The role of cultural intelligence for the emergence of negotiated culture in IT offshore outsourcing projects

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze how individual project members in IT offshore outsourcing projects cope with culture-specific behavior, and how the project members' cultural intelligence enables the emergence of negotiated culture. Design/methodology/approach - The employed research approach is an interpretive, in-depth single-case study based on 31 qualitative interviews. The cultural intelligence framework serves as a sensitizing device to develop a model of cross-cultural interaction in IT offshore outsourcing projects. Findings - The paper presents a model explaining cross-cultural interaction at the individual level in IT offshore outsourcing. The analysis shows that effective cross-cultural interaction manifests itself in active cross-cultural adaptation behavior, which is driven by motivational and cognitive factors. Cultural intelligence, including cognitive, motivational, and behavioral elements, is found to be an important driver for the development of a negotiated culture, characterized by trust-based interpersonal relationships, shared understanding, and the effective resolution of conflicts in IT offshore outsourcing projects. Practical implications - This study helps to understand how the emergence of a negotiated culture depends upon the cultural intelligence of individual project members. Practitioners need to focus on the accumulation of cultural intelligence in their project teams. Originality/value - This study makes a theoretical contribution to the IT offshore outsourcing domain by presenting a model of individual-level cross-cultural interaction in this context. Furthermore, it represents one of the first qualitative case studies on cultural intelligence in IS.