Intercultural learning as a strategic response to socio-cultural differences in global software development

In this paper, we conceptualize the relationships between software developers’ socio-cultural differences, global distribution, intercultural learning and interpretation of information in the organization of GSD. Our discussions are centred on the idea that the combination of global distribution and different socio-culturally-based perceptions will lead to interlocutors’ heterogeneous interpretation information. Such interpretation contributes largely to several organizing problems that have been reported in the literature on distributed work – e.g. conflicts, uncertainties, misattributions, ethnocentrisms and mistrust. We propose intercultural learning as a strategic response for dealing with different perceptions and hence for moderating the heterogeneity of information interpretation. On the methods to attain intercultural learning, we propose the creation of avenues for informal interactions, the increment of the frequency of interactions, and the creation of common contexts for enriching information exchanged in remote interactions.