MULTICULTURAL AND INTERNATIONAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT

4 September 2001

by Alexandre Rodrigues

"Multicultural" is a term being used more than ever before. Globalization and the weakening of foreign borders are increasingly bringing together professionals of different nationalities. Suddenly, the world has become aware of cultural differences. In many cases, negative preconceptions about foreign countries have fallen apart. This is good news. However, there are many unsolved problems with multicultural teams that are likely to pose serious socioeconomic and business problems in the near future. Despite the fact that we have made considerable progress in our awareness of cultural differences, when it comes to managing them in the field, I think the world is still not prepared. Cultural differences raise strong barriers at the level of individual relationships. It is easy to talk about them, but when we feel threatened, our reaction is still very basic and defensive. There is a clear need to make progress here.

The two basic patterns of multicultural projects are familiar to most of us, although the individual scenarios within them are diverse. In the first pattern, professionals from Third World economies migrate to the US and the European Union (EU) in search of better working opportunities, and they are integrated into local working teams. In some cases, as in the US, they can make up the majority of the team members, including the team leader. In other cases, they are just a minority within the local team. In the second common pattern, globalizing companies from the US and EU move into third world economies in search of new business opportunities and growth in less-saturated markets. Again, the scenarios are diverse. In some cases, only top management moves to the foreign country to run the regional office. In other cases, entire teams move to the foreign country, while in still others the team is split into "staff at home" and "staff abroad." This movement is also happening within major economic communities like the EU, and between the EU and the US.

IT projects are being caught in the wave. Globalizing companies need to extend their IT infrastructure to their regional foreign offices. On the other hand, companies from the less-developed economies are buying their IT infrastructures from companies in the more-developed countries. This often requires software development, installation, and maintenance, forcing the contractor to move across national borders and integrate with the client. As a result, many IT projects today are being implemented in multicultural environments, which challenges the validity and effectiveness of the traditional IT project management approaches that companies apply in normal (non-multicultural) projects. Companies need to learn and quickly adapt these traditional approaches, as well as the underlying working practices for these new environments.

-- Alexandre Rodrigues, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium