I recently undertook some informal research on the cultural issues that come into play when e-learning products are produced by partnerships of western (US and UK mainly) and Indian e-learning companies. My intention was to get a better understanding of these issues, with the intention of helping such partnerships work more effectively. However, pressure of time, technology and problems getting hold of the right people somewhat constrained my research, so rather than producing a full, formal report, I thought I would write up my findings in an article that reflects a more personal and, where necessary, subjective account of what I found. The aim of this article is to stimulate discussion and reflection on this subject.
India’s strategic role
A few years ago, a colleague of mine sat in a meeting on the west coast of the US and heard a prospective client say “if you don’t have an Indian production facility, you won’t be considered for the business”. The implication was clear: the client wouldn’t pay for high-cost western production workers.
In many ways, this is a simplistic view, and one that is changing, as I hope to make clear in this article. But there’s little doubt that Indian e-learning organisations are building on the success of the sub-continent’s IT sector and are forming a powerful presence in the global e-learning industry. Most western e-learning companies of any size now have some presence in India, with at least one basing nearly half the workforce there. Indian organisations are involved across the full range of e-learning services and all the way through the value chain, from technology infrastructure, through tool production, content and services.
The impact India is having on the global e-learning industry should not be underestimated. In a market that is still strongly driven to cut costs and increase speed of production, Indian organisations and facilities are increasingly seen as ideal partners to deliver on both counts. But a common western perception – that Indian organisations exist solely to respond to production briefs from western clients – is incorrect. Even relatively young Indian e-learning companies such as Web Spiders have offices in the UK, the US, the UAE and Canada, while the well-established NIIT has made a number of significant global acquisitions, not least that of world-leading e-learning simulation producer, Cognitive Arts (Chicago).
And it’s important not to focus exclusively on reducing competitive prices to end clients. When I talked to a senior manager of one UK-based e-learning agency we agree that low cost, high-quality production allowed us to design and produce complex forms of e-learning that would otherwise be ruled out as too expensive, and that we would typically educate our clients not to expect from us. In an industry that is still trying to find its feet, persuade clients of its value and win converts, the ability to experiment is crucial – and high quality, low cost production facilities makes this more viable.
Anecdotes and models of cultural difference
So, for whatever reasons - cost, quality, speed, reach, flexibility - the e-learning industry has taken on the challenge of producing e-learning products and services across multiple cultures. But just because technology allows us to work together doesn’t necessarily mean that we will work better together. In fact increased cross-cultural contact may, at least at the outset, increase the likelihood of misunderstandings and problems.
In starting to investigate this informally, and focussing specifically on relationships between Indian and UK/US organisations, I wasn’t surprised to hear things that suggested that cultural issues were surfacing. For example, Indians speaking of North Americans told me that “they are so very impatient and aggressive” and “they could afford to be a little more polite”; and North Americans speaking of Indians said “they just seem to have so many layers of management” and “they never seem to say quite what they mean”.
Of course this could just be the usual noise surrounding the complex and ever-changing process of e-learning development. And politeness or directness hardly seem the most important of considerations in comparison with the scale of the business benefits that are being delivered. So I decided to do two things. Firstly, a review of theoretical models of culture, to see what research data might throw up about cultural differences between India, the UK and the US (I use these a lot in my work). Secondly, a simple survey, based around a typical e-learning production process, designed to highlight any major issues that might be the result of cultural differences between these cultures.
A useful, and widely used, model of cultural difference is that produced by Geert Hofstede. He describes differences in cultures as existing along five dimensions: Power Distance (PDI), Individualism/Collectivism (IDV), Masculinity/Femininity (MAS), Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) and Long Term Orientation (LTO). Rather than going into the detail of each, here’s how India, the US and the UK compare:
![](http://radio.weblogs.com/0125797/myimages/hofstede-graph.gif")
Data from Culture’s Consequences, Geert Hofstede, 2nd Edition, 2003. Summary data available at http://www.itim.org/4aba.html
India’s high Power Distance score, combined with its relatively low score on Individualism, means that in general, people are likely to have a greater tolerance of hierarchical environments, and are more likely to belong to strong, cohesive “in-groups”. The opposite, low Power Distance and high Individualism generally indicates an expectation for power to be distributed equally, and for people to have a stronger sense of individual, as opposed to collective, identity. The low Long Term Orientation score of the US and UK indicate a view of time that works with short time horizons, when compared to Indians.
Of course, people are subject to many cultural influences, and are part of many types of culture: IT industry and internet culture, regional culture, organisation culture. It’s also worth pointing out that our cultural influences work at many different levels. The cultural conditioning we receive from our parents, teachers and society affects us very deeply, and typically changes quite slowly. So it’s important to distinguish between superficial symbols of culture – the worldwide adoption of Compaq or Dell laptops, New York Giants baseball caps, Coke cans and Nike trainers – and what’s going on inside.
But having said all that, it’s clear that even the briefest review of available data starts making sense of some of the comments that I came across. For example, a number of Indians I talked to made a point about how much effort was being made to reduce hierarchy and flatten organisation structures. It was clearly an issue they were aware of.
The e-learning survey
I then produced a short survey (available at http://fs10.formsite.com/pdconsulting/form994582489/index.html) which asked questions about the relative success of each component of a typical e-learning development process. Respondents were mainly from Indian companies or divisions or organisations based in India, who had partnered with western clients to produce e-learning. All were involved in some form of e-learning content development – there were no pure infrastructure or technology organisations involved. I followed up this survey with a series of short telephone interviews to investigate some of the issues raised.
I would emphasise that responses were limited – 11 questionnaires completed and 6 phone interviews. So I am not in any way presenting my results as scientifically grounded. However, they are interesting and may be helpful.
Communication
The survey and phone calls were generally positive about quality of communication within culturally mixed development teams. Communications methods were agreed, familiar to all parties, and procedures for communication generally followed. Likewise, meetings appeared to be run in familiar ways, with familiar team roles.
However, throughout the responses there are undercurrents of problems. Indeed in many of the free text responses, there are indications that projects involved a lot more communication than was expected – a tone of surprise that often occurs when working with other cultures for the first time. For example, “Often Partners were not sure of the appropriate corrective action, even when the issue had been clearly articulated”, and “although meetings were run effectively and seemed to go well, results were often nothing like we expected”.
Further, it was clear that when dealing with issues that were less able to be highly specified, such as graphical quality or instructional method, communication was occasionally difficult (more on this later), and results patchy.
A key distinction between a Collectivist culture, like India, and more Individualist ones, is the use of “high context” communication. Rather than making communication specific and well-defined, (in western terms “clear”), much of what is communicated is assumed, or is clarified by the environment in which it occurs. Such an approach can come over to westerners as evasive or incomplete, but makes perfect sense situated in its own cultural context. Further, inter-cultural communication using the internet – particularly email – can be difficult between high and low context cultures as so much context is stripped away, or altered by the environment into which it is delivered.
While this potential problem was acknowledged by one Indian respondent, who said that “Indians were generally less communicative” (which could be taken to mean they communicate in different ways), he also pointed out that the westerners he had worked with were aware of it, and compensated. Another respondent commented very positively on the directness of US communication: “it’s good for us!” he pointed out, suggesting that direct, clear communication resulted in greater efficiency and fewer scope problems.
Finally, in spite of a shared language – English – problems of idiom were occasionally apparent. One respondent used the term “fag-end” of a project to a client, a term quite harmless in UK and Indian English, but potentially offensive in the US. Another respondent wanted a suggestion “tabled” in a meeting with her US partner, and was surprised when it appeared to have been abandoned (to “table” something means the opposite in UK and US English).
Development process
While overall project processes were generally regarded to have been followed, and there was almost universal agreement that end products were delivered to specification, there was less consensus about how such processes should be agreed in the first place. Some organisations appeared to take the view that a highly prescriptive approach was most appropriate, allowing very little initiative on the part of partners, while others had recently increased the flexibility in the process. One comment was that “It was difficult to establish project management standards between the on-shore and off-shore teams.”
Given the differences in cultural profile, in particular the contrasting scores on Individualism/Collectivism and Power Distance, it might be expected that decision-making could be the source of some problems, and this was partly confirmed (high Power Distance cultures will expect decisions to be imposed by authority, while low Power Distance cultures may devolve decision making). Although most respondents indicated that decision-making processes were familiar, and decisions were followed, those who disagreed did so strongly.
The most solid source of agreement was around technology and implementation. There was almost unanimous agreement that understanding of technology was “the biggest strength of the combined team”, and that instructional design and interface/graphical elements were implemented correctly and as agreed. This reflects one of the key characteristics on which Indian companies promote their services: there is a focus on quality of process, hence the widespread adoption of ISO and SEI-CMM standards. But it was interesting that some of the strongest disagreement was around gaining common views of graphical quality and instructional method. This implies that although the end was achieved, the route to getting there may have been painful!
The other part of the process that appeared to cause most problems was final testing and feedback. Of course, this is typically a difficult point in any production process, but it would not be unreasonable to assume that the need for shared understanding, for being absolutely clear about the nature of final refinements, caused more than the usual crop of problems.
Some reflections
This was an interesting, enjoyable and informative exercise, and I would certainly welcome the opportunity to develop it further. I would just make three last points.
Firstly, it is clear that e-learning presents a range of cultural challenges beyond those presented by other forms of software development. Aesthetic and pedagogical issues, both of which are absent from most software production, are both crucial and difficult to communicate across cultures. The organisations involved in my investigation generally took the approach that neither aesthetics nor pedagogical considerations were negotiable and were, therefore, very highly specified, but even then, problems arose.
Secondly, problems of a cultural origin are often difficult to identify, but have more visible knock-on effects elsewhere. Raising understanding of potential cultural issues among partners is likely to further enhance the ability of cross-cultural partnerships to function effectively.
Finally, everyone I talked to in India mentioned the need for some form of cultural adaptation of e-learning products, in order to ensure better quality of learning outcomes (and did so without my prompting them!). This varied from comments about cultural sensitivity to idioms used (e.g. “fag-end”, or “hot-dog”), to stating that “when we use the term e-learning in India, we are really not talking about the same thing as you”. This is a subject I have written much about elsewhere, and will continue to investigate.
The author: Patrick Dunn is an independent e-learning, knowledge management and community of practice consultant based in London, UK. He has written widely on the subject of culture, technology and learning. His company is Networked Learning Design Ltd. patrick@dunn.co.uk. +44 7906 452939. www.dunn.co.uk/pdconsulting.
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