The Impact of Cultural Differences on IT Nearshoring Risks from a German Perspective

Abstract

Which nearshoring risks arise from cultural differences between German outsourcers and IT providers located in the nearshore environment? This paper focuses on the domain of IT nearshoring which is quite sparsely researched. Based on exploratory expert interviews from the IT service industry in six typical nearshoring countries from a German perspective (Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia, Lebanon, Tunisia, Turkey), we analyze which and how cultural differences influence typical outsourcing risks. We develop a causal model which derives outsourcing risk factors (such as insufficient formal communication, insufficient interaction, emotionally laden communication, and insufficiently open communication) from different cultural dimensions and links them to traditional outsourcing risk dimensions.