Global Software development(GSD) involves interaction among developers, leaders and other members. It is different from the traditional software development as the cultural differences , time zone differences comes into play. So there are challenges of communication and coordination among the different sites. These problems arise due to wrong impression that team members form about each other, that could result into poor communication , less and incomplete information being gathered, less motivation for the development of the project and competition between groups. Impression formation is a very important part of the project and is involved from the start till the end of the project. The paper discusses about the factors that restrict formation of individuated impressions and that result into more category based impression formation. Also, the paper discusses about the methods that could help to form accurate impression.
GSD involves many challenges which boils down to the problem of communication and coordination.Research have found that most of the problems arise due to wrong impression formed about each other, which might result into poor communication, wrong information being gathered and demotivation.
Impression formation is one of the most important factor that can result into problems of the communication and coordination and can impact the project. There are two types of impression that one person forms about the another. They are category-based and individuating based. In category based , a member forms impression about other by categorzing them for example based on gender and race whereas in individuating process , a member form the impression about the other based on the qualities. Individuating processes are better than the category based as they provide more appropriate information about the other member. There are various factors that restricts the impression formation when working in a GSD . They are distance , technology mediation , heterogeneity and dynamic structure.
Distance plays a hinderance in GSD. It inhibits the face to face interaction between the team members and also result into less informal communication. Distance has effect on the information being gathered and also result into less motivation in the project as it may be possible that the member in power is located at different site and hence communication is too formal and restricted. The distance has effect on the information , as the situations and the context of the team members differs from site to site , and this information is not avaibable to members at different site. Also researches have found that members form impression about the other members by observing the way they behave to other members, and when they are not at the same site , they cannot gather such information. Also as it is found that informal communication results into better productivity and solutions, when team members are at the same site , they come to know about each other by incident for example , at the canteen or some informal meetings. But in GSD , this is not possible between members over different sites. So this restricts the right impression formation , that could be individuated and hence result into more category based impression. Observing the above factors , the author presents a proposition , which says that distance result into decreased informal meetings and interactions , that can reult into wrong impression formation and hence effect the project. Also distance has a effect on motivation as when working in GSD, there is frequent need to interact or consult the member at different site. It make be possible that the person in power can be placed at a different site , and hence the members may not interact that frequently and also when they interact , it becomes difficult as they may not be aware of the member they need to communicate. Hence there can be situation of unequal power distribution in which case the impression so formed about the member is directly proportional to the type of communication that will be held between them. It might result into hesitation or incomplete information being gathered , which would demotivate the growth of the project as well as the impression formation of the team members. Hence the coworkers ,who are present at the same site with all the leaders and the managers tend to form more individuated impression about each other as compared to those who are collocated. Also it has been observed that when a project is developed globally, the teams at one site tend to treat the team at other site as differnt . There is always the scenario observed where the teams think that the other team is different from their own. Cultural differences plays an important role in such impressions being formed. The teams tend to compete with each other and lack socialization. This could be the result of lack of informal communication between the team members. Such conditions prevails the in-group/out-group categorization. Such categorization result into the impressions again being formed on category , this time the categorization could be based on false belief about the cultural a particular team belongs to.
Technology mediation is very common in GSD as most of the interaction in the forms of meeting takes place through web or by the use of communication tools. The members of GSD rely heavily on technologies for their interaction and formal communication. This result into more of meeting formal communication and less informal communication between the team members. And hence the information gathered about each other in the technology mediated enviornment gets effected due to high dependency on technologies for the discussion between team to take place. In such cases , there is lack of non-verbal communication between members , which would result into wrong information being conveyed across the team members , resulting into wrong impression formation. Also the information like the gestures, expressions are not conveyed , therefore the impressions so formed will be less complex, but as the team members rely on what has been conveyed , the impressions formed are more intense in nature.
Heterogenity refers to the GSD team being comprising of members belonging to different cultural and of different skills and expertise.It also restricts the impression formation as there are members who might be very skilled particular field and might not understand other team member seeking help. And hence this result into wrong and category based impressions being formed about the other. This impacts the motivation of the correct impression formation of the members. Such conditions starts to frame impressions based on groups as discussed above. Team members start to believe that their groups are different and hence conclude to wrong impression formation which is mostly category based and less individuated as the particular attribute of the member like the expertise and skill may be percieve differently by other coworker.
Dynamic structure refers to frequent change in role of the members. The role of a particular member is volatile and changes frequently. For example a member may be a project leader of a particular project. But as when when the members of the project transit their impression about the project leader from category based to individuated impression , the project leader might get replaced by other. This again restricts the impression formation as by the time th impression gets refined , the person is changed and it gets fall back to category based for the new leader.
All these factors might effect the impression formation and hence have a effect on information and motivation, but there could be ways in which the impressions so formed can be refined by few facilitators like the travel, shared identity, use of electronic interpersonal information , expectation of future interaction ,sharing of contextual information .
Travel to various sites should be arranged so as to make members aware of the context in which other collocated coworkers work. Travel also exposes members to different situations and different culture , which help them modify their preconcieve notions and impressions of the members at other site. Travel should be planned and everytime different members should be sent to different site so that all are exposed to the culture , context and situations of their collocated coworkers. This results into better impressions being formed as they are based on contextual knowledge , culture, and situations and hence are individuated in nature.
Shared Identity refers to discussion about other members with few members. As it has been observed that people react differeently at different situations, hence instead of forming wrong impression about a person belonging to different group or of different power , it is better to discuss about them , and refine the impression so formed. When the identity about a coworker is shared among members , it erradicates wrong impression so formed due to in-group /out-group categorization or due to unequal power distribution .
Electronic Interpersonal Information can be very useful to form better and individuated impression about the team members. This is because when teams share their views on blogs or other such medium , they tend to personalize the content, which reveals more information about a particular members,hence unleasing certain attributes of them that result in the formation of individuated impression.
Expectation of Future Interaction makes members gather more personal information of the member that expect a future interaction with . They tend to exchange more information , being informal and more personal . This result into again motivation for the coworkers to develop better understanding of each other and hence formation of more attribute based impression.
Sharing of contextual information results into context and situations the collocated coworkers are working on . This has a greater impact on the impression so formed as the team member are exposed to the context lik ethe software etc. used by them , and also the situtions. All these result into attributes like the expertise ,skills being unleashed and hence more individuated impression formation.
Feedback and repair refers to the ability and the motivation for the impression so formed being refined. This can result into the impressions that were formed on category to be changed and formed on attributes. Hence feedback can help in impression refinement.As it has been noticed that the impressions once formed are hard to repair , but it could be done with effective and timely feedback. Hence the catefory based impressions can be repaired and more realistic and attribute based , that is depending on the skill and expertise on the person can be formed.
Impression accuracy should be achieved and hence impressions should be formed based on work style , expertise and contextual knowledge. When impressions are formed taking into account the work style , expertise and knowledge of the context , it would result into less bias and category based impressions being formed.
Behaviour of the members can be categorized to predictive and explanatory. When team members have formed impression , they are liable to predict the behaviour of other member , and also explain the behaviour. When wrong impressions are formed , then it becomes difficult to rightly predict and explain the behaviour of a member. This could also help in indicating the accuracy of the formed impressions.
Impression formation has a high impact on almost all the processes of GSD. It forms the foundation for the success of the project as when team members form individuated impressions about each other , they tend to communicate and coordinate far better then when wrong and category based impressions are formed. Hence impression formation is a continuous process of the process model adopted for the GSD. As studied , there is no such stage as the impression formation , still it begins as the project starts and is involved at all the points during the project. Impression formation plays an important role in carrying out the project as planned and achieving the motives.
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