Software, sports day and sheera: Culture and identity processes within a global software organization in India

Abstract Global software organizations (GSO) represent one kind of workplace setting within the new economy. Employing information technology (IT) professionals engaged in global software development work, these workplaces are not only rational, information-based structures, but also actively create and nurture social and symbolic frameworks for their employees. An in-depth, interpretative case study of a GSO located in Mumbai, India, was used in order to understand how these frameworks constitute and are constituted by various kinds of coexisting cultures. Four kinds of cultures — corporate culture, IT work culture, national culture and primordial cultures — were identified through an interpretive analysis of the empirical material. The dynamics and intersections of these cultures within this workplace were seen to relate to how GSOs, as well as IT workers, construct their respective identities. An understanding, of these dynamics, has both theoretical and practical implications.

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