Individual cultural models

Cultural models can be helpful to shed some light to better understand the factors affecting Information Technology (IT) adoption, these models have been developed at different levels: national, organizational, individual, etc. (Ali & Brooks, 2009). At the Innova Institute , we focus on culture at individual level to study how cultural individual traits can influence IT adoption. To study culture at individual level, Hofstede's dimensions (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005) can be used. They were designed at national level, but Dorfman and Howell (1988) proved that Hofstede's dimensions make sense at the individual level. Furthermore, Bagchi’s (2003) work found enough support for the following hypotheses: - H1: Information technology adoption is greater in nations with high individualism. - H2: Information technology adoption is greater in nations with low power distance. - H3: Information technology adoption is lesser in nations with high uncertainty avoidance. Therefore, individualism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance can be proposed as a proxy to study the effect of cultural traits on IT Adoption. In addition, all these dimensions can be grouped in one construct, which allows to have a broad idea of a person’s individual cultural attributes on IT adoption. According to Hofstede's framework, individualism studies the ties between individuals. In other words, if there is a weak tie between individuals of a country they will have a high individualism; while, countries where individuals have strong ties show a low individualism. The second dimension, power distance, studies how individuals accept that power is distributed equally or unequally in an organization, a country with a low power distance means that individuals accept that there is not distance in the relationship between bosses and subordinates; so power is distributed almost equally between subordinates and bosses. Conversely, a country with high power distance means that individuals needs a clear differentiation between subordinates and bosses. Finally, uncertainty avoidance studies how individuals feel in front of ambiguous and unpredictable situations. A country with a low uncertainty avoidance means that country citizens feel comfortable in ambiguous and unpredictable situations. Hofstede’s approach allows the Innova Institute to study how cultural individual traits can influence on IT adoption. According to your opinion, do you think that individual cultural attributes can explain IT adoption by individuals in today’s global environment? From your point of view, which one of the Hofstede’s dimensions can better explain adoption of new technological artefacts? References:

• Ali, M. & Brooks, L. 2009, "A situated cultural approach for cross-cultural studies in IS", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, vol. 22, pp. 563.
• Bagchi, K., Cerveny, R., Hart, P., & Peterson, M. 2003, The influence of national culture in information technology product adoption", Proceedings of the Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systems, pp. 957-965.
• Dorfman, P.W. & Howell, J.P. 1988, “Dimensions of national culture and effective leadership patterns: Hofstede revisited”, Advances in international comparative management, vol. 3, pp. 127-150.
• Hofstede, G. & Hofstede, G.J. 2005, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, 2nd Ed, McGraw-Hill, New York, USA.