The Effect of Culture on IT Diffusion: E-Mail and FAX in Japan and the U.S.

Abstract

Few cross-cultural studies have investigated how firms diffuse new information technologies (IT). Still fewer have advanced a theoretical perspective on possible cultural effects. In a world moving rapidly toward corporate multinationalism, this oversight seems notable. As foreign managers locate plants and offices in the U.S. and as American managers establish foreign subsidiaries and offices abroad, it is important for these managers to know in advance as much as possible about the impact of culture on technological innovation. Japan and the U.S. are cases in point. Both have subsidiaries and actively market goods and services in the other country, far flung enterprises for which IT seems to be a natural coordinating mechanism. Yet while U.S. companies exploit the advantages of IT such as E-mail, Japanese firms do not. The Japanese, however, do utilize FAX extensively. Culture is one fruitful explanation for these differences. To examine these two markedly different cultures and the effect of these differences on technological innovation, a large Japanese airline and financial institution were chosen as representative Asian sites. The IT experiences of 209 Japanese knowledge workers are contrasted with those of 711 knowledge workers in comparable firms in the United States on certain dimensions. Using Hofstede'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 explain 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 predicted differences between Japanese and American knowledge workers. In general, cultural effects seem to play an important role in the predisposition toward and selection of electronic communications media. Surprisingly, responses to traditional media such as face-to-face and telephone were remarkably similar between cultures.