11.1 Introduction

Culture operates at many levels of aggregation: group, firm, industry, profession, region, group, country, group of countries. Regardless of groupings culture remains the means by which non-genetic information is transmitted either within a given generation of agents or from one generation to the next. Technological practice forms an integral part of such information transmission but usually combines universal theoretical knowledge with more practical, local and culture specific application. This has particular implications for the management of communication within multinational, multicultural organizations and for the specific form of virtual organization which comprises technology-based alliances over several cultures operating in an even broader cultural environment.

Information and communication technology (ICT) is, by definition, the technological foundation of e-business consisting of a number of business-centric categories such as business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-employee (B2E). As discussed in previous chapters, e-business has been extended to allow for the systematic integration of an organization's internal and external systems, via the Web, both up and down the supply chain. This in turn will result in today's business-centric e-business topologies evolving into customer-centric e-communities.

In this chapter we review cultural influences on organizations and information technology applications. This is expanded into the development of online communities where a shared culture of common practices is a key factor in effective development and maintenance. Finally, the whole issue of global expansion is placed under the spotlight...