Business Applications Outside Their Original Contexts : Study of an Iranian Company

Abstract: This paper is about the importance of culture in the usage of business applications and how they function outside their original context. When involved in an environment that has different culture or value than yours, it is important to live and interact on a high level with the group of people or company that you are in project with because we believe that it will help you to understand and value the culture you are working with. Let it be known that it is important for the consultant or the programmer to be patient and open minded towards new learning experiences or else they will stumble on their own feet whether it is national culture or business culture. We will do our study with the help of a qualitative research in a company with international experience located in Iran where we will make interviews over the phone with the help of semi-structured interview method. The conversations will then be recorded with a record player in order to gain high reliability. The difference between national and business culture as the way we understand it is that national culture consists of so many different aspects and is both inherited and learned. It also involves heroes, symbols, religious beliefs and rituals while business culture is less complex in the comparance. Although heroes and rituals exists in business culture as well, but the main difference is that you can change a business culture more easily than you can with a national culture. This conclusion is based on our empirical findings were we noticed that you can change the business culture through modernization, like our case study were they renewed their IS. We come to the conclusion that it is essential for the company to have a developer who understand the companys’ needs and demands and develop business applications that can satisfy the companys’ wishes according to the existing and new norms. These norms are often set by IC: s. and developers in DC: s following them as best as they possibly can. Some of them are more successfull than others, and that is due to their cooperations with companies in IC: s. We must not forget that even though the majority of companies in Iran uses only native applications they still are mostly influenced from IC: s methodology. As shown through our analysis and our conclusions the main reason for a business application to fail is cultural barriers where we have mentioned language, values, logics and business culture. Besides the national laws and business mentalities are also factors playing important rolls. All of these factors lead to the situation where it is insupportable to use a foreign business application. It is also very important that the consultant developing the business application has a solid understanding about the cultural differences, and a strong knowledge base about different kinds of business applications.