The Role of IT Culture in IT Management: Searching for Individual Archetypal IT Cultural Profiles

This article presents findings from an ethnographic study aimed at developing a typology of IT users based upon their Individual IT Culture. Social Identity Theory and the existence of a Technologicvl Cwltural vayev in6eac~ anvividual are the two main underpinnings of this typology, which is approached in a holistic perspective of the concept of culture. This offers a new path to understanding IT adoption and diffusion in organizations, which is an alternative to traditional theories using Organizational Culture and National Culture as frameworks in IS research. Our typology, built upon users’ self identities, develops eight archetypal profiles of IT-users. Within these identities, IT-assumptions, IT-values and IT-practices compose what we present as the users’ technological cultural identities or profiles. This typology is then used to illustrate how individuals, depending on their Individual Technological Cultural Profiles, can play different roles in the socialization processes which are induced by the IT implementation projects.