Challenges in cross-cultural project management

I am aware that the article is not done yet, and I apologize for that.

Abstract

In the globalized world we see today, there is a bigger need for managers in general but also for project managers to be able to recognise, understand, and manage different cultures. This can both be when doing projects within an organization across different countries and when working with local contractors, partners and suppliers. The scope of this article is to outline some frequent problems and some of the areas it is important to take into account when doing cross-cultural projects.

It is never an easy task to manage a project team. There is no one fit all method and every project can give new challenges that the leader have never experienced before. Of Course there are some attributes that are generally good like honesty, positivity and being a good communicator, but other attributes can in some groups be seen as a positive thing and in others seen as a bad attribute. The composition of the group can also have an impact on how easy it is to manage the group. Even though a project group also will consist of different individuals they can have more or less things in common which can play a huge role in how hard it is to manage the group.

To look at some of the things that can have an influence on this Hoffstede’s culturel dimension framework is used.It consist of 4 dimensions, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, indiviualism versus collectivism and masculinity versus femininity.

It is the product of a research made by Geert Hofstede, a Dutch psychologist, from data collected at IBM between 1967 to 1973, where more than 100,000 employees, from across 40 countries were asked about individuals values and attitudes.

Power distance is about how willing a culture is to accept inequality in physical and intellectual capabilities. This is very often show in how much power and wealth are “allowed” in the culture. In a company or a project group this can be seen by the ability for employees lower in the title hierarchy to get in direct contact with superiors, question their decisions and come with suggestions to how things could work better. The higher the number the higher allowance in power distance for the culture. Countries that have a high power distance includes most South american countries, middle eastern and asian countries and low scoring countries are the northern part of europe especially scandinavia.

Uncertainty avoidance as the name suggest how much a culture want to avoid uncertainty. Cultures that have a high uncertainty avoidance appreciate high job security, clear career patterns and a high level of rules and regulations. The manager is to give clear instructions, and there is a high avoidance to take risks. Also the resistance towards changes are getting higher as the uncertainty avoidance score raises. Examples of high scoring countries are southern europe, the middle east and South america, whereas the low scoring countries are Scandinavian, UK and some of the former british colonies.

Individualism versus collectivism

Masculinity versus femininity

Problems with the tool The research is more a tool for business culture than a direct project management tool, and it has been criticised for for not differentiating between culture and country even though a country can consists of multiple cultures. The research is based upon data from a single company, and although it was a large multinational company there will still be some similarities across the company since people have the same positions around the world. Lastly it has been criticised to maybe be a bit biased since all of the research group was either european or american and the results correlates well with a “western” view on cultures. That being said it can still be good for a project manager that have to manage a cross-cultural project group especially if it consist of people from countries with high difference in scores for the different parameters, or if the manager is to manage a group of from the same country, but one that differ a lot from the manager's own country.

An example could be a manager coming from a low uncertainty avoidance country that had to manage a project where most of the project group had a high level of uncertainty avoidance. The manager is willing to take some risks every now and then there is a good part of how to do certain things to allow the rest of the project group to be more creative to encourage a more co-development style in running the project. This can be the project group be seen as the manager is not good enough suited to be manager and therefore either don’t do anything because they are afraid to do something wrong since the guidelines are not precise enough or to start being counter productive since as they don’t find the manager suitable they have to manage themselves