THE EFFECT OF CULTURE ON IT DIFFUSION - E-MAIL AND FAX IN JAPAN AND THE UNITED-STATES

Few cross-cultural studies have investigated how firms diffuse new inf ormation technologies (IT). Still fewer have advanced a theoretical pe rspective on possible cultural effects. In a world moving rapidly towa rd corporate multinationalism, this oversight seems notable. As foreig n managers locate plants and offices in the U.S. and as American manag ers establish foreign subsidiaries and offices abroad, it is important for these managers to know in advance as much as possible about the i mpact of culture on technological innovation. Japan and the U.S. are c ases in point. Both have subsidiaries and actively market goods and se rvices in the other country, far flung enterprises for which IT seems to be a natural coordinating mechanism. Yet while U.S. companies explo it the advantages of IT such as E-mail, Japanese firms do not. The Jap anese, however, do utilize FAX extensively. Culture is one fruitful ex planation for these differences. To examine these two markedly differe nt cultures and the effect of these differences on technological innov ation, a large Japanese airline and financial institution were chosen as representative Asian sites. The IT experiences of 209 Japanese know ledge workers are contrasted with those of 71 1 knowledge workers in c omparable firms in the United States on certain dimensions. Using Hofs tede's work on culture and social presence/information richness theory as grounding, it was hypothesized that high uncertainty avoidance in Japan and structural features of the Japanese written language could e xplain Japanese perceptions about new work technologies such as E-Mail and FAX. Furthermore, the theoretical conceptualization in the paper attempts to account for Japanese departures from the U.S. experience. Results from empirical tests verified many, but not all of the predict ed differences between Japanese and American knowledge workers. In gen eral, cultural effects seem to play an important role in the predispos ition toward and selection of electronic communications media. Surpris ingly, responses to traditional media such as face-to-face and telepho ne were remarkably similar between cultures.