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Most of the studies carried out on human factor in software development concentrate primarily on personality traits. However, soft skills which largely help in determining personality traits have been given comparatively little attention by researchers. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether employers' soft skills requirements, as advertised in job postings, within different roles of software development, are similar across different cultures.

The authors review the literature relating to soft skills before describing a study based on 500 job advertisements posted on well‐known recruitment sites from a range of geographical locations, including North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The study makes use of nine defined soft skills to assess the level of demand for each of these skills related to individual job roles within the software industry.

It was found that in the cases of designer, programmer and tester, substantial similarity exists for the requirements of soft skills, whereas only in the case of system analyst is dissimilarity present across different cultures. It was concluded that cultural difference does not have a major impact on the choice of soft skills requirements in hiring new employee in the case of the software development profession.

Specific studies concerning soft skills and software development have been sporadic and often incidental, which highlights the originality of this work. Moreover, no concrete work has been reported in the area of soft skills and their demand as a part of job requirement sets in diverse cultures, which increases the value of this paper.

This study seeks to determine factors that encourage post‐meeting work activity in a software development group by assessing attendee diversity (functional, staffing and tenure), meeting size, and meeting history.

One year's worth of meeting data from a software development group in a US‐based financial services company were collected and analyzed. A binary logistic regression analysis was utilized to determine the impact of diversity, meeting size, and meeting history on the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity.

Tenure diversity and meeting history for each meeting event significantly contribute to the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity.

A lack of variance in the data does not allow for the examination of staffing diversity. Further, generalizability of findings is limited since data come entirely from one organization. Findings suggest that meeting characteristics, specifically tenure diversity and meeting history, can improve the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity occurring.

Findings illustrate that management can leverage tenure diversity and meeting history within a software development group to encourage post‐meeting work activity.

All organizations employ meetings, and research that clarifies how to extract maximum value from meeting events is critical. This study provides a first step in uncovering specific meeting characteristics which are most likely to impact post‐meeting work activity.

The purpose of this paper is to classify the factors affecting the performance of software development teams and stress the soft (non‐technical) factors affecting the performance of software development teams.

This paper is based on the thorough secondary research and literature review of the past empirical studies published in reputed journals. The methodology followed is the secondary research based on extensive literature review of empirical studies done and analysis of the findings of those studies and categorization of the factors affecting the software development team performance. Literature review and analysis were carried out between March 2010 and March 2011.

It was found that the soft factors such as team climate, team diversity, team innovation, team member competencies and characteristics, top management support and team leader behavior, have an effect on software development team performance. Mutual trust and communication effectiveness are found to be the prioritized factors affecting the software development team performance.

The conclusions made are based on the past empirical studies found in the literature. A primary research can be done by taking these soft factors into consideration and implications or observations can be found on the software development team's performance.

The original contribution of this paper is the classification of factors affecting the performance of software development teams. This contribution also highlights the soft factors such as team climate, which was not discussed much in the literature. It also highlights trust and communication, for example, as leading factors affecting the software development team performance.

This research seeks to investigate the relationship between knowledge diversity (KD) in software teams and project performance. Previous research has shown that member diversity affects team performance; most of that work, however, has focused on diversity in personal or social attributes, such as gender or social category. Current research targets at the knowledge level aim to facilitate the implementation of knowledge management in organizations.

A research framework was developed based on conflict theory and empirically tested on software teams in Taiwan.

It was found that KD increases task conflict, which in turn has significant positive effects on team performance and that value diversity (VD) increases relationship conflict, which in turn negatively affects team performance.

The findings indicate that task conflict can enhance team performance, while relationship conflict can reduce team performance. Therefore, it is important to maintain healthy relationships among team members.

This research concludes that KD is beneficial and that VD is harmful to project outcome in software development. It is, therefore, useful for managers to form teams whose members encompass a broad knowledge base.

This paper proposes a novel way to measure knowledge and VD in teams and reports the effects of these attributes on team performance. The work also shows that a proper level of task conflict in a software team is necessary for achieving high performance.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Research on agile software development (ASD) has so far primarily focused on processes and tools. Recently, researchers have started to investigate the social dimensions of ASD. The authors contribute to this and examine the largely invisible psychological factor of age stereotypes as one important social dimension of ASD. Driven by demographic change, employees of different age groups will need to work closely together in ASD in the future. However, age stereotypes can hinder many aspects of communication, cooperation and coordination in these self-managed teams. The purpose of this paper is to identify and differentiate age stereotypes in ASD.

A quantitative survey at the individual level was conducted with 464 employees in two software development companies. The authors developed an age stereotype model for ASD and developed two scales to measure performance expectations (PEs) in ASD.

Employees in ASD show a bias in general PEs, favoring middle-aged employees over both younger and older employees. The perceived PE of a developer decreases over working life. Furthermore, the data show a complex interplay of age and job role in both the research participants and the group evaluated. Younger developers hold the strongest negative age stereotypes and older developers suffer most from stereotypes.

Management should enact formal or informal measures against stereotypes when an older or younger employee joins a team of members of other age groups, or when a new team is formed. In addition, the authors propose human resources to create permeable career paths.

The study extends the stereotype content model by adding additional age groups and including job role as a moderating variable. It identifies obstacles in daily employee interactions in agile development, and proposes ways of incorporating invisible psychological aspects in ASD-specific theories.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how digital and physical product development can be successfully coordinated and which new product development and contextual practices are suitable for the combined digital-physical product development process.

The paper is based on a multiple-case study within one company with three digital-physical product development projects as the units of analysis. The data collection and analysis are guided by an existing research model. The case study is used deductively to illustrate the model.

When combining digital and physical development processes, one or both need to change. This may lead to sub-optimization of one or both of the processes but optimizes the combined digital-physical process. Various development and coordination practices as well as contextual measures must be put into place to improve fit to the digital-physical process characteristics and mixed materiality.

The paper illustrates the research model with case evidence and suggests tentative theory in the form of propositions. Further research needs to explore the impact of the practices and contextual measures proposed.

This research proposes a range of conditions facilitating the successful development of digital-physical products.

This paper is among the first to empirically explore the complex process of digital-physical product development. Taking a process perspective and focusing on organizational and managerial practices and the influence of context, organization theory is used as the theoretical lens.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the role of individual–social–technology fit in online social network (OSN) value development. The social software features (e.g. communication and interaction), social features (e.g. privacy and trust) and individual features (e.g. sense of belonging and self-disclosure) are considered fitting forms to describe the OSN value. Implications and suggestions are addressed.

The literature review on social software, the social and individual characteristics and the research gap with respect to OSN value is presented. The research arguments are then hypothesized, and research model used to describe the proposed role is examined empirically. The research targeted mobile phone users as the subjects, and the extent of the activities of these users on OSN for both work and studies. A salient investigation explores the moderation effect of gender. The research results are obtained, and the findings are revealed on the basis of 468 social software users.

The significant effect of individual–social–technology fit on OSN value development is presented through the satisfaction of both participation and sharing information, and knowledge about this fit is verified. The interplay of social software, social and individual features contributes significantly to individual–social–technology fit development, implying that OSN value development is not a single issue. OSN value development should be considered concurrently with technological, personal and social issues.

The empirical study confirms that fitness analysis produces a systematic outcome, in which all elements (e.g. social, technology and individual) are required to cooperate with one another to maximize the OSN value. An individual adopts online channels to communicate with others; thus, the benefits may be a multidimensional issue instead of only a single information service issue. They also consider building an equal social relationship to be important, as it enables diverse propositions, maintains acceptable privacy and behaves on faith to enhance the fit of technology features and individual features to value development. The subjects also likely accepted the fact that emotion generation is important for the advantage of fit of technology features and social features, thereby likely benefitting OSN value development.

The OSN does not only add new values to the society but also brings new effects on social development, especially in terms of social cognition from virtual community formation, development and creation. Although existing studies in the literature present the important aspects and antecedents linked significantly to OSN value development, these studies also insufficiently discuss the effect of fit of these facets on OSN value development. This exploratory study mainly aims to propose and examine the individual–social–technology fit model through an empirical investigation. The main argument of the study is that when a positive and healthy virtual society is developed through social software, the individual and social characteristics, as well as the social software features, should be defined with a suitable fit to promote the social networking value.