It seems that people in Morocco have different email practices than others I have talked to in TBC. The custom for how fast one should reply to an email is an example. When you call, however, they reply immediately. (From my video field diary July 2011).
Introduction
This chapter is the third of the four empirical chapters in this thesis. As chapter five assisted in answering the research question in chapter six, the insights presented in this chapter will provide a background that will give a more holistic understanding when I explicitly answer the second research question in the next chapter: How do consultants’ working practices in contextual offline settings interplay with their interaction practices online?
This chapter brings to the analysis some of the key differences in the routines, traditions, norms and procedures for working among TBC-professionals from the different entities involved in this study. These are elements that concern the vertical dimension (structure-agency) highlighted in red in Figure 10:
As stated, the social structure is in the framework the rules (implicit or explicit formulas for action) and resources (what agents themselves bring to action, such as knowledge and abilities) that both enables and restrict individuals’ actions (Giddens 1979, 69). The social structure consists of individuals’ conscious actions, yet individuals’ actions are also restricted by the structure (i.e., other individuals). According to structuration theory (Giddens 1984), the duality of structure confirms established practices and simultaneously initiates changes due to agency:
Individuals are knowledgeable and act on their own. In the framework, “agency” refers to TBC workers’ reflexive actions. In structuration theory, individuals are knowledgeable and characterized by three types of consciousness: (1) discursive (things the individual can articulate); (2) practical (elements that are needed for participating in social life, are taken for
Structure
• Tools and platforms used for working (e.g., social enterprise
Figure 10: The elements discussed in this chapter are highlighted in red in my framework.
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granted, and are not reflected upon); and (3) unconscious motives/cognition (personality, basic, instinctual human drives) (Giddens 1984). This chapter presents insights into some of the different routines, traditions, norms, and procedures of how TBC professionals carry out their work and interpret ways of doing work other than their own. These key differences are relevant when TBC professionals work and interact together not only in offline places but also in the shared online social enterprise platform.
Local Ways of Doing Things
Practices are defined as shared routines, traditions, norms, and procedures for working, thinking, acting, and using things (Whittington 2006, 619). According to this definition, cultural differences are similar to having different practices. In the management literature, studies of culture in cross-cultural groups and organizations have been influenced mostly by cultural dimension theory (Hofstede and Hofstede 1991, Hofstede 1980). This approach, however, has been heavily criticized because of its view of culture as a static, objective entity capable of being studied in isolation (Ailon 2013) and characterized by a value-set defined from a masculine, managerial, and Western point of view (Ferguson 1994, 89-90). Additionally, cultural dimension theory ties culture to geographic location, which is problematic because culture concerns shared meanings that do not have clear borders (Eriksen and Neumann 2011, 5). From this anthropological perspective, culture might change quickly, as when people take in new impulses and influences from the outside (Eriksen and Neumann 2011, 5). Social identity (group formations and group boundaries) differs from culture by being more discontinuous and has carefully guarded borders (Eriksen and Neumann 2011, 5).
Routines are understood in structuration theory to be integral to both individuals and structures.
Routines are founded on traditions or habits fundamental to individuals’ daily interactions with others who are physically co-present (Giddens 1984, 64). TBC professionals hold different norms and rules, sometimes also within the same entity. Rules or norms consist of “acting out”
meaning (Giddens 1984, 28). As shown, TBC professionals spend their working days in local structures characterized by unique values, norms, and rules with a shared language, which acts as a lubricant for social interaction. Social interaction is manifested mostly through language and communication (Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz, 2008), and as mentioned, a number of languages are spoken in the enterprise platform. TBC professionals thus enter the online social enterprise platform with communicative practices they have established in offline (contextual) social structures. The workplace plays a key role in working practices and, consequently, the social enterprise platform because shared meanings and routines are confirmed on a daily basis and play a key role in social integration (Giddens 1984).
Speaking versus Writing Practices
A key finding from early in the research process was that TBC professionals have different norms for how quickly they reply to emails. While participants from Norway, Denmark, and the United Kingdom replied fairly quickly (always the same day or evening), TBC employees from Morocco did not always even reply. This pattern was also observed by Arnulf and Kristoffersen (2014) in their study of European and Chinese managers. Closer analysis showed that the spoken word- intertwined with social trust - was still very present among TBC
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Moroccans. This does not mean that TBC employees in Morocco do not reply or use email, because they indeed do. Rather, it points to the role the spoken word plays for TBC consultants in the North African entities. I write in my field diary:
One of the managers explains the difference between the South and the North in terms of different traditions based on an oral dissemination of the spoken word. Moreover, the spoken word concerns growing trust to the participants in the conversation. People have other habits than people from other places in regard to communicating via e-mail or writing reports and documents. Conversations and seeing people are important, even when people are sitting far from one another. Communication here concerns establishing a relationship which must be social before it can be anchored professionally.
(July 2011)
The preference for oral speech in TBC Morocco was shown to be closely related to trust and building social relationships. For example, sending a text message concerning important life matters (e.g., having a child) is perceived as disrespectful to the social relationship of the sender and the receiver. As one Moroccan consultant put it, “If it is important, you call.” Preferring telephone calls over, for example, sending emails is a practice valid to all TBC professionals, regardless of entity. However, establishing a social relationship in order to develop a trustful relationship before doing professional work together is more important to Moroccan workers than the other TBC professionals included in this study. All TBC employees build social relationships by communicating in co-presence. A getting-to-know-each other process in Morocco typically includes sharing personal information about, for example, family. Sharing personal information provides an imagination of who a person is. When establishing a social relationship, face-to-face communication adds the social cues needed to establish meaning and thus reduces social distance (Goffman 2000 [1959]).
Arnulf and Kristoffersen (2014) found that, for Chinese managers, the best way to get a message across to collaboration partners in Europe was to make communication personal through social relationships. European managers, however, preferred written communication because they saw it as easier for the Chinese managers to understand than oral communication due to language difficulties. The Chinese managers, however, seldom replied to the emails the Europeans sent, which was experienced as frustrating by the Europeans. Chinese managers, in turn, were frustrated by a lack of response due to European holidays and restricted working hours (Arnulf and Kristoffersen 2014, 11).
In TBC, the preference for the spoken or written word is closely related to the context of which the communication partners are part of (e.g., Oslo 1 or Rabat 2). The different communication preferences (writing, speaking) give insight into future versions of enterprise platforms because users might have different preferences for content formats. Although the social enterprise platform has the functionality to support visual content (pictures, video), the majority of technologies are modelled on the logic and tradition of the written word (writing status updates or blog posts, asking questions). For example, one Moroccan technical worker explains that he prefers watching videos over reading lengthy paragraphs of text. Visual elements can also enable a sense of knowing others. Zheng et al. (2002), for example, found that having a static
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photograph of the communication partner was effective for establishing trust, whereas a text-based, static information sheet of personal information was not. Nandhakumar (2002) found that ICT did not provide the emotional satisfaction needed to build trust relationships and that working relationships had to be established the conventional way before the employees could perform teamwork virtually (Nandhakumar 2002, 52). Additionally, in this study, process workers were found to need more interaction with other individuals than written documentation for working. Skype and other real-time visual and oral technologies, therefore, are helpful in their working processes.
Discrimination
Local and implicit rules in social systems are often symbolized in materiality visible to the eye.
For example, this prayer rug in an office space in Morocco indicates that TBC professionals practice Islam, while the shoe polish boxes hint at the dress code in Norway (Photo 2).
Photo: 2: A prayer rug in an office space in Morocco to the left, shoe polish boxes in Norway to the right.
Other rules that are less easy to see play important roles in meetings between TBC workers having different practices. For example, a female consultant tells that she went to a meeting at a TBC entity in a country that still has very traditional views of woman. The consultant was immediately perceived by the other entity’s employees to be her male colleague’s secretary and was treated in line with this interpretation. Not only gender, but also racial discrimination is experienced by some TBC women in multinational TBC. This has also happened in the enterprise platform space, tells one Moroccan employee:
Once I saw this group of women, and I sent a request to join the group, and the administrator said no. I was thinking, why did she say no? Is it because I’m from Africa?
There was a photo [of her]. Why? I wanted to send a note and ask why. Then I lost interest.
An online social platform does not automatically eliminate established practices or prejudices.
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Different Rules for Prioritizing Working Tasks
The underlying prioritization rules were found to differ greatly among TBC employees. While individuals at one entity interpret the highest number (no 5) on a prioritized list of 1 to 5 as the most important and therefore the task the employee should begin first, individuals at another entity use the opposite rule of thumb, beginning with the work task listed first (no 1). Such small details are seldom articulated but are taken for granted. It is also assumed that others follow the same set of implicit rules. This easily leads to misunderstandings when TBC employees from different entities work together. There have been occasions when a team held a video conference with an international client and set the five most important tasks to solve in the coming week, but in the next meeting, the client shook his head in frustration because the team started with what was perceived as the least important matter. Language differences also make TBC employees unsure whether they share common ground with communication partners and whether others fully understand the work tasks they should do.
Rules for When to Begin the Workday
Practices of how work is done and how tasks are expected to be solved are less easy to perceive with the bare eye and are typically taken for granted until meeting with others who follows different rules. The proper time to begin work in the morning, for example, came up as an issue during the interviews. One consultant kept calling another entity in the morning, but employees at the other entity had different routines for when to begin working. Their workday started at a later time than the consultant’s. Different rules for what time is the proper to begin work became an annoyance, typically followed by the development of prejudices against others. Thus, identification with the in-group was reinforced more than downplaying silos (Rouzies and Colman 2012).
Rules for Meetings
Distance from others’ ways of doing things is relative, depending on what is being compared, as this Norwegian employee illustrates:
As individuals, I think I have most in common with the closest countries. I’m aware that there are cultural differences between Norway and Sweden and [between] Norway and Denmark and between Denmark and Sweden as well, but I think that, after all, we are more similar than if we move a step further away.
However, being geographically close does not eliminate differences in, for example, the underlying norm for how meetings should be organized, as this Danish consultant describes his neighboring country of Sweden:
I was at a meeting in Sweden. We kept going for three hours and had two coffee breaks.
When the time went out for the first session, we went outside the meeting room for a coffee and small talk. Then we went back in and continued the meeting. In Denmark, we would have laughed and thought that we should have waited with coffee until we were done with the meeting.
The rules for how meetings are organized differ between and within the TBC entities, even when the entities are geographically close.
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Violations of Known Rules are Interpreted Negatively
When work tasks are organized or fulfilled in unaccustomed ways, TBC workers interpret this within the set of common rules and norms they themselves apply. Violations of these rules are consistently interpreted negatively by TBC workers, as this consultant illustrates:
I’ve sometimes found them [TBC employees from a country] to be very laidback, very relaxed about things. Almost to a state where you’ll ask for something that is really urgent, and it just isn’t dealt with in the kind of way that it would be here. That frustrates me a little.
The procedures for doing work differ from one TBC context to another. By being in shared social structures are shared rules confirmed on a daily basis. When the consultants are asked which entities they perceive as most different from themselves, many list entities that have different routines and rules for how good work is organized.
There is a reasonable difference with the [TBC employees from a country]. I think it is difficult to collaborate with them because they do not give important messages. You ask people if they’re working on the agreed tasks, and they say “Yes, yes,” and then the deadline arrives, and they say; “Sorry, I didn’t make it. My kids were ill, and I had a big project.” “So, why didn’t you tell me?” I think a deal is a deal. As I see it, you stick to the deal, and do what you say you will do.
The consultant interprets the action of giving important messages as a universal rule that is equivalent to how work gets done. However, TBC professionals have different rules and norms for working, which frequently leads to prejudices against others who have different ways of organizing and carrying out work. Such differences maintain social distance and subordinate others’ way of doing things (Ashforth and Mael 1989).
Different Rules in Overlapping Structures
However, as mentioned briefly, the analysis did not find that having different practices was tied to geography. In entities in the same country or city and even within the same entity, the consultants have unique rules and norms different from those of others. TBC employees expressed stereotypes about others who have different business models and prioritization systems, as this consultant illustrates:
We are very local. We work towards our close market. We are businessmen; being kings at the customers is what drives us. With [the other entity in the same country], they are more into communities of different disciplines. They are much more concerned about their entity’s inner life, nurturing their professional disciplines.
The two entities offer somewhat different services to their clients and thus are organized differently.
In addition, having many meetings is interpreted by some TBC entities as a symbol of a successful client process, but another entity believes that a deal can be done with few meetings and that many meetings are a waste of time. The number of client meetings is also interpreted
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differently within one entity, representing for one department being busy and having many clients and for a different department as showing off.
Even when entities are geographically close and communicating in a shared language, they have different traditions, rules, and norms for working. These differences are often interpreted negatively, and as shown in the next chapter, TBC professionals’ interpretations of others seem to be strengthened, rather than weakened, in the transparent enterprise platform.
Working with Strangers
As pointed to in the analysis of the social network data in chapter five, there is little cross-unit collaboration in TBC, even when the entities are located within the same country or city.
Working with TBC professionals at other entities has been more or less been a consequence of joint projects and of employees being stationed at other offices for shorter or longer periods.
Although some TBC professionals have experienced contact with or tried to contact others they have never met, such contacts most often are one-time occurrences. When asked why no further communication is pursued, most informants refer to misunderstandings. One does not understand what the intention of initiating contact is:
I had an interesting teleconference with someone from [country] about our project a few weeks ago, but nothing came out of it. I think we misunderstood each other a bit because they wanted me as a reference in a project they had going in [country]. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t hear anything more from them. In regard to the project we discussed, I think I could have contributed with quite a bit of competence, experience and such.
According to structuration theory (Giddens 1984), all social interaction is situated, which points to the importance of co-presence in interaction and communication. The consultant above had a virtual teleconference with a TBC entity located geographically very far from his own. In contrast, the teleworker in chapter five explains that their team managed to create co-presence through Skype and telephone calls. The difference between the teleworker’s and the consultant’s situation is that the consultant above and those that contacted him did not know each other nor shared a common ground or social practices. In Giddens’s (1984) model, social interaction is tied to the modality of interpretation. TBC workers make sense of their surroundings through their interpretative schemes so that communication is meaningful (Giddens 1984, 29). These rules are manifested mostly through language and communication and learned in everyday work activities in which the employee is socially integrated (Giddens 1984). A shared language serves as a lubricant among people (Gumperz and Cook‐Gumperz 2008), and common ground is key for communication to be meaningful. Trygg (2014, 190) found in her study of home offices that employees preferred to come to the office rather than work from home because personal interactions are the main building blocks for developing relationships. Through daily interaction, work practices are routinized, institutionalized, and finally taken for granted until they are met with other rules or ways of doing things.
When asked to list which entity TBC-professionals perceived as the most similar and the most different compared to their own, they classified others along a close–periphery continuum of
When asked to list which entity TBC-professionals perceived as the most similar and the most different compared to their own, they classified others along a close–periphery continuum of