Cross-Cultural Knowledge Management Practices to Support Offshore Outsourcing

In offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) arrangements between US client firms and Indian vendor firms, a ”culture gap” has been reported between the organizations. This gap originates from (1) macro level differences between the two firms in their operating procedures and (2) micro level differences in the cultural proclivity of the individual workers. This gap often hinders the much needed bi-directional knowledge sharing in the outsourcing organization. To close this gap and improve knowledge sharing, effective organizational practices are needed. This chapter studies a case where a set of technical support processes were outsourced by an US based multinational client to an Indian vendor. Data was collected using interviews of client-side, process and business managers to understand what challenges were faced in the organization after BPO and what practices facilitated cross cultural knowledge sharing. A set of organizational enablers and collaboration tools were reported by the interviewees to be successful in bridging the gaps and enhancing bi-directional knowledge sharing. This case demonstrates the benefits of three organizational practices – (1) bridging, (2) bonding and (3) linking, that build social capital in the form of relational norms and connections among workers. These relational practices, together with social capital, complement the use of collaboration tools and technologies to improve knowledge sharing between the client and vendor teams.