Improvisation in Technical Work: a Study of the Culture of Globally Distributed Technology Consulting in Technology Services Firms

Canonical studies in the field of technology and organizations argue that technical work is a scripted performance that can be unearthed through pattern detection of everyday activities of technical workers. The present work engages with this view to argue that when technical settings are globally distributed, as in the case of technology consulting in technology services firms, technical work is a series of improvisations. I analyze a specific, popular business practice--the 24 hour workday, onsite/offshore model of global collaboration. Using ethnographic methods I argue that the improvisations happen at three levels--structural, practice and perceptual.;The first chapter brings out the importance of studying the cultures of production in technology firms to unearth how the social world is ordered in specific ways in today's changing, mediated global work environment. The second chapter focuses on how the 24 hour workday includes structural arrangements and practices of collocated and distributed collaboration that provide conditions for improvisations. It also explains how participants feel that most interruptions to work flow happen at the perceptual level, particularly due to differences in "culture" and "communication". The third chapter focuses on these interruptions and brings out the dominance of managerial narratives over engineering narratives in the discourse that binds globally distributed technology consulting. The fourth chapter highlights how communication technologies are used to bridge the gap in understanding and explains the instances when participants feel comfortable using communication technologies to bridge perceptual gaps with cultural others. The fifth chapter points to the significance of studying the culture of distributed high-end technical jobs to global locations, explaining the importance of narratives in such cases and the role of cultural contexts in using communication technologies to bridge perceptual and knowledge gaps. Data comes from seven weeks of field observations in America and India and 45interviews with American and Indian consultants (located in both countries) in the business of technology services. Four multinational consulting companies are part of the study, two American and two Indian.