Intertwining Practices and Uses of ICT: A Cultural Digital Analysis

Abstract

National culture is a central principle in understanding employees, their work and how to do it. When communication practices are incompatible with the values of employees, they are likely to feel dissatisfied, distracted, uncomfortable and uncommitted. As a result, they may have less ability or desire to perform. Instead, consistency between practices of communication and the characteristics of the national culture leads to better performance. This study highlights some elements of cultural analysis by identifying the behavior of groups of individuals by combining their communication practices, their ICT equipment and the uses they make of it. We identify five very distinct profiles ranging from “univores” to “multi-omnivores”, whose membership factors we test. It seems that the more diverse the use of ICT, the more the individual has a diversified consumption of the time budget. More finely, the “culture of digital networks” positively explains the degree of technophilia. The difficult start of digital communication models can be explained by the generally limited profile of "multi-omnivores" and the geographic location.