Abstract
The start of the new millennium has put forth various debates, especially in the western world, regarding the lack of skilled information technology (IT) workers and strategies to meet this fast growing skills gap. Norway is no exception, with an estimated shortage of engineers in 2010. In order to minimize this rising challenge of skill shortage, firms are forced to look outwards for qualified IT-workers at lower costs.
This emerging trend brings forth various challenges for the actors operating across cultural borders. This thesis focuses on collaboration between small and medium sized Norwegian and Indian software firms separated by time, space and culture. The aim was to identify and analyze potential cultural challenges that arise in a GSA project within a Norwegian-Indian perspective, seeing that Norwegian firms have not built up an extensive experience in this area, and rewards to date have been limited. From an Indian perspective, working with Norwegian firms is relatively virgin territory, and the cultural challenges are poorly understood.
These issues are important to address in order to create a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities of GSA and thus the thesis hopes to contribute to raise the mutual value of outsourcing.