A new typology of national and organisational cultures to facilitate software quality management.

Globalising trends in recent years have resulted in more cross-national studies. Being a global organisation implies having a universal culture. For the past few decades there has been an important debate about convergence or divergence of work values. International organisations have tried to understand the diverse value system of their multinational structure. The objectives of multinational organisations are to create a universal culture in the whole organisation, and to integrate multidomestic operations with individuals who hold opposed work related values. If a multinational organisation is going to be a truly global organisation the diverse individual work values must converge and be integrated into a common set of values creating a universal corporate culture. The authors are investigating how culture influences the implementation of Software Quality Management Systems, aiming to develop a model, which will take culture into consideration for successful implementation of Software Quality Management Systems. There is evidence that national culture influences management practices, and multinational enterprises need to adapt to the national cultures in which they operate in order to achieve high business performance. A typology of national cultures has been developed to aid understanding of the characteristics of different national cultures and especially the capability and culture of organisation’s leadership. The intention in this paper is to identify cultural factors, which may have a bearing on the successful adoption and implementation of Software Quality Management. The fifth INternational conference on Software Process Improvement Research into Education and training, INSPIRE 2000, London 7-9 Sept. 2000