Attending to Implicit Bias as a Way to Move Beyond Negative Stereotyping in GSE

Abstract

Despite the prevalence of global software Engineering (GSE), many companies continuously struggle to collaborate across geographical distance, nationalities, and languages. Prior research documents how the use of national cultural differences as an argument for failed collaboration is common amongst people working in GSE, which has made IT companies blind to the fundamental challenges of GSE work emerging upon the conditions for the actual conduct of work and practices undertaken by human actors. Based on an interventionist ethnographic study conducted within a Danish IT company, we present the results of attending to implicit bias as an approach to combat pervasive practices that deploy static cultural narratives and negative stereotypes in GSE. We find that implicit bias is a useful grip for moving discussions beyond negative cultural rhetoric and to reconsider the actual and locally situated collaboration-related problems that exist within organizations involved in GSE.