Intersoft of Argentina

Executive Summary

Intersoft was founded in 1983 by Emilio Lopez and Felix Racca. This was one of the fastest growing software companies in Latin America with its head office in Argentina. This case depicts the company’s origin and gives an overview of the relationship between the founders and their employees. It also gives us an understanding of the Argentine employee’s relationships with their Russian business partners.

In the early 90’s the market was moving from procedural programming and character based interface design (this was Intersoft’s traditional strength) towards object oriented programming and Graphical User Interfaces (GUI’s). Therefore, the founders of Intersoft approached Orgland, a Russian software company which had extensive experience in GUI’s. Since Orgland agreed to work with Intersoft, Emilio Lopez, the vice president and director of Intersoft Systems Software Lab has to manage a creative, cross-cultural “Virtual” team.

The case shows the various problems that the Argentine programmer, Hernan Otero and Russian Programmer, Alexey Iskhakov faced when they visited Russia and Argentina respectively. The key points that are addressed in the case study are:

1) Language Barriers.

2) Communication issues within the management.

3) Difference in work ethics in different countries.

4) Cross Cultural Relationships.

The case study proposes v arious methods to overcome the issues faced by the company’s employees due to cultural differences. Proper investment in cross cultural training can solve many of the issues.

The Main Challenges and their causes:

There are quite a few similarities between Russians and Argentines like for example both shared some common religious beliefs as Roman Catholics such as family and certain moral principles, both cultures appreciate a good (alcoholic) drink such as vodka etc.

But there are some key differences in their outlook of work culture. This poses a challenge for them to work together. The following are the list of major challenges:

1) Authority Issues:

Russians believe in anarchy and hierarchy and are rebellious towards authority. Argentines don’t rebel against authority, they just ignore them. Russians think it’s not necessary for a peer to share his/her views with a boss if there is a possibility of agreement at the peer level. Argentines do not respect these boundaries and believe in asking opinions and sharing their views with their boss.

2) Language Barrier:

Language Interpretation was one of the major problems. It was very difficult for Argentines to understand Russian English and vice-versa.