We conducted a study exploring how software professionals’ individual cultural orientations influence the ways they manage uncertainty in requirements engineering, highlighting uncertainty management as a fundamentally socio-technical process. By examining how practitioners communicate, plan, collaborate and make decisions under ambiguous or evolving requirements, we found that cultural traits meaningfully shape preferred strategies: individuals with higher power distance tended to prefer clearer hierarchy, stronger guidance from leaders, and more structured decision-making, while those with lower power distance favored open dialogue, shared leadership, and collaborative problem-solving when navigating uncertainty.
Our findings show that cultural diversity, when acknowledged and leveraged, can serve as a powerful resource that broadens the approaches available to a team, strengthens their ability to handle uncertainty, and fosters innovation. This work contributes new insight into the human and cultural dimensions of software engineering for building teams and processes that better navigate the complexities of uncertain requirements.