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“It’s About Business not Politics”: Software Development Between Palestinians and Israelis

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ECSCW 2015: Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 19-23 September 2015, Oslo, Norway

Abstract

This paper focuses on the collaboration in an Israeli-Palestinian tech start-up company. We investigate the strategies enacted by the IT developers for managing the political dynamics and making collaboration possible under the highly challenging political conditions. We found that one of the key strategies was explicitly separating the work domain of software development from the domain of politics. We argue that the IT developers manage to collaborate by displacing the political conflict through strategies of non-confrontation instead of engaging in translating conflicting agendas against each other. By insisting on keeping politics outside of the workspace, the IT developers adopt a strategy of keeping the collaboration together by keeping politics and work apart. However, we found that despite the attempts to manage the sub-group dynamics, politics constantly invade the workspace and challenge the collaboration. Significant resources are invested into managing the regimes of differentiated identity cards, permits, and checkpoints, all of which have consequences on the employees’ freedom or restriction of mobility. Thus, we argue that the IT development domain is inseparable from and deeply dependent upon the political domain.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The interviews were conducted in July 2014, when the political situation was relatively calm as there were negotiations with Israel about releasing Palestinian prisoners and negotiations within Palestine for a unity government between Hamas and Fatah. A few days after the researcher left Ramallah, three settlers were kidnapped and this lead to a military crackdown on the West Bank and to an invasion on the Gaza Strip.

  2. 2.

    The names of all the informants are pseudonyms in order to preserve their anonymity.

  3. 3.

    http://www.pacbi.org/atemplate.php?id=100.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Palestinian developers from Alpha for welcoming us so warmly to Ramallah and for taking the time to kindly and generously share with us their honest reflections and critical experiences. This work was supported by The Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation: International Network Programme grant #4070-00010B.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Nina Boulus-Rødje & Pernille Bjørn

  2. IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Ahmad Ghazawneh

Authors
  1. Nina Boulus-Rødje
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  2. Pernille Bjørn
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  3. Ahmad Ghazawneh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nina Boulus-Rødje .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, The University of Copenhagen, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Nina Boulus-Rødje

  2. The University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway, Telemedicine & eHealth Research Group, Tromsø, Norway

    Gunnar Ellingsen

  3. University of Oslo, Department of Informatics, Oslo, Norway

    Tone Bratteteig

  4. University of Oslo, Department of Informatics, Oslo, Norway

    Margunn Aanestad

  5. Department of Computer Science, The University of Copenhagen, Department of Computer Science, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Pernille Bjørn

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Boulus-Rødje, N., Bjørn, P., Ghazawneh, A. (2015). “It’s About Business not Politics”: Software Development Between Palestinians and Israelis. In: Boulus-Rødje, N., Ellingsen, G., Bratteteig, T., Aanestad, M., Bjørn, P. (eds) ECSCW 2015: Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 19-23 September 2015, Oslo, Norway. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20499-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20499-4_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20498-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20499-4

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