Page 231 - Culture Technology Communication

214 Lorna Heaton

decisions, illustrating the translation of these cultural arguments
in CSCW systems. 1

Background

Cultural attitudes towards technology and cultural dimensions in
the implementation and use of technology are topics of increasing in-
terest worldwide, perhaps as a result of increasing globalization and
intercultural contact. This subject is becoming all the more signifi-
cant with the proliferation of new communications technologies that
hold out the promise of global communication. The novelty of new
computer-mediated communication networks does not, however,
mean that we must start from scratch in attempting to understand
how people from different cultures will use them, and how diverse
cultural attitudes are likely to affect their use. Over the past twenty
years these questions have in fact been explored in the fields of both
organizational and development communication.
In development communication, a turn-key approach to technol-
ogy transfer has been rejected in favor of other models which accord
substantial importance to culture. Among them, there has been con-
siderable research on the importance of technological infrastructure
and predisposition or competency as preconditions for technology
transfer (Andrews and Miller 1987; Copeland 1986), as well as vari-
ous measures for increasing the likelihood of successful transfer:
modification of imported technology by local engineers to make it
more “appropriate” (De Laet 1994; Ito 1986), a two-step flow in which
new ideas or technology are introduced first to an opinion leader or
technological gatekeeper who then persuades others to adopt it
(Rogers and Shoemaker 1971), or involving stakeholders in planning
and decisions (Ackoff 1981; Madu 1992). All this work shares a con-
cern for facilitating accommodation to a changing environment pro-
duced with the introduction of new technology. In other words,
making the technology fit its context of implementation and use has
been found to considerably improve the chances of optimal use.
Understanding the reciprocal link between organizational prac-
tices and technologies has also been a key concern of organizational
communication scholars, particularly with the advent of office au-
tomation and computerization. Many have drawn on Giddens’ struc-
turation work (Orlikowski and Gash 1994; Orlikowski 1992; Poole
and DeSanctis 1990) to explain how computerization changes orga-
nizational structure. Heath and Luff (1994) have studied the evolu-