Indonesia´s cultural background in productivity and performance in the implementation of SE processes: Indonesian expatriate engineers´ awareness

This paper reports the implementation of Systems Engineering (SE) processes by expatriate Indonesian engineers in their project or company with particular attention to awareness of cross-cultural issues within the project team. A web survey was conducted in which several questions are designed to investigate the engineers´ awareness of how they manage their cultural background in implementing SE processes to achieve high quality project performance. The survey questions were designed using the results of a set of 18 interviews with Indonesian engineers working in several countries as expatriates. The interviews were used to surface the issues that would enable a tightly organized set of survey questions. The survey was answered by 291 Indonesian engineers working in various countries as expatriates. Several factors were identified as influencing productivity and performance in the implementation of SE Processes, as perceived by the Indonesian engineers. These factors include work ethic, social environment and educational background. This study reveals that engineers with an Indonesian cultural background typically exhibit several behaviors supporting a good work ethic such as discipline, responsibility, politeness and persistence. Other results from this study are that their social environment, educational background, and cultural background contributed to their awareness of their productivity and performance in implementation of SE processes. The purpose of this paper is to identify their awareness of how their cultural background influences the implementation of SE processes particularly in productivity and performance.