La autoevaluación

In terms of the technology available the actors have a wide range of up-to-date communication technologies available at hand on a daily basis: Emails, telephones, instant messengers with the option to have both textual as well as one-on-one video meetings, phone conferencing equipment and video conferencing equipment. All of these technologies work seamlessly except for phone conferencing, which in some cases can have a lower quality. However, even with quite good technology available we are not near the ‘paradise’ that Arthur Mee projected a little more than a century ago.

“If, as it is said to be not unlikely in the near future, the principle of sight is applied to the telephone as well as that of sound, earth will be in truth a

paradise, and distance will lose its enchantment by being abolished altogether.” (Mee, 1898: 345)

Throughout my fieldwork it has been clear that the actors from both organizations value face-to-face interaction with their counterparts immensely. The value of co-location has repeatedly been brought up during interviews and furthermore substantiated by the means of my observation studies, where I have had amble opportunity to observe how the actors repeatedly turn to co-located counterparts – to the familiar faces conveniently present.

Actors from both organizational entities explain that co-location makes communication and collaboration easier. One vendor-side actor claims that being “somewhere near to them [the client-side actors], it is always easy for me to go and interact (Interview #9)”, while another elaborates that it may also be “more effective in a way. That is the reason we have a guy over here [in Denmark] all the time” (Interview #5). A third vendor-side actor with almost fifteen years of experience from various Indian service providers adds that it is a common contractual agreement in all larger IT-outsourcing arrangements he has experienced: “any service provider whatever you’ll do is there is support you from onsite, any industry will make sure there is one guy” (Interview #10).

The notion of co-located work being easier and more convenient is supported by the client-side employees, who find it more convenient to interact “directly with them instead of writing short messages on instant messenger and [sending] emails”

(Interview #6) as one puts it.

“What is it that is easier when being collocated?” I ask them. Predominantly the answers are: ‘being available’ and ‘understanding’. The first, ‘being available’ is perceived as a value in itself as eases communication, while the latter, ‘understanding’, is twofold: On one hand it is about the ease of communicating and learning about technical and domain specific issues. One the other hand co-location and face-to-face

interaction are seen as means to gaining understanding of the people who from the other organization.

Understanding

“If I am here, we all sit in a room, to make me understand the requirement, it will take only an hour, exactly an hour” (Vendor-side actor, Interview #5)

One of the vendor-side actors tell me that gaining a thorough understanding of a requirement passed on from the client-side to the vendor-side can take several weeks when they are not co-located – something that can be done in an hour when they are.

On a similar note one of the client-side actors express that he has a clear preference for apprenticeship as he has experienced positive outcome of that way of passing on knowledge earlier in his career as there is a “greater risk of misunderstanding when communicating in writing compared to when you sit together and can easily ask for clarification” (Interview #6).

This is furthermore supported by the one of the client-side managers in charge of the outsourcing agreements who explains that the initial phase of the cooperation with the vendor consisted of a six month transition period (that ended up lasting more than a year) in which key staff from the vendor was brought onsite for knowledge transfer.

Among the client-side actors there is agreement that this transition period has been

“vital” for the success of the collaboration and they furthermore point out that such an intense knowledge transfer can only be successful if the vendor-side employees are onsite and “sitting on the lap of our people [the Danish employees]” (Interview #6) as one puts it.

One aspect of understanding relates to the technical and business domain specific knowledge. Another relates to the human aspects, which is brought up repeatedly by the vendor-side actors. One of the vendor-side actors who has been onsite for both the transition and is now again back in Copenhagen explains the value of collocation like

this: “So we are asked to be here and I came to understand how these guys [the client-side actors] work, so I can do a great job now” (Interview #5) and another vendor-client-side actor elaborates that:

Yes, basically what I do is once I came here I used to observe the people basically, how they talk, how they speak, how they communicate […] you need to, as a service provider […] you need to understand them first and then you need to mingle with different kind of people. […] As a service provider this also is a part of your job getting to know them and their mindset and their culture and then you have to modify yourself a bit and then you need to do your service. So, that he will be happy [and] I will be happy”

(Interview #10 – vendor-side actor)

This notion, that the vendor-side actors, as representatives of the service provider, need to understand the mindset, culture and the way the client side employees work – and subsequently adjust themselves to fit in is very predominant among the vendor-side actors, who uses terms like ‘modify yourself’, ‘adjust’ and ‘mold oneself’ (a subject which I will return to in much greater detail in Chapter VII: ‘Trusting Across Cultures’). The same notion is only to a limited extend found among the client-side actors; a few emphasize the importance of finding common ground and “understand their [the vendor-side actors’] way of working” (Interview #14), but most of the client-side actors have a very process-oriented and technical focus and do not conclient-sider the more humanistic perspective explicitly. To them, understanding is primarily related to the subject matter rather than to the human aspect.

Being Available

In addition to ‘understanding’, the notion of ‘being available’ is also repeatedly brought up by the vendor-side actors as an explanation as to why co-location is important. One vendor-side actor explains that being onsite means that he will be the natural contact person for the client-side actors. A senior vendor-side employee with

onsite experience and managerial responsibilities for a smaller group of offshore consultants explains that: “Developing personal relationship is important, but as I said, as a service provider you should have the very, very less response time to make anybody happy” and elaborates that whoever is onsite “will be the go-to guy, of course” (Interview #10) and further elaborates that in order to obtain “effective communication there has to be some physical presence” (Interview #10) and exemplifies that “if there is a critical issue coming like a breakdown happens or a server is down or the internet is down that time obviously it’s a very critical issue that someone is present” (Interview #10).

A part of the explanation for the importance of ‘being there’ refers back to

‘understanding’ namely, that understanding complex matters is easier when being co-located. But another part is referring to ‘being there’ as something that has value in and for itself. Several of the vendor-side actors that are, or has been, onsite explain that they act as intermediaries between the offshore team at the Operations Management Center (OMC) in Chennai and the client-side actors in Copenhagen, in order to smoothen the cooperation: On one side they are the client’s go-to guys and on the other side they can act as intermediaries for their colleagues working in the OMC. When the offshore staff members have questions and needs for clarification they are quite often using the onsite vendor-side actors, who are first explained the situation and then they will approach the client-side counterpart on behalf of the OMC.

Likewise, the client-side actors often use the vendor-side actors stationed onsite as intermediaries when they need to bring something up with the offshore vendor-side employees, as “this is much easier than communicating with India” (Interview #6).

Mostly, the Indian vendor-side employees stationed onsite are approached with subjects within their work domain. The same applies for the native Danish vendor-side employees, who are repeatedly used as go-to guys by the client-side employees and thus acts as intermediaries between the client-side and the offshore vendor-side actors

on subjects relating to their work domain. There is, however, one notable exception, namely the service manager, who has the management responsibility of the rest of native Danish vendor-side employees and act as “the glue” (Field Notes 20130212), as he expresses it himself, between the client-side and the vendor-side actors. His role is, in his own words, to “make the ends of the pipes meet” (Field Notes 20130212) and over the course of my observation studies it has become crystal clear that this is exactly what he is used for. In addition to being involved in a wide range of standing phone meetings with India he is on average called over to one of the client-side actor’s desk and presented with some issue once or twice per day during my observation studies.

Most of the time he will accept the task and promise to communicate, discuss or raise the issue with the OMC. Being available seems to be not just a part of his job, but virtually his full time occupation.

Judging from the emphasis that actors from both organizations put on co-location it is clear that distance has not lost its enchantment. Despite the fact that the actors have multiple modern and well-functioning technologies at hand distance still matters.

Below we shall have a closer look at the concrete challenges they face when collaborating across distance, namely ‘difficulties going directly’, ‘knowledge gaps’

and ‘lacking transparency’.

Communicating at a Distance: Three Challenges

While co-location of the actors from the two organizations results in the actors being available and understanding each other this is not the case when the actors have not had a chance to work in close physical proximity. This lack of exposure to co-location leads to three challenges that will be elaborated below.

Challenge I: Going Directly

During my interviews several people have used the term “putting a face” to the other’s, when asked to elaborate on why it is more cumbersome to collaborate with people they have met face-to-face as opposed to people they have only interacted with via mediated

communication. For instance, one of the client employees explain that “it is important to put face on” as she feels “closer to them – and they feel closer too” (Interview #17).

One of the vendor-side employees, and one who performs a role that requires a lot of client interaction, recollects the how the collaboration changed after meeting her client-side counterparts: “I started feeling free to call in for any issues. Before I met them I used to have a fear […] so after meeting there is a change” (Interview #19).

Another vendor-side employee, also with substantial interaction with some of the client-side employees explains that she used to think: “what are they going to think about me, why is this girl so much pestering” (Interview #22), But after she met with her client-side counterpart, she realized that “he was a really cool guy” (Interview #22) and that meeting in person was “definitely really important. And after he left from here I really did not hesitate to call him for any issues” (Interview #22).

In a similar vein some of the client-side actors have addressed the value of meeting their counterparts. For instance, one client-side actor characterizes an vendor-side actor with whom she is interacting with on a daily basis as a “strict lady, who always goes by the book” (Interview #17) and assesses that “if I had not met her, I would almost not dare writing an email to her. But now that we have met, I think it’s easier”

(Interview #17). Thus, the reluctance to approach “faceless” counterparts is similar for a number of actors from the client-side as well as the vendor-side. What they all express, in each their own way, is that the physical face-to-face meeting, even if these are rather short, humanizes their counterparts and makes it easier to make contact directly – that is, by phone. And in cases where they need to communicate with a

‘faceless’ person from the other organizational entity they would do so in writing – either by email or in some cases by chat. As one vendor-side actor puts it: “I don’t know him in person, so rather than talking with him on the phone I prefer messaging on communicator with him” as he is more “comfortable on a communicator”

(Interview #22) in such instances.

Thus, the actors perceived a challenge related to ‘going directly’, which is caused by lack of adequate interpersonal interaction. This absence of interpersonal interaction is explained by two factors. First, as elaborated above, there seems to be a mental barrier, which can be overcome by physical proximity. To paraphrase Goffman (1959), one could say that the actors refrain from offering a positive self-image as long as they are communicating using technology and they maintain a depersonalized mode of communication as long as they have not met in person. Consequently, physical distance becomes mental distance.

However, the actors also express another dimension of the challenge of the ability to be

‘going directly’ – one that is indeed has a much more pragmatic connotation, but nevertheless is important: The availability of technology. That is, in order to conduct video-based meetings or to have phone conferences meeting rooms has to be booked, which some actors perceived as challenging. As one vendor-side actor puts it these video conferencing facilities “has to be book[ed] and it’s very cumbersome” (Interview

#21) as the rooms need to booked well in advance. Thus, impromptu video meetings are not an option – unless there is an operational crisis, in which case other bookings will be overruled.

This is in stark contrast to the interaction with co-located actors. Another vendor employee explains that: “if it is in our team anytime we can talk to them and we can make them understand what actually we are going to convey. So that thing is very easy here, but whereas with the client we have to schedule a meeting” (Interview #24).

Therefore, as he continues: “First we’ll initiate with the mail trails and if this getting continuous mail trails then we’ll go for a meeting” (Interview #24). Thus, emails are the default way of collaborating. At least up to the point where the actors realize that the complexity of the matter inhibits successful collaboration via emails.

To sum up, the actors find it difficult to approach their counterparts from the other organizational entity, when they have not met face-to-face, as encounters in physical

proximity facilitates communication that allow the actors to get to know each other.

Furthermore, going directly is a challenge due to scarce technological resources in the form of meeting rooms with video equipment and phone conferencing systems.

Challenge II: Knowledge Gaps

In line with other studies (e.g. Dibbern et al., 2004; Madsen et al., 2013) asymmetric knowledge across the geographical and organizational boundaries poses a significant challenge to the collaboration between the client-side and vendor-side actors in the context of the offshore outsourcing collaboration that constitutes the empirical foundation for this dissertation.

During my observation studies as well as in interviews it has repeatedly been brought to my attention that the client-side actors believe that the vendor-side actors working from offshore lack important knowledge about the client’s business and the impact that technological changes and failures have on the business. One of the client-side actors explain:

“Even though we have executed a giant knowledge transfer lasting more than eight months, there is still a lack of overview of what they [the IT-systems] do and how they are interconnected. I don’t think anyone has that now, except for myself and a few others in our department [in Denmark]. It is not easy to communicate via these channels. I think there is a big difference” (Client-side actor, Interview #6)

Consequently, he has “given up on getting them [the vendor-side actors] to understand how things are connected” (Interview #6) and he furthermore states that he is repeatedly consulted on things that he had expected that the vendor-side actors would be able to figure out themselves, which he attributes to the distance, as “one has another kind of dialogue when one is sitting next to people and talking directly to them compared to writing short messages on instant messenger or email” (Interview #6).

This point of view is widely shared among the client-side actors, though some express it in a softer tone. On the other hand, several of the vendor-side actors are exclaiming that they see themselves as what Markus (2001) labels expertise-seeking novices – as someone who are who are in need of knowledge possessed by others to be able to perform their work – when asked to reflect on the collaboration with the client employees. One vendor-side actor explains: “I do learn from them. So my mistakes will be spoken to me so that I also improve” (Interview #19) and furthermore he assumes that learning is not bi-directional, as the client-side actors do not seem to learn from him or his colleagues. During my interviews and over-the-desk talks with actors from both organizational entities this lack of business understanding has been mentioned repeatedly, whereas the vendor-side actors’ level of technical knowledge is assessed as good. Thus, the knowledge gap is not related to the technical, but rather to the business knowledge.

Interestingly, the notion of lack of business knowledge among the vendor-side actors only apply to the one’s who have not been stationed onsite, in Denmark: One of the vendor-side actors with significant onsite experience explains:

“If anyone sends a mail from the client they [the offshore team in India] will not be understanding the exact criticality of that issue, how the client is facing over there. […] So the website is down; […] so they [the offshore team in India] will consider this is as low criticality. So we [the onsite vendor-side actors] need to tell them that the entire Europe is using this. If this website is not working, then it’s the credibility of [the client] and their name is going to lose in the market” (Interview #20 – vendor-side actor)

Furthermore, the vendor-side actors who have been working in close physical proximity with the client-side actors are repeatedly acknowledged for the abilities to understand the core business of the client company during interviews and informal

Furthermore, the vendor-side actors who have been working in close physical proximity with the client-side actors are repeatedly acknowledged for the abilities to understand the core business of the client company during interviews and informal