Culture is a term that reflects the community’s assumptions, norms, values, and artifacts. Community includes the parent organization charting the project, the local community or communities where the project is executed, and the region and country where the project is located. The project team must understand the community’s culture and its potential impact on the project.
Culture also defines the meaning of work, truth, the value of nature, relationships, and how to communicate. Projects executed in various cultures will often experience cultural conflict.
Gender Difficulties in Argentina
A project team from the United States was responsible for executing a project in Argentina. The U.S. leadership team included women in key leadership positions, and the Argentines refused to take direction from females. The U.S. team believed strongly in their leadership capability and refused to make changes. This conflict was settled by senior managers of both organizations, and rules were established that respected all team members in leadership roles. The conflict did not go away, but the team was able to successfully execute the project with the original team. Delays were experienced on the project that could be traced to this cultural conflict.
Many organizations have rule-based cultures. Institutions of higher learning, organizations related to judicial organizations, and most government organizations are examples of rule-based organizations. The organizational structure and culture inhibits risk taking through established rules and policies. Projects are goal based and focus on plans and processes to achieve goals. Goal-based cultures promote assuming risk to achieve goals. Projects that are closely tied to a rule-based parent organization will often find conflict with the parent organization’s need to follow rules and the project’s need to accomplish goals. This conflict creates additional stress that adds to the project complexity.
On global projects, language, cultural conflict with the role of women, the religious role in daily activities, and even the concept of time can becomes issues on the project. These issues require project leadership to resolve and they add to the project complexity. In some countries and even different companies in the same country, meetings start on time, and a person arriving five minutes late will cause major disruption. In other situations, meetings can start within thirty minutes of the starting time without anyone objecting.
Communication Problem in India
A team of project experts was sent to India to evaluate a large construction project. The team arrived and reviewed the project documents and found the project on time and meeting all project goals. After spending three days with various contractors and team managers, the team discovered the project was significantly behind schedule and would miss an important window during the monsoon season. A culture existed on the project where workers told the project management what they expected to hear, and the difference between the progress of the project team and the progress reports became so large that the difference could not be reconciled during the original schedule of the project.
An increase in the number of cultures represented on the project team raises the cultural complexity. Increases in the number of cultures with which the project team must interface also increase the complexity of a project. Although this cultural diversity creates leadership challenges, it also presents opportunities. The diversity of cultures presents various approaches to solving problems, and the project manager may find innovative solutions easier to develop with a diverse project team.
- 1394 reads
