Prentice Hall.
13. Lantz, B., SNIFS: a wideband integral field spectrograph with microlens arrays. Proceedings of the SPIE, (2004), 146.
14. McSweeney, B. (2002). Hofstede's model of national cultural differences and their consequences: a triumph of faith - a failure of analysis. In: Human Relations, 55 (1), 89--118.
15. Myers, M. D. and Tan, F. B. (2002). Beyond models of national culture in information systems research. In: The Journal of Global Information Management, 10 (1), 14--29.
16. Olson, G. M., Malone, T. and Smith, T. eds. Coordination theory and collaboration technology, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 2001.
17. Olson, G. M. and Olson, J. S. Distance Matters. Human-Computer Interaction, 15, 2000, 139--178.
18. Perlmutter, S., Aldering, G., Goldhaber, G. et al. Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae. Astrophysical Journal, 1999 (517), (1999), 565--586.
19. Poon, S. S., Thomas, R. C., Aragon, C. R. and Lee, B. Context-linked virtual assistants for distributed teams: an astrophysics case study. Proceedings of CSCW 2008, ACM (2008), 361--370.
20. Ribak, A., Jacovi, M. and Soroka, V., "Ask before you search": peer support and community building with ReachOut. Proceedings of CSCW 2002, (2002), 126--135.
21. Riess, A. G., Filippenko, A. V. et al. Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant. Astrophysical Journal, 1998 (116), (1998), 1009--1038.
22. Zheng, J., Bos, N., Olson, J. S. and Olson, G. M., Trust without touch: jump-start trust with social chat. Proc. CHI 2001.

Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Collaborative and social computing

    • Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms

      • Computer supported cooperative work

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing and business

      • Computer supported cooperative work