A Cross-Cultural Comparison of is Designer Values

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Social Aspects of

Computing

Rob Kling

Edifor

A Cross-CulturalComparison of IS

Designer ‘ValuesThe values of system designers have a significant influence on the extent to

which information systems meet the broad effectiveness needs of an

organization.

Kuldeep Kumar and Niels Bjplrn-Andersen

A number of studies in the information systems litera-

ture report upon the negative organizational outcomesand/or the lack of the realization of potential benefits

of computer-based information systems [l, 28, 32, 51,

69, 721. To some extent these failures have been attrib-

uted to a lack of appropriate information systems devel-

opment methodologies (ISDMs) [32, 651. However, in

spite of the emergence of new ISDMs, information sys-

tems design (ISD) is still largely a complex and unstruc-

tured process, usually with ambiguous goals. Accord-

ingly, systems designers must make a number of

choices which significantly affect the systems develop-

ment process and its outcomes [55].

In the absence of explicit policies or guidelines, these

choices are determined, to a large extent, by the sys-

tems designers’ personal values.? During the design pro-

cess, the designer, either consciously or subconsciously,

makes a series of incremental choices in the design and

implementation of a system [16]. To some extent, there

are methods or standards guiding the ISD process. How-

ever, most of the time these standards do not readily

apply. The context is never exactly as assumed, and the

standard procedures have to be interpreted. Further-

more, these standards are far from complete and the

designer has to fill in the blanks, especially as regards

implementation and organizational design. Similarly,

the management obiectives specified for the project are

usually very high level and far from specific. The de-

signer has to define, interpret, and operationalize themissing objectives in the absence of clear directions.

Accordingly, designers have to rely on their own judg-

ment for making the design decisions. Hedberg and

Mumford [32] state:

’ “A value is a conception, implicit or explicit, distinctive of an individualor characteristic of a group. of desirable which influences selection fromavailable ends and means oi action.” 1421This study was funded in part by NATO Collaborative Research Grant Num-ber 730/84.

0 1990 ACM 0001.0782/90,‘0500-0528 $1.50

“It is reasonable to assume that values play an im-

portant part in guiding the designers’ choice be-tween different design alternatives . . . The values,

needs and objective of top management and sys-

tems designers will influence the kind o f technical,

organizational and task structure alternatives they

consider during the design process and the solu-

tions they eventually choose.”

The premise that the designers’ values influence de-

sign choices also finds support in the work of scholars

in the fields of management science, general, systems

theory, and information systems [4, 14, 15, 16, 36, 39,

40, 41, 54, 55, 641.

The designer’s values, however, may not always be

instrumental in achieving systems that are consistentwith organizational objectives. Indeed, a number of au-

thors suggest that overly technical, rational, and eco-

nomic value orientation of systems designers, accom-

panied by a lack of attention to political, organizational,

and psychological issues, is the cause of deficiencies in

existing IS development practices [12, 18, 26, 29, 31, 32,

44, 55, 71, 72, 731.

Once the influence of systems designers values on

design decisions is recognized, it becomes important

that the values which guide these design choices must

be made explicit. A better understanding of system de-

signers’ values could provide clues for explaining

design decisions in development projects. Furthermore,such an understanding is useful in order to

a. Guide the design, development, and adoption of

information systems development methodologies

which are consistent with, and complement the

system designers’ values, so that a balanced set of

social and organizational, as well as technical and

economic objectives may be achieved;

b. Change the control and reward structures for sys-

tems designers to reflect the growing concerns in

organizations and societies for taking social, organi-

zational, and human values into account;

520 Communications of the .4CM May 1990 Volume 33 Number 5









Articles

was measured on a “Preferred Direction of Change” therefore the exclusion of these respondents does not

dimension. invalidate the following analysis.

In summary, for each of the value dimensions there

are three scales: importance rating (very low, low, me-

dium, high, very high); reason mode [success, right,

pleasure): direction of change (increase, neutral, de-

crease).

For the remaining respondents, each person’s value

profile was determined and BRS value profiles were

calculated for Canadian and Danish samples according

to the procedure described in the Theoretical Founda-

tion for Measuring Values.

The questionnaire was pretested on a representa-

tive group. In addition, a test-retest of the question-naire (with four weeks in between the two administra-

tions) was performed with a sample of 13 accounting

and business students. The test-retest reliability co-

efficients for the importance rating, the reason mode

and the preferred direction of change were 0.89, 0.84,

and 0.93 respectively. These reliability co-efficients are

comparable to those reported for the original England

PVQ [25].

Overview of Value Profilesin Canada and Denmark

Table I presents an overview of Canadian and Danish

designers’ value profiles. For both samples the technical

values seem to be the most behaviorally relevant, fol-

lowed closely by economic values. The socio-political

values have the lowest behavioral relevance score in

both samples and are the least likely to be translated

into behavior.

RESEARCH METHOD

The field survey was conducted in 13 Canadian and

eight Danish business and government organizations.

The organizations sampled included federal, provincialand city government departments; electric and nuclear

power utilities; manufacturing, retail, and businesses,

insurance, and universities. To obtain the sample we

contacted the highest ranking information systems ex-

ecutive in the selected organizations. However, since

only those organizations which consented to participate

in the study were included, (i.e., it was a convenience

sample), the possibility of sampling bias remains. No

major differences were found between the types of or-

ganizations within the two samples, which might other-

wise explain the differences between the two samples

reported next.

The field suvuey was conducted in 13

Canadian and eight Danish business and

government organizations. . . To obtainthe sample we contacted the highest

ranking information systems executive in

each organization.

If the two samples (i.e., the rows of the table) are

examined separately. The Canadian system designers

seem to focus strongly on technical and economic value

dimensions, while they find the socio-political values to

be the least behaviorally relevant. A similar pattern is

found in the Danish sample. However, the three value

groups have a relatively more equal potential for driv-

ing the behavior of the Danish systems designers.n each organization the IS executives were re-quested to select randomly a group o f system designers.

The ISD-PVQ was administered to the respondent

group in a meeting. To encourage the respondents to

respond according to their personal preferences, they

were told there were no right or wrong answers and

that the individual responses were confidential.

Though attempts were made to ensure equivalent ques-

tionnaire administration in both countries, the possibil-

ity of translation and interviewer bias remains,

RESULTS

The final sample contains 132 Canadian and 72 Danish

systems designers from a total of 21 organizations. Ofthe 132 Canadian respondents, 34 (26 percent) were

found to have no dominant reason mode (i.e., no over-

all preference for success, right, or pleasant as the

rationale for importance). Similarly, of the 72 Danish

designers, 21 (29 percent) were found to have a no

dominant reason mode. These respondents were ex-

cluded from further analysis because the classification

of values into the four categories (operational, adopted,

intended, and nonrelevant) requires a dominant reason

mode [23, 241. The percentage of respondents having no

dominant reason mode is similar for both countries,

If we examine the technical, economic, and socio-

political value groups (i.e., the columns of the table)

separately, we find that technical values are behavior-

ally more relevant for the Canadian system designers,

whereas socio-political values are behaviorally more

relevant for the Danish system designers. The potential

of economic values for influencing behavior is almost

equal for the two samples.

The upcoming section discusses the Development

Product-Related value dimensions (Table II). This is fol-

lowed by a discussion on the Development Process Re-

lated value dimensions (Table III). For both of these

tables, the behavioral relevance scores and the percent-age of individuals preferring a certain direction of

change is enumerated for each value dimension. The

level of significance is calculated for both, using cross-

tabulation and the chi-square statistic. For BRS, the

significance is analyzed across all four behavioral rele-

vance categories (operative, adopted, intended, and

nonrelevant). Only those value dimensions where the

BRS and/or the Preferred Direction of Change is signifi-

cantly different (alpha less than o r equal to 10 per-

cent) between the Canadian and Danish samples are

presented.

532 Communications of the ACM May 1990 Volume 33 Number 5



Articles

CanadaDenmark

Table I. Overview of Canadian and Danish Value Profiles

AVERAGE BEHAVIORAL RELEVANCE SCORES

Technical Economic

52.4 48.747.1 46.2

Socio-Political

30.540.3

Product-Related Value DifferencesProduct-related values are shown in three tables relat-

ing to the technical (IIA), economic (IIB), and socio-

political (IIC) values respectively. In the Product-

Related Technical Values (Table IIA), there are signifi-

cant differences among seven of the 18 values in the

group. For six of these seven value dimensions, the

Canadian system designers had a higher BRS than their

Danish counterparts. On only one value dimension,

“Security of update and retrieval access to informa-

tion,” did the Danish designers score higher than the

Canadian designers. This presumably reflects the legis-

lative concern about privacy in the Scandinavian coun-

tries. On those value dimensions where there is a sig-

nificant difference in the Preferred Direction of

Change, it is consistent with the differences in behav-

ioral relevance scores.

In case of Product-Related Economic Values

(Table IIB), there are significant differences in either

the BRS or in the preferred direction of change in three

out of four value dimensions in the group. The Cana-

dian designers found the operating costs of the system

more behaviorally relevant than did the Danish design-

ers, and significantly more of them preferred a decrease

in the operating costs of the system. However, the

Danish designers found the value dimension “control of

the organizational resources” more relevant than did

Canadian designers. An interpretation of these differ-ences could be that the Canadian designers seem to be

more concerned with efficiency (i.e., cost) issues,

whereas the Danish designers seem to be more con-

cerned with their overall effectiveness issue (control o f

organizational resources).

In the Product-Related Socio-Political Values (Table

IIC), there are significant differences between Canadian

and Danish designers in 14 out of 19 value dimensions.

In all but two of the cases, the Danish designers have a

higher behavioral relevance score, supported by an ap-

propriate significant difference in the preferred direc-

tibn of change. The two value dimensions which do not

follow this pattern are (a) the assignment, clarification,and formalization of responsibilities in user areas, and

(b) the system’s responsiveness to the primary client. In

both cases the Canadian designers scored higher than

the Danish designers. The first exception, however,

confirms the general hypothesis from the earlier

“models of man” studies that the Canadian designers

are more Theory-X oriented, and look for greater struc-

ture and specificity in their designs. The second excep-

tion, which is significantly different only in the pre-

ferred direction of change, may reflect the greater

consumer orientation in North-America.

Process (Development Project)-Related Value Differences

Process-related values are those value concepts that in-

fluence the selection of the means of action, i.e., the

development project. Table III outlines the differences

in Canadian and Danish system designer values related

to the process of systems design. It is subdivided into

three parts: Table IIIA outlines the differences in tech-

nical values; Table IIIB, the differences in economic

values; and Table IIIC, the differences in socio-political

values.

The Process Related Technical Values (Table IIIA)

display high behavioral relevance scores for both Cana-

dian and Danish designers. Canadians score higher

than Danes on six of the eight value dimensions in this

group, though only two of them (degree of consistency

between work done by various analysts, and ease of

producing and maintaining documentation) are statisti-

cally significant. On the remaining two value dimen-

sions (flexible and modifiable development standards,

and promptness in responding to development re-

quests), a significantly greater percentage of Danish de-

signers prefer an increase in the direction of change. In

the case of the latter value dimension, Danes also have

a significantly higher behavioral relevance score, which

may be attributed to the user-oriented nature of the

value concept. This again confirms the general pattern

that Canadians are more tuned to the technical aspectsthan are their Danish counterparts.

The responses to Process Related Economic Values

suggest in general, a high level of behavioral relevance

of these values to both Canadian and Danish system

designers. However, a detailed analysis reveals statisti-

cally significant differences in response patterns

(Table IIIB). Whereas the Canadian designers seem to

put the highest premium on efficiency-related values

(such as reduced development costs, project within

schedule and within budget, the planning and control

of the development project), the Danish designers seem

to be prepared to invest a greater level of user and

designer time and resources in the development project(presumably to achieve a higher quality product). This

is consistent with the pattern of differences expressed

in the Product-Related Economic Values group where

the Canadian designers put greater emphasis on effi-

ciency, and the Danish designers’ on effectiveness.

Of the 13 Process Related Socio-Political Values, 10

had statistically significant differences in either the be-

havioral relevance scores or preferred direction of

change or both. Among these differences, values related

to participation and user understanding stand out as

the most behaviorally relevant set of values. User par-

May 1990 Volume 33 Number 5 Communications of the ACM 533



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TABLE II. SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT PRODUCT RELATED VALUESTable of significant differences between Canadian

and Danish Information Systems Designers

TABLE IIA. Product (System) Related Technical Values

VALUE CONCEPT

BehavioralRelevance Score

PreferredDirection of Change

I-lncr. D-Deer.

Canada Denmark Sig. Canada Denmark Sig.

Reliabilityof the System 74 59 5% 81 I 82 I non-sig

Maintainabilityof Procedures 60 39 1% 71 I 68 I non-sig

Compatibilitywith InterfacingSystems 59 47 non-sig 69 I 60 I 5%

Currencyand Recency f Information 58 49 10% 62 I 69 I non-sig

ComputerSupport or DecisionMakingand Judgmental asks 51 45 non-sig 75 I 62 I 10%

Levelof Sophistication f Hardware nd Software 21 8 5% 45 I 24 I 1%

Securityof Updateand RetrievalAccess o Information 40 61 1% 53 I 65 I non-sig

Total Number of Value Concepts in Class 19

TABLE IIB. Product (Systemi) Related Economic Values

BehavioralPreferred

VALUE CONCEPT Relevance ScoreDirection of Change

I-lncr. D-Deer.

CaInada Denmark Sig. Canada Denmark Sig.

OperatingCostsof the System 55 31 5% 76 D 49 D 1%

UserManpower equired or Operatinghe System 37 28 non-sig 52 D 41 D non-sig

Controlof Organization’s esources 37 45 5% 46 I 67 I 1%

Monitoring and Controlof Clericaland OperatingActivities 20 22 non-sig 14 D 35 D 1%

Total Number of Value Concerts in Class 4

TABLE IIC. Product (System) Related Socio-Political Values

VALUE CONCEPT

UserSenseof Making mportantContribution o Organization

User’sAutonomy n Planningand Performing is/her Tasks

Alignmentof SystemDesign o User’sCognitiveStyle

Job InducedMental Stresson User

Provisionof Learningand Growth n UserJobs

Varietyof Tasksn User’s ob Description

Job Security or Users

InterpersonalRelationships nd SocialContactamongUsers

PhysicalHealth,Safetyand Comfortof Users

Alignmentof UserSalaries elative o Job Description

Centralization f Authority,Power, nd DecisionMaking nOrganization

Communication etweenOrganization nits

Assignment,Clarificationand Formalization f Responsibilitiesin UserAreas

System’sResponsivenesso PrimaryClient

Total Number of Value Concepts in Classification-19


--Ca’nada--

36

16

30

23

19

16

12

18

26

9

Denmark

53

49

47

45

43

39

33

3331

14

14 33

42 53

46

59--

25

62

Sig. Canada Denmark Sig.

5% 69 I 74 I non-sig

1% 38 I 74 I 1%

5% 52 I 64 I non-sig

1% 60 D 70 D 1%

5% 62 I 76 I 1%

1% 48 I 67 I 5%

1% 20 I 49 I 1%

1% 31 I 54 I 1%ion-sig 43 I 62 I 10%

10% 30 I 44 I 10%

1% 28 D 70 D

10% 70 I 83 I

1% 61 I 26 I

non-sig 86 I 76 I

1%

10%

1%

10%

1Preferred

Direction of ChangeI-lncr. D-Deer.

534 Communications of the ACM May 1990 Volume 33 Number 5



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ticipation shows a rather remarkable distinction be-

tween the Canadian and Danish designers. W hile the

Canadian designers emphasize increased participation

by user managers, the Danish designers find participa-

tion by clerical/supporting staff users more operative.

This reflects the management orientation and the re-

ward structure in the Canadian environment versus the

more democratic, user-oriented approach in Denmark.

However, the Canadian designers seem to find in-creased user understanding of the overall system design

significantly more relevant. A possible explanation of

this finding could be that for this question the Cana-

dian questionnaire did not specify the user-type

whereas in translation the Danish questionnaire specifi-

cally mentioned clerical users. A subsequent review of

the translation did not find any other translation differ-

ences. The remaining significant differences support

the general observation that the Danish designers find

the socio-political values more operative. However, it

should be noted that the behavioral relevance scores

for both groups are fairly low.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The objectives of this article were twofold: to investi-

gate the extent to which technical, economic, or socio-

political values are guiding systems design in contem-

porary organizations, and to investigate the differences

between the values of Canadian and Danish systems

designers.

For both countries, the results of the survey provide

evidence for the dominance of technical and economic

values. Given their cultural and geographical proximity

to the U.S., in the case of Canadian designers, this re-

sult is not surprising. However, in the case of Danish

system designers, the results suggest that contrary to

the conventional wisdom, social-democratic value posi-tions do not always work to the detriment of technical

and economic concerns.

Second, the survey confirm s the assumptions of

cross-cultural differences in system designer values be-

tween Canada and Denmark. These differences are

found, not only for organizational and job-satisfaction

values (socio-political values) as discovered in earlier

studies [i’, 17, 31, XI], but also for technical and eco-

nomic value concepts. Even though both the Canadian

and the Danish samples show a similar pattern of high-

est behavioral relevance of technical values and lowest

relevance of socio-political values, the difference be-

tween the three sets of values is substantially larger inthe Canadian sample. The three sets of values (techni-

cal, economic, and socio-political) have a more equal

potential for driving the behavior of Danish designers.

This finding could be a reflection of the mix of socialist

and capitalist values in the Scandinavian society. Fur-

thermore, in case of economic values, Canadian design-

ers are found to be concerned with efficiency issues

(such as cost and manpower usage), whereas the Danish

designers are more concerned with effectiveness issues

(such as management of organizational resources).

Before we discuss the implications of these findings

for information systems development, we need to clar-

ify our baseline value position. It is our belief tha t, from

an organizational effectiveness perspective, a balanced

value orientation is essential to the design and imple-

mentation of successful computer-based information

systems. If the value structures or viewpoints of the

system’s designers are limited (i.e., if they emphasize

only a limited subset from the range of technical, eco-

nomic, and socio-political values), then the designersmay create system designs which are inadequate or

unacceptable from the perspective of the omitted value

concerns. This, in turn, could lead to organizational,

technical, or behavioral problems [Z, 11, 13, 29, 55, 721.

We therefore believe that if the designers are empha-

sizing only certain types of values in their design deci-

sions (specifically technical and efficiency related eco-

nomic values) while ignoring other types of values

(such as effectiveness and socio-political values], this

represents a pathology which needs to be addressed.

Though this value position may not be commonly ac-

cepted, it has a rich tradition in socio-technical litera-

ture (fo r a review of STS literature in the information

systems context see [27]), and in parts of the informa-

tion systems community (see [5, 12, 14, 16, 18, 30, 32,

36, 38, 71, 721). Furthermore, this value position is be-

coming m ore acceptable in the current North-American

business milieu [60].

In light of this value position, we believe that these

findings have important short-term and long-term pol-

icy implications. In the short-term, the cross-cultural

value differences have implications in terms of prob-

lems related to an uncritical technology transfer of off-

the-shelf methodologies, tools, and techniques between

different cultures [JO]. ISD methodologies, with their

potential for economic, technical, and organizational

changes, have built-in value biases reflecting the valuepriorities of the culture in which they are developed

[43, 451. If a methodology overtly espouses values

which are alien to the values of the people who are the

designated users of the methodology, the methodology

will not be accepted [32, 43, 44, 651. Furthermore , the

products of LSD methodologies-the systems developed

using these methodologies-may not be acceptable in

cultures with value orientations different from the one

in which the system was developed.

However, the values might not be that apparent to

the untrained eye, and sometimes methodologies and

their resulting systems may be implanted without re-

gard to the basic underlying assumptions. The result ofsuch an implant is likely to be substantial conflict and/

or loss of potential. The value elicitation methodology

described in this article provides an a priori means of

clarifying the values in a particular context.

The long-run implications of these overall value pro-

files and value differences can be analyzed in the con-

text of the evolutionary perspective on the use of infor-

mation technology in organizations [30, 461. Heberg [30]

suggests that organizations develop the use of informa-

tion technology through a number of distinct stages,

The first stage is the pioneering use of a new technol-




Articles

TABLE 1111. YSTEMS DEVELOPMENT PROCESS RELATED VALUESTable of significant differences between Canadian

and Danish Information System Designers

TABLE MA. Process (Development-Project) Related Technical Values

i



I-lncr. D-Deer.

Canada Denmark Sig.

69 I 64 I non-sig

85 I 90 I non-sig

61 I 85 I 1%

70 I 92 I 1%

VALUE CONCEPT

Sig.

10%

5%

non-sig

5%

Degree f Consistency etweenwork done by differentAnalysts

Easeof Producingand MaintainingDocumentation

Flexibleand ModifiableDevelopment tandards ndProcedures

Promptnessn Respondingo Dev.Requests

Total Number of Value Concepls In Classification-8

TABLE IIIB. Process (Development-Project1 Related Economic Values

Behavioral

Relevance Score iVALUE CONCEPT


I-lncr. D-Deer.

not applicable

not applicable

--Canada--

69

62

!59

48

:38

.56

,44

.59

--

Denmark

59

59

32

32

Sig.

1%

non-sig

1%

10%

50 5%

65 non-sig

68 5%

63 non-sig

Planningand Controlof the Development roject

Development rojecton Schedule

Development rojectWithin Budget

SystemDevelopment osts

SystemDevelopmentManpower equired orAnalysisand Design

Levelof Skills required or Analysisand DesignTasks

UserManpowerRequiredor Project

Elapsed ime or Development roject


TABLE IIIC. Process (Development Pr’oiect) Related Socio-Political Values-- _

BehavioralRelevance Score T Preferred

Direction of ChangeI-lncr. D-Deer.ALUE CONCEPT

Participation f UserClericaland OperatingStaff n DesignDecisions

Participation f UserAreaManagersn DesignDecision

Analysts’Autonomy n Planningand Performing is/her asks

On Project,SocialContactand InterpersonalRelationshipsorAnalysts

Proportionof Challenging nd SimpleTasksn the Analysts’Job During he Project

Amountof Routine,Repetitive nd MechanicalAnalysisandDesignTasks

Varietyof Analysisand DesignTasksDuring Project

UserUnderstanding f Development lan

UserUnderstanding f OverallSystemsDesign

UserUnderstandina f TechnicalSvstemsDesian

--Canada--

Denmark Sig. Canada Denmark

43 67 1% 57 I 70 I

65 35 1% 71 I 36 I

28 51 1% 38 I 68 I

Sig.

5%

1%

1%

19 25 10% 36 D 54 I 5%

15 24 10% 42 I 45 I ion-sig

16

19

57

67

4--

20 non-sig 69 D 53 D

18 non-sig 34 I 47 I

55 non-sig 83 I 65 I

49 10% 82 I 65 I

14 5% 17 I 17 IL

1%

10%

1%

1%

ion-sig


536 Communications of the ACM May 1990 Volu~rre 33 Nurubcr 5



Articles

ogy with organizational consequences coming as a sur-

prise. In the second stage careful design is carried out

to minimize unforeseen and dysfunctional organi-

zational consequences. The third stage is characterized

by the realization that organizational goals can be

achieved through information systems change. Finally,

the fourth stage is where a participative, evolutionary

design strategy for increasing the effectiveness of the

organization and the quality of working life of the peo-ple in the organization is found.

Hedberg [30] suggests that all organizations and cul-

tures go through the same stages primarily because of

the general trends in society. Our data could be inter-

preted to mean that due to contextual factors such as a

social democratic political tradition and a strong union

influence these developments are coming earlier in the

Scandinavian countries (see [20, 26, 53, 661). If this is

true, there is a good case for the researchers and meth-

odology designers studying systems design practices in

these countries in order to learn from their successes

and failures (e.g., [9, 50, 57, 58, 651).

However, the techno-economic value orientation ofsystem designers is a major obstacle to the adoption of

organizational and socio-political design practices [34,

631. Therefore, we may need to attempt to influence

the underlying value structure of the system designers.

Three options are suggested: First, through education

and training we could attempt to increase the aware-

ness of the designers, of the organizational and human

consequences of their designs [47, 581. Second, if the

designs reflect an undesirable reward structure existing

for designers, a more concerted effort may be needed to

educate those who plan, contro l, and manage the infor-

mation systems function in the organizations [IT, 30,

43, 441. Third, the codes of ethics and good practice ofprofessional societies could be redrafted to reflect a

higher concern for socio-political dimensions.

It is our belief that a suitable combination of the

strategies we have discussed will be instrumental in

making the respective designer groups more aware o f a

balanced set of values, and would help the IS designer

community evolve toward a participatory, learning, and

evolutionary strategy.

Acknowledgments. We are indebted to Michael G.

Houghton-Larsen for his assistance in conducting the

Danish part of the survey, and to Liam M. Bannon,

William W. Cotterman, Rob Kling, Ephraim R. McLean,

Enid Mumford, Hans Oppeland, Daniel Robey, Richard

J. Welke, and three anonymous reviewers for their re-

view o f the paper and valuable comments and sugges-

tions.

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CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: K.4.m [Computers and Soci-ety]: Miscellaneous; K.6.1 [Management of Computing and InformationSystems] : People and Project Management

General Terms : Design, ManagementAdditional Key Words and Phrases: Cross-cultural comparisons. de-

signer values, information systems design, organizational issues,

socio-technical design

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

KULDEEP KUMAR is an assistant professor of computer infor-

mation systems at Georgia State University. His current re-

search interests inclu de the management, plannin g, evaluation

and development of information systems. Author’s Present Ad-

dress: Computer Information Systems, College of Business,

Georgia State University, Atlanta. GA 30303.

NIELS BJQ)RN-ANDERSEN is professor of information systems

at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His current re-

search interests include the social and organizational aspects of

development, management and use of information systems, es-

pecially quality of life issues. Author’s Present Address : Insti-

tute of Informatics and fvianagement Accounting , Copenhagen

Business Scho ol, Howitzvej 60. DK 2000 Frederiksberg, Den-

mark. [email protected].

538 Communications of the .4CM May 1990 Volume 33 Number 5

Documents

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of is Designer Values