Designing and implementing culturally-sensitive IT applications: The interaction of culture values and privacy issues in the Middle East

The Internet, World Wide Web, and related information technologies, originally developed in western countries, have rapidly spread to a great variety of countries and cultures. Many of these technologies facilitate and mediate interpersonal communication, an activity whose modes and means bind closely to cultural norms and values. This article provides a theoretical integration of Hall's (1976) framework for culture values together with Information Boundary Theory, a model for understanding privacy and related issues that arise when personal information is shared or exchanged using information technology. The resulting hybrid framework can help understand and predict individuals' reactions to various communication-related IT applications In this information age, communication freely occurs across many parts of the world. People in many countries receive, transfer, and exchange information anywhere, anytime, and with almost anyone with the help of information technology (IT). Constraints of time and distance that existed before are gradually diminishing with the global spread of IT (Kedia and But the information age also presents many challenges as the use of knowledge becomes more influential over the productivity of societies, organizations, and individuals. The idea of the " Global Village " may have become more accepted and widespread, but information technology planners and proponents still need to consider carefully the myriad differences among cultures as they work to implement new forms of technology in new cultural settings. Cultural values held in common by individuals within societies reflect a complex of preferred behavioral patterns for social interaction, communication, and exchange (Adler, 2001; Schneider and Barsoux, 1997). As such, cultural values influence the typical ways in which supports the need for cultural awareness, sensitivity, and understanding with regard to how differing cultural values affect the adoption of communication artifacts; as well as how the Internet and new technologies impact cross-cultural management. As such, newer forms of Internet-based communications such as email, instant messaging, chat, newsgroups, web logs, and certain varieties of peer-to-peer application are likewise subject to differences in how individuals perceive information, how individuals value information, and how individuals Culture, Privacy, and IT in the Middle East 4 4 exchange information. Although servers, fiber optics, and other technological infrastructure elements may be universal, user functions and interfaces may need to accommodate differences overused expression, " Think Globally, Act Locally " seems meaningfully applicable to the development of culturally sensitive IT applications. Prior research supports the idea that the success or failure of design and implementing …