Selecting A Culturally Responsive Project Management Strategy

Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508 www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation

Selecting a culturally responsive project management strategy D.Z. Milosevic

*

Department of Engineering and Technology Management, Portland State University, 1900 SW 4th Avenue, ll55-10, Portland, OR 97207-0751, USA Received in revised form 10 April 2001; accepted 15 May 2001

1. Introduction A meeting was drawing to a close in a joint product development project somewhere in Asia. “O.K. We meet again tomorrow at five p.m., project room, my company’s headquarters,” said the local project manager, his bearing full of power and authority as is appropriate for the highest official in the project. “O.K.,” responded Alan DeLuca, a Western counterpart, his demeanor equally abounding with power and authority. Since their past meetings were in the local language, Alan, whose experience with the language included a year of intense training, four years of residence locally, and numerous trips for the previous six years, spoke in the language during the meeting. The next day after a four-hour drive Alan reached the meeting venue only to discover that his counterpart did not show up. In their next meeting, after shaking hands, the two briefly exchanged greetings in the spirit of the local culture, and went on to talk about the project affairs. Midway through the meeting, the local project manager commented, “By the way, how about meeting tomorrow at five p.m., project room, my company’s headquarters?” His counterpart’s words surprised Alan, and he hesitated to respond. In a split second, the counterpart, in fluent English, said: “You look confused, what’s the matter?” Alan’s approach to this multicultural project management (MPM) situation is essentially an application of the centuries old paradigm, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” a widely espoused approach in the West. The approach appeared to come across as a thoughtful way to demonstrate harmony, fluency in local culture, and esteem for his host. But like many others who have promoted or pursued this approach, Alan missed other meaningful opportunities.

* Tel.: +1-503-725-5465. E-mail address: [email protected] (D.Z. Milosevic).

Managerial style differences between Alan and his counterpart are apparent. Given his counterpart’s cultural background, one may wonder what the source of the differences may be. Several schools of thought — universal, economic, and cultural — have attempted to interpret differences in management styles like the ones described in the above story. Although this issue was first tackled in the 1920s, it is in the 1960s when an intense debate started. However, the decade of the 1970s witnessed a shift in the debate. More and more scholars and practitioners viewed cultural variables as having the most effect on managerial differences. Although the 1980s and the 1990s seem to have brought even a stronger dominance of the cultural school, the voices of the other schools of thought can still be heard (Child, 1982). The thrust of the universal school is that there is no difference in managerial behavior across cultures. In this view, when management functions are the same, the manager’s behavior should be the same regardless of cultural differences (Likert, 1963; Blake and Mouton, 1970). Management theory and practice, the view goes, can be applied in every culture and situation without a need for adaptation to specific cultures (Haire, et al., 1966). According to the universal school, the source of the differences in managerial approaches is in individual managers’ perception and cross-organizational differences, rather than in cultural variations. The economic school of thought views economic and industrial development as the predictor of managerial behavior. The school’s proponents do not dispute the impact of culture on managerial behavior and style, but they consider it less important than economic and industrial development (Kerr et al., 1962) The proponents also think that cross-cultural management differences will disappear as the differences in the level of industrialization among nations disappear and as managers around the world are forced to employ the same managerial practices (Neghandi and Estafen, 1969).

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Since there is a substantial degree of interaction and overlapping between sociological, psychological, and cultural factors, these factors may be viewed as one group, and cross-cultural studies related to such a group are often labeled cultural cluster. Proponents of the cultural school put a strong emphasis on the cultural influence on management style differences (Schaupp, 1978; Laurent, 1981; Adler, 1991; Triandis, 1992). They consider culture the major predictor of managerial behavior and attitudes. “The premise is,” as Shaw put it, “that intercultural difficulties may occur between managers and employees from different cultures because of their differences in how they collect, process, store, and use information about one another’s behavior” (Shaw, 1990). The reason for this, Hall believes, is that managers around the world have worked out and integrated into their subconscious literally thousands of behavior patterns that impact their managerial styles (Hall, 1960). In other words, as Hofstede put it, organizations are culture-bound (Hofstede, 1984). The view we are taking in this paper is one of the cultural school, where culture means ethnic culture, not corporate or professional culture. Although in the works of many authors ethnic culture is equated with the country or nation, we will live with such imprecision in the belief that it does not essentially impact our discussion on the subject. Most project managers recognize that managerial styles in their own culture are difficult enough to handle effectively. However, the risks posed by the different styles used by their counterparts from a different culture are even more challenging (Badawy, 1980; Tokunaga, 1982; Enshassi and Burgess, 1990; Michalak, 1992; Simkoko, 1992; Schneider, 1995; Breen, 1996). When ignored, cultural diversity causes problems that diminish the project team’s productivity (Enshassi, 1994). The bottom line is obvious: there is an extraordinary risk for misunderstanding project management styles, project failures, and productivity losses (Dadfar and Gustavsson, 1974; Konieczny and Petrick, 1994). What is less obvious though is what underlies the styles and how to correctly interpret what a project management style from a different culture means. Think of the style as a set of project management practices or actions taken by the project manager. Using tips from the usual survival strategies such as watching more attentively, listening more carefully, asking those with experience for advice, etc. will certainly help (Lane et al., 1997), but it would not make the problem of dealing with a project management practice from a different culture go away. To successfully resolve the problem, you first have to examine the very heart of it — cultural values. In the next section we will examine cultural maps, essentially a framework for cultural analysis that helps one understand the values and the choice of a culturally responsive project management strategy. To make ideas of cultural maps more accessible to

managers, we have opted to simplify their terminology, fully understanding that such an approach may distort the original meaning of the authors. Their basic idea is that there are common issues that different cultures have faced throughout time, and that the issues (often called cultural dimensions or variables) provide a way of viewing culture more objectively (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, 1961). These are: (1) relationship to the environment; (2) time orientation; (3) nature of people; (4) activity orientation; (5) space orientation; (6) power distance; (7) uncertainty avoidance; (8) focus on responsibility; (9) universalism; (10) affectivity; and (11) specificity (Fig. 1). There are certainly more of these issues, but since they are less used than the above ones we chose not to include them in the paper. Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck found that cultures can be classified according to their relationship to the environment — subjugation to nature, mastery over nature, and harmony with nature. In some Middle Eastern countries, people view life as essentially preordained. Everything happens by God’s will and, consequently, people are subjugated to nature. In contrast, Americans strive to harness nature’s forces and change them as needed (Hornblower, 1997). In between these extreme views lies the third way — one seeking harmony with nature (Lane et al., 1997). Cultures also differ in how they value time. Some cultures, like some Southern Mediterranean peoples, emphasize a focus on the past. They hold dear their traditions and seek to preserve their historic practices. Americans are present-time oriented, primarily focusing on the immediate effects of a challenge or action, which can be seen in Wall Street’s immense emphasis on the quarterly earnings of corporations. In contrast, the Japanese concentrate on a long-term performance that is so well-reflected in their development of business goals with a 20+-year time horizon (Hamel and Prahalad, 1989; Chang, 1995). Hall identified two distinct notions of time: polychronic and monochronic (Hall and Hall, 1990). People with monochronic orientation focus on and perform only one task at a time, proceeding in a sequential or linear manner. They are task-oriented, emphasize promptness, and stick to their plans. Monochronic time is viewed as being almost an economic good — time is “spent, saved, wasted, killed, lost, and time is money” (Graham, 1981). Monochronic people, accustomed to short-term relationships with other people, tend to be low context. Once involved in communication, they seek explicit and verbal background information (Hall, 1983). Examples of countries dominated by this concept include England, Switzerland, and Germany (Hall, 1983). In contrast, polychronic cultures are able to act in a parallel mode, doing several things at a time. People with a polychronic orientation tend to change plans, emphasize relationships rather than tasks, and build long-term

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Fig. 1.

relationships with business partners (Hall and Hall, 1990). They experience time as intangible. These cultures, in which people tend to build extensive information networks with those surrounding them, are highcontext. Consequently, in communication with others people do not expect much in-depth background information because it is already in them. Mediterranean, Latin American, and Arab peoples exemplify the polychronic perception of time and high-context culture. Does a culture perceive people as good, evil, or mixed? In many African cultures, people view themselves as being essentially sincere, truthful, and honorable (Robbins, 1993). In contrast, some Mediterranean cultures believe that the character of the human species is inherently evil. The third way is taken by those who see human nature as essentially good but are cautious so as not to be taken advantage of (Robbins, 1993). Americans tend to follow the third way.

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Cultural maps.

Activity orientation is how people focus on their activities. Some cultures, like American, stress doing or action. They view work and work-related activities as being crucial to their existence. What matters to other cultures, Russian, for example, is being or living for the moment. They concentrate on experiencing life and pursuing immediate fulfillment of desires. In between the being and doing positions are cultures, such as French, with a focus on controlling. They strive for a balance of feeling and thought, mind and body. Space orientation is concerned with how one is oriented toward the surrounding space, especially the sense of the ownership of space relative to others (Lane et al., 1997). Some cultures, American, for example, place a strong emphasis on keeping things private. In contrast, other cultures, like Italian, favor doing business in public. Still, others — Japanese come to mind — mix the two and take the middle ground.

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Hofstede defined power distance as the extent to which a society accepts the fact that power in institutions and organizations is distributed equally (Hofstede, 1984). Russian and French cultures are often described as ones with high power distance, where managers wield significantly more clout than subordinates. Known for its low power distance, American culture features subordinates who are on a first-name basis with their managers. Cultures high on uncertainty avoidance tend to feel threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations (Hofstede, 1984). In response, they design management systems based on rules and regulations, minimizing risks and emphasizing stability; Germany is an example. On the other end of the uncertainty avoidance spectrum are cultures thriving on uncertainty and risk taking, as is the American culture. What responsibility does one have for the welfare of others? Individualistic cultures, like American, value a person’s responsibility to take care of oneself. Malaysia and Israel are examples of the group cultures, which emphasize group harmony, unity, and loyalty (Pant et al., 1996). The British and French belong to another variation on the focus on responsibility dimension — hierarchical (Robbins, 1993). They also rely on groups, but the groups are hierarchically ranked and their position is stable over time. This is typical of aristocratic and caste cultures. Universalism/particularism deals with the degree to which a culture is universalist, willing to follow general rules and obligations as a source of moral reference, as opposed to particularist cultures in which particular circumstances are much more important than the rules (Trompenaars, 1994). While the American practice of scrutinizing the private lives of public officials is an example of the former, special treatment for the privileged in some Eastern European countries exemplifies the latter culture. How much displaying of emotion is sanctioned by the society? While in affective cultures people show their emotions, people from neutral cultures are neutral in their approach (Trompenaars, 1994). While Italians, who use a lot of body language to make their point in conversations, tend to be on the affective end, the English, with their ability to talk without facial expressions, are more on the neutral end. The degree of involvement in a relationship is the core of how we define specific vs. diffuse cultures. Members of specific cultures easily make close contacts without involving privacy in relationships (e.g. Americans), whereas in diffuse cultures people begin from a foundation of great privacy and take a long time to build a personal relationship (e.g. Russians). This short tour of cultural maps hints that project management practices may vary across cultures. There is abundant evidence for such variations (Kumar and

Bjorn-Andersen, 1990; Blair, 1992; Grinbergs and Rubenstein, 1993; Watson et al., 1993; Enshassi, 1994; Konieczny and Petrick, 1994; Smith, 1994; Tse et al., 1994; Al-Arjani, 1995; Balachandra, 1996; Keller et al., 1996; Granrose and Oskamp, 1997). Using dimensions of the maps we will explain and illustrate the variations through several examples. Fig. 2 presents the span of PM practices caused by variations of dimensions in cultural maps. Let us look at examples of scope, cost, and time management. As mentioned earlier cultures can be classified according to their relationship to nature — subjugation to nature, harmony with nature, and domination over nature. These different perspectives are certain to impact scope management practices such as goal setting and work breakdown structures (WBS) (Berlew, 1993; Schneider, 1995). In a subjugation culture, project managers tend to define both goals and WBS in an implicit, unwilling, and ambiguous way (see Fig. 3). After all, why bother — everything is preordained and they cannot do much about accomplishing them. In a domination culture, pro-

Fig. 2.

Spectrum of cultural features of project management.

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Fig. 3.

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Cultural impact on project scope and cost management practices.

ject managers are expected to define SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely) project goals (O’Connor, 1994). A harmony with nature project manager would rely on tentative goals and WBS, recognizing appropriate contingencies for environmental parameters (Schneider, 1995). The hidden workings of culture may also be demonstrated in cost management practices such as project budgeting (see Fig. 3). Project managers from a harmony culture are likely to consider budgeting as an elegant practice that prepares a project for the future but does not really count; it is only actual costs that count (Lane et al., 1997). In a subjugation culture, budgeting might be an unfruitful act going against fatalistic, predetermined outcomes. In contrast, project managers from a domination background look at budgeting as a factual, essential, and fruitful practice that empowers them to keep project costs in check. Knowledge of time orientation helps one understand time management practices such as scheduling (see Fig. 4). Present-oriented schedulers are likely to develop a precise schedule for near-future activities, while the longer-term activities will be detailed as more information becomes available — the rolling wave approach (Harrison, 1995). Preserving deadlines is crucial. Contrary to this, the importance of deadlines would be low in the past-oriented cultures where schedules are of a

Fig. 4.

‘God willing’ nature, with a summary level of detail, and based on past projects (Al-Arjani, 1995). To the futureoriented schedulers the project is a marathon race where the start, finishing line, and milestones are known but the terrain between them is unknown (Hamel and Prahalad, 1989). Schedules will be of a not-so-detailed level and deadlines will likely be treated as tentative. Given all these variations, it is apparent that multicultural project managers are in need of direction. Every project manager and team member belongs to a culture. The culture is the collective mental program of the people in an environment and encompasses a number of instructions (Hofstede, 1984) that permeate their behavior and everything that they do, including project management (PM). How do the instructions get created? We begin to learn the instructions through our upbringing, then through education and life experience, which are all unique to our cultural environment. These past experiences are categorized and encoded into schemas, cognitive frameworks composed of a network of expectations learned from experiences and stored in memory of an individual. Essentially, schemas are a built-up repertoire of tacit knowledge that provides a basis for the interpretation of information, events, and actions in a specific culture (Sims and Gioa, 1986). One of the schemas, called the script, has a distinct purpose. It guides our action on the basis of knowledge that

Cultural impact on project time management practices.

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schemas contain. More specifically, when one experiences a new situation in a muliticultural project, the script triggers a set of actions to handle the new situation (Sims and Gioa, 1986). And that set of actions will be based on one’s culture, whether the situation is compatible or not with the culture. The new situation, whether project goal setting and WBS development, or cost budgeting and scheduling, will be directed by the script — that is, a set of behavioral instructions. The script also influences other practices such as the project and team process, the methodologies they employ, and their anticipation of their team members’ or other project persons’ conduct (Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey, 1988). Consequently, project managers and members bring into their teams different PM scripts that are obscure and possibly incompatible (Milosevic, 1999). To make this point clear, look back at Fig. 2. We drew the solid line to identify dominant American PM practices. Then, we added a dashed line to indicate dominant PM practices of another culture. In essence, each line illustrates the dominant script of named cultures; note that some members of the culture may not use the dominant script. The distance between the lines indicates the differences between the scripts. Consequently, the larger the distance, the larger the differences and the greater potential for encountering problems. In a nutshell, every bit of a person’s PM script is shaped by the culture in which they live. A look at the script lines from Fig. 2 reveals that doing as Romans do demands knowledge of the Romans’ script, which may be a privilege that only few non-Romans may have. Besides, the approach wrongly assumes that Romans are culturally homogeneous (note again that not all members of a culture subscribe to the dominant script) and, as a result, “a Roman acts Roman with a non-Roman in Rome” (Weiss, 1994). The world of multicultural project and team management is much more complex than a simple do as Romans do approach presumes. The world is a whirlwind where vigorous challenges such as globalization of business operations, globalization of labor, and domestic multiculturalism reign. In the wake of business globalization, in the period from 1993–1995, US foreign direct investments increased 33%, while foreign direct investments in the US grew by 82% (Witherell, 1996). For globalization of labor, human capital moves across national borders just as cars, computers, and financial capital do (Johnston, 1997). Today, more than 100 000 technical experts from India, China, Israel, and Europe help keep Silicon Valley at the leading edge of global technology (Engardio and Burrows, 1997). Domestic firms are multicultural when their or a client’s employees come from more than one cultural background (Adler, 1991). Many US companies often have employees of Hispanic, Asian, and Anglo-Saxon descent (Morganthau, 1997). The combined outcome of all these challenges – glo-

balization of business operations, globalization of labor, and domestic multiculturalism — has created a whole new world of multicultural projects and scenarios in which an American, the leader of a worldwide team, may meet on Wednesday with a group of his German team members, and travel on Thursday to meet one-on-one with an Italian member in Italy. A week later, through a video conference, the project manager will communicate the project status to members in Singapore, Switzerland, and Florida. Another continuous improvement project manager and her team members born in China, Iran, and Russia, work and live in Portland, Oregon. Some teams need several weeks to complete the project; others have several years to do so. This variety of people and project scenarios requires a menu of thoughtful strategic approaches.

2. The menu of culturally responsive strategies Some companies deploy multicultural teams, task them with performance challenges, prepare them to navigate past their cross-cultural pitfalls, and, in return, receive outstanding performance results (Neff, 1995; Solomon, 1995; Snow et al., 1996). Unlike them, experiencing horror stories of MPM is commonplace for many project managers. Aside from debunking feelings of confusion, uneasiness, and embarrassment, the stories prompt multicultural project managers to ponder their possible behavior in similar situations. Consider what may happen to a multicultural project manager. Perry Smith, an international project manager, arrived at his counterpart’s office for their regular tour of the manufacturing plant in a remote developing country. A few minutes later, they ran into an unusual scene. A young man, offering no resistance, was repeatedly slapped by another man. “Was this the end of a fight or was the young man being abused by a bully?” Perry wondered. After getting closer, Perry recognized the two. It was the local resident engineer who beat the young man, a local project engineer. Perhaps the best word to describe Perry’s feelings regarding the scene is speechless. His confusion grew bigger as he heard the explanation for the beating given by the resident engineer. “He,” his finger pointed to the engineer, “Did not turn in the progress report and deserved to be disciplined like this.” Experience and research indicate that a primary concern in an intercultural interaction is that the interaction makes sense to those involved (Cronen and Shuter, 1983). For a PM interaction to take place, both a project manager and a counterpart have to distinguish concepts and conduct that the other side deliberately uses as part of the project process. Furthermore, parties need to decipher the conduct to the point of discerning right from wrong, agreement from conflict, and behave otherwise

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to keep the interaction alive. The knowledge to decipher the conduct and skills to sustain the interaction, however, typically is not part of a project manager’s PM competencies. The essence of multicultural project and team management, then, is to develop a culturally compatible strategy to align PM scripts of non-Romans and Romans. The strategy’s purpose would be to enable parties to perform their MPM task in harmonious combination with one another. For the harmony to evolve, a culturally compatible strategy should have a clear goal and an avenue to accomplish the goal. In terms of the approach to its development, the strategy may be either deliberate or emergent (developed as we go) (Mintzberg, 1987). Whatever the approach, when executed the strategy should make it possible to transfuse thoughts from one party to another in their search for an agreeable solution. What are alternative strategies for MPM? What could a project manager do in a typical real-world situation of having neither the knowledge nor the time to deal with MPM issues? (Throughout this paper, the terms ‘project manager’ and ‘counterpart’ are used as shorthand for ‘own-culture project manager or member’ and ‘other-culture project manager or member,’ respectively.) How does the project manager devise a responsive approach to work with a culturally different team member or a counterpart PM team? This paper suggests a situational approach including a set of nine culturally responsive strategies (Fig. 5) for Americans and other cultures dealing with MPM at home and abroad. In continuation we define boundaries for the approach, outside which the model should not be applied. The proposed model seeks to identify situational variables that permit certain strategies to be more effective

Fig. 5.

Culturally responsive project management strategies.

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in a given situation. In other words, the project manager is not expected to use the traditional paradigm of ‘onesize-fits-all’ MPM. Rather, the emphasis is on a philosophy that what is appropriate is really dependent on the specifics of the situation. While many issues are important, this situational approach focuses on three variables: 앫 the project manager’s competency in the counterpart’s PM script; 앫 the counterpart’s competency in the project manager’s PM script; 앫 the potential for explicit coordination of the two. It is different combinations of the variables that create different situations and impact the choice of the MPM strategy. For example, in a situation when both parties have high competency in each other’s PM script, and there is no mutual agreement for explicit coordination, jamming strategy may be an effective strategy to deploy. To make things simple to comprehend, the model applies a situation with two interacting persons from different cultures. Effectively, each one of them may be either a project manager or a counterpart. Competency in this context is the competency level in another culture’s PM script. The competency implies both the knowledge of the script and the ability to apply the knowledge in a PM interaction. For example, part of a script knowledge is the ability to use cultural maps to understand variations in PM practices. Having a high competency essentially means a significant prior exposure to the other culture, a solid track record in dealings with their PM, and often fluency in their language. To acquire these impressive credentials, a project manager needs an expatriate experience of significant length and depth. An important thing here is that once they have achieved a certain level of competency, the project manager and the counterpart are able to deploy strategies at their level of competency as well as those appropriate in lower levels. The very fact that the project manager and the counterpart have their own approaches to PM interactions indicates a potential for their coordination. While it can be implicit — without being spelled out — the coordination methodology can be explicit too. When explicit, the project manager and the counterpart identify and address the issues, and it is for such situations that the strategies underlined in Fig. 5 are designed. Respect for other cultures in a sense of viewing them as being created equal and accepting them as a source of differences in PM practices is a major element of the boundaries of this situational approach. Therefore, culture-free strategies, although frequently used, are outside the boundaries. While these may work in certain situations, in others they carry a high potential for failure. An example of such strategies, unicultural PM, which

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appears to have a significant following, ignores cultural differences. Its thrust is that PM practices are universally applicable around the globe. As its name tells, unicultural PM is associated with one culture, typically Western or US culture. Taking culture-free strategies for granted amid multiple cultures involved in a project does not have rational justification. For a project manager to respond to a MPM situation, we propose a model with nine culturally responsive strategies (see Fig. 5). They can be grouped by the project manager’s level of competency, a key variable in selecting strategies. Accordingly, the nine strategies are: 앫 Low competency of the Project Manager in the Counterpart’s PM script -Employ an agent -Employ a consultant -Engage a facilitator -Persuade the counterpart to follow your own script 앫 Moderate competency of the Project Manager in the Counterpart’s PM script -Adapt to the Counterpart’s PM script -Adjust mutually 앫 High Competency of the Project Manager in the Counterpart’s PM Script -Embrace the counterpart’s PM Script -Synergize -Jam with the counterpart The nine strategies are described below.

3.1. Employ agent On behalf of the project manager, an agent deals directly with the counterpart side. In some countries when a local company works on a project with a foreign company, using an agent is mandated by law. In 1989, a German company hired a local agent to help negotiate and implement the project in Thailand. Germans were offering the licensing rights and manufacturing plant for product X; Thais sought to pay for the plant in commodities. The agent, educated in Germany, provided invaluable information, put in long hours, and coached Germans toward the contract for the project with cash payments. He then continued to deliver advice throughout the successful implementation of the project. The effectiveness of the agent strategy is closely associated with the agent’s skillfulness. Highly skilled agents, as the one in the above Thai–German case, may be a big part of the cross-cultural PM equation. Drawing on his fluency in both scripts, this specific agent helped the two parties with low competency in each other’s script accomplish their conflicting goals. Germans received a cash payment contract, while Thais enjoyed a successful transfer of technology. Thais and Germans did not encounter multiple tradeoffs that may come out of engaging an agent: compromised development of the relationship and trust between the project manager and the counterpart; convoluted communication patterns; and friction between the agent and the project manager. Looking at the bright side, though, an agent who is well respected by the counterpart can perfectly lubricate the cross-cultural PM interaction.

3. Low competency in the counterpart’s PM script

3.2. Employ consultant

The project manager whose resume features low competency in a counterpart’s PM script may select from three culturally responsive strategies. There is also a fourth possibility that is contingent upon the counterpart’s competency in the project manager’s PM script. When the counterpart’s competency is low, apparently no party has competency to reliably engage in a PM situation unless a mechanism is instituted to facilitate the interaction. That mechanism may be either in the form of an agent or consultant or facilitator. Each of the three strategies is essentially an outsourcing strategy whereby a project manager hires an outside expert to enhance his or her competency level. The rationale is that an expert with a reasonable competency in both the counterpart’s and the project manager’s PM scripts is likely to help the two parties connect. The fourth option relies on persuading the counterpart to play by the project manager’s PM script. Of course, the option is most likely when the counterpart’s competency in the project manager’s script is high.

The consultant provides information and recommends courses of action to the project manager. This approach is widely used in international projects (Marsh, 1984) as well as in in-company multicultural teams when an external or internal consultant advises the team. Between 1994 and 1997, a city government in the US used a number of local Hispanic subcontractors for city projects. Almost as a rule, the contractors were late in performing their work. Baffled, the city retained a consultant who soon discovered the contractors’ casual attitude toward the project schedule. The attitude created almost constant tensions between the contractors and city project managers, almost all white males, to whom schedule management was the key piece of PM. On their part Hispanics were puzzled as to why city project managers made such a big deal of delays and penalized them. Having identified these differences in schedule orientation, the consultant trained city project managers to reconcile the differences and provided one-on-one technical assistance to Hispanic contractors for their project scheduling.

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The appeal of this strategy for the project manager lies in its autonomy: the project manager can pick and execute the consultant strategy without the counterpart’s involvement. The strategy has two distinct features. Firstly, when chosen this strategy does not offer a clear PM script, which apparently happened in the city government case. With the help of the consultant, a strategy was developed in the process of interaction with the counterpart. It worked so well that it became a blueprint for preparing new city project managers and Hispanic contractors, training the former and assisting the latter. Next, the counterpart often may not even be aware of the consultant’s engagement, which may make it more difficult for them to read the project managers’ courses of action. In the city government case, this did not occur. 3.3. Engage a facilitator Asking a facilitator to step in has become a legitimate routine in many cultures, especially in the US. It is a strategy rooted in a mutual consent of the counterpart and the project manager to task a third party with providing a relevant process for PM interaction. In a typical scenario of this type, a facilitator joins the parties from the very beginning, with an idea of learning who the parties are and then directing their interaction throughout the course of the project. In another scenario, the facilitator’s role is limited to the initial stage of the interaction when the parties’ PM scripts are harmonized. Once the point of harmony is reached, the facilitator leaves the project stage, and the parties take over the responsibility to synchronize their acts. The scenarios appear to have a higher potential for success than the one in which the facilitator is brought in to ease the problems that surfaced in the parties’ interaction. All of the scenarios may be implemented in cross-organizational as well as inhouse multicultural projects. Whatever the scenario is, the premise is that the level of the facilitator’s competence in PM scripts of the involved cultures is closely associated with the effectiveness of the interaction. A corporation in the continental USA formed a quality improvement team. The project manager and two members were from the US, while another two members were originally from Germany. When it came to developing the WBS, the American members favored constructing a tentative WBS with several work packages, which would make its implementation flexible and easy. In contrast, the Germans advocated a very detailed WBS, with many work packages, which would enable a machine-like implementation. Soon the team was in a gridlock with both groups insisting that their approach was more appropriate. At that point, the company brought in an experienced facilitator who first introduced the team to cross-cultural PM basics, helped the two parties identify the gaps between their PM scripts, and a WBS with several work packages was developed. Members were then

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given an option to further break down their work packages into activities. The team successfully continued and completed the project. Like any other strategy, the facilitator approach may have both upsides and downsides. To begin with potential upsides, the facilitator in the quality team case educated both the American project manager and the German counterparts about the other side’s PM script. He subtly designed a facilitation process that inspired both sides to put out courses of action that generated a welloiled and fruitful PM interaction. A potential downside might have included the facilitator’s decision to go with the PM script of either of the two parties. Or, the facilitator might have resorted to a third way — one that was not rooted in either party’s script, which is not an unusual practice. To reduce the potential downsides and enhance the potential upsides, both the project manager and the counterpart should strive to hire a trustful and competent facilitator that they hold in high esteem. 3.4. Persuade the counterpart to follow your own script The viability of this strategy is in the premise that the counterpart is highly competent in the project manager’s PM script. Consequently, the parties would be comfortable playing by the script’s rules. To make this theory work, one has to verbally persuade the counterpart to consent to the strategy. When an England-based consulting company and an Arab owner worked on the detailed design of the research center, they used project matrix organization. The Arabs went along with it despite their feeling that the matrix creates confusion for the lack of a single chain of command. They went along with it because the English convinced them that without the matrix the project could not be completed on time. Although the project was finished on time, the Arabs decided not to use the matrix in their research center. The merits of the persuade strategy are related to the counterpart’s interpretation of the grounds on which the project manager uses it. For example, in the English– Arab case, the Arabs might have believed that the English are culturally illiterate; assuming or audacious; culturally rigid but not argumentative. Rather, their judgment was that the English request for the matrix approach arrangement was no more than an attempt to deploy a pragmatic approach. The key in making the persuade strategy successful laid in the English managers’ skill to communicate that it was not motivated by a disrespect for the Arabs’ culture. Acquiring the skill may require an investment of time and resources, but the investment is probably smaller than the one of mastering the Arab PM script. And, after all, for the English to play by their own script, without the fear of sudden shocks, was a privilege granted by the

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Arabs. In return, the Arabs received a successful project, which also taught them that, given their cultural values, the matrix would not fit well with their future work. This does not come as a surprise, since several studies found that organizations in cultures with high power distance such as Arabic tend to have difficulties in applying the matrix approach (Pant et al., 1996). An alternative to persuading the counterpart to follow the project manager’s script is to push your script presuming that the counterpart will tacitly accept your way. Here is one example of the ‘push’ approach. In search of a solution to a product design problem, a US company put together a self-managed engineering team. Soon an American senior engineer with an enviable track record emerged as an informal leader. Without the input from other team members, he developed a fast-track project plan including deliverables, schedule, and resource estimates. After proclaiming it “our project plan,” he required that everyone follow it. While other American members did not object in a belief that the plan was good, two engineers, one Peruvian and the other French, almost rebelled. They were outraged that someone equal to them usurped the project manager role and imposed a plan that in many aspects they saw as impossible to implement. Eventually, management asked the self-styled leader to leave the team. Indeed, if based on the disrespect or ignorance for other cultures, such a ‘push’ approach may be considered a form of the dominance strategy, which happens when US companies force their culture’s style of management upon the employees and clients of another culture (Adler, 1991; Lane et al., 1997). In the case of the self-managed engineering team, the senior American engineer exhibited typical behavior of his low power distance culture — self-initiative and taking charge based on merit. To the high power distance French and Peruvian members, this behavior meant the violation of their script — only bosses behave like this, and the American engineer was not their boss but peer. The result — clash! And the team was dead. Sometimes one’s own script is pursued in a belief that PM is universal and culture-free, which might have been the case here. Note that this approach is outside the boundaries of our model.

4. Moderate competency in the counterpart’s PM script There are two strategic options in this approach, assuming that both parties’ track record displays a moderately positive experience with each other’s PM script. In the unilateral strategy, the project manager modifies his or her script to the counterpart’s. Mutual adjustment of their scripts is the gist of this bilateral strategy.

4.1. Adapt to the counterpart’s script At times multicultural project managers tend to not play out each line in their script. Rather, in dealings with other players they omit some lines and add others from the counterpart’s script. While such actions may appear as a unilateral adjustment, the adapt strategy is more than that. The substance of the adapt strategy is a set of intended actions to alter one’s own script in tune with the counterpart’s. In the early 1990s, a small US subsidiary of a French telecommunications multinational established a product development project led by a seasoned project manager, a recent transferee from France, and three Americans. Inexperienced, but willing to learn from their project manager, the American members prepared by reading books and articles about French culture, taking crosscultural and French classes, and watching French movies. Then, through deliberate effort they adjusted their routine approach to managing projects by: (1) accepting the power distance, formal communications, and hierarchical team approach that their leader exercised; (2) adhering to decision making as a right and privilege of rank; (3) following their leader’s ‘scientific’ approach to project minutiae; and (4) diligently trying to get used to the French way of working on many things at the same time. The tricky part of the adapt strategy is the decision about which elements of the script to modify or leave out or even add to the script. In the above French–US case, gaps between the two scripts are significant. Notwithstanding, American members perhaps pushed to the extreme by deciding to play by the French script. The risk is that their attempt may not have an apparent positive impact on a multicultural project interaction, either because of their inability to execute their desired course of action or because the French project manager may be unable to fathom their behavior. One good way to deal with the tricky part is to look for help in other cross-cultural management disciplines coping with similar issues, in cross-cultural marketing, for example. Researchers have identified parts of some cultures’ scripts that non-Romans must abide by, others that may but need not be respected, and still others that non-Romans are not expected to obey. Whereas an approach like this certainly cannot be transplanted with adjustments, it may provide a solid analogy to multicultural project managers’ considerations. The American members did not pursue this direction. Rather, they relied on cultural orientation through less sophisticated means — by taking classes, reading books, and watching movies. The case does not offer clues to other possible traps in the adapt strategy. That a counterpart is attempting to use the adapt strategy may usually be detected by some easily discernible elements. Less discernible, however,

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are many other alterations. A poorly executed embrace strategy (described below) may lead the counterpart to believe that the project managers are pursuing the adapt strategy. A possibility is also a scenario in which both the counterpart and the project manager are trying to play by the adapt strategy at the same time. Then, modifications that both parties make to their own scripts may choke rather than lubricate their PM work. If aware of these traps, a project manager’s odds of making a good choice of which parts of the script to adapt may be higher. 4.2. Adjust mutually Mutual adjustment of the project manager’s and the counterpart’s PM scripts may unfold as a result of a deliberate planning prelude, or it may take the form of an emergent strategy. Whichever approach prevails, the outcome is a jointly developed script, composed of PM behaviors acceptable to the interacting cultures. The adjustment strategy comes in other forms too. A special case of the mutual adjustment strategy — the compromise approach — draws on management practices that are similar between the national cultures engaged in the business dealing. In a recent joint venture, the French and Hungarian members of the management group conducted a carefully designed workshop that openly addressed crosscultural issues by examining management styles in the two cultures. Through an interactive and dynamic communication, participants successfully built a better understanding of each other’s PM script, and increased tolerance and adaptability. Patiently proceeding with a strategic planning process, the group developed a shared comprehension of major strategic issues and business terminology. As a result, a map was charted for further cooperation (Berger, 1996). What sticks out in this case is the very substance of the approach — cooperation by design, respect for each other’s culture, tactful treatment of differences, and patient progress. It is quite possible that the substance, at least partially, may be credited for the successful development of the strategy for this project. Another form of this strategy is the ‘bypass’ strategy (Weiss, 1994). When in pursuit of it, the project manager and the counterpart shun their respective scripts and resort to a third culture’s PM script in which they are moderately competent. An example of the script that often fills such role is PMBOK, Project Management Institute’s guide to the PM body of knowledge, essentially an American PM script that appears to be gaining acceptance by the international PM community. Whether PMBOK or some other script, the point here is that the parties know how much they know about the script and how much additional guidance they may need to successfully steer their intercommunication.

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As in many US graduate programs, student team projects are a class requirement at Portland State University’s Department of Engineering and Technology Management. Some of the teams face a tough challenge: all members are often non-American students and have just arrived in the US for their first term. Driven by their distinct cultural baggage and pressures of the short 10week term, the students rush to work out their own PM script and deliver results. As an outcome, tensions typically run high and nothing gets done. Aware that the continuation of the same strategy would be courting a grade disaster, the teams opt to implement an American management script, one described in “The Team Memory Jogger,” for example (The Team Memory Jogger, 1995). The compromise approach delineated in the Portland State case begets a great deal of successes, although mediocre performance has often befallen teams populated by freshmen lacking the experience and knowledge of the American script. The value of this strategy, as both the French–Hungarian and Portland State case illustrate, is that the deliberate cooperation diminishes probability of non-aligned modifications that any party may independently seek. While some cultures may favor the mutual adjustment strategy for its transparency and bilateral nature, to other cultures — because of its verbal explicitness, for example — the strategy may be unacceptable.

5. High competency in the counterpart’s PM script To embrace or to synergize, that is the question that project managers seasoned in their counterpart’s PM script face. In both options the crucial variable is the counterpart’s competency in the project manager’s script. Should the counterpart be incompetent in the script, the project manager can adopt their script — which is termed the embrace strategy. If the counterpart is highly competent in the project manager’s script, the two parties may bilaterally or independently concentrate on composing a PM script that will unite their scripts, cultures, individualities, and situations. This approach, termed the synergy strategy, and the embrace strategy may have a powerful impact on the MPM process. 5.1. Embrace the counterpart’s script Following the PM script typical of the counterpart’s culture is what this strategy is all about. In the late 1980s, a US company embarked on its first exploration geology project in Brazil. The company hired an American project manager with 20+ years of experience in exploration geology in the Brazilian rain forest. Using his strong ties in the local geology community and a masterly knowledge of the intricacies of

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the local government’s red tape, the project manager quickly took the project off the ground. He relied on his own, Brazil-friendly methods to recruit local geologists and build them into a cohesive team. During the execution, the project manager was able to motivate his crew, notorious for its casual time management, to overcome all hurdles and complete the project on time. For a great majority of multicultural leaders this strategy is not an option. For its sheer complexity, especially when there is a chasm between the cultures involved, only project managers who have acquired personal mastery in other culture’s PM script should qualify for the embrace approach. The American project manager in the above Brazil case is an embodiment of the personal mastery. His command of the counterparts’ language, culture, and PM took 20+ years of dwelling and working in Brazil to craft. With a proper execution of the embrace strategy, the benefit is that Brazilian team members could easily comprehend it. In addition, the members enjoyed the advantages of feeling at ease and being in their comfort zone. The strategy’s poor implementation, in contrast, might have led to a serious disadvantage: the members could have mistaken it for the adapt strategy. Playing by embracing the counterpart’s script is a demanding endeavor, which may not always be under the project manager’s full control. 5.2. Synergize The synergistic approach is a process in which project managers form a PM script based on but not limited to the scripts of individuals involved in a multicultural project situation (Adler, 1991). Drawing on their high level of expertise, both the project manager and the counterpart can stay within or venture outside the bounds of their native cultures to create necessary solutions. When a European company formed a team to develop a new business solution for the international markets, the team was comprised of 13 nationalities from subsidiaries around the world. Many of them were veterans of several expatriate assignments. To weld themselves into a cohesive, high-performing team, the members took on some challenges. These included recognizing that there are many ways to organize a team, helping people to let go of old ways of doing things, and appreciating that other ways of doing things may be more appropriate to the current situation. As a result, the team built an ‘international microculture,’ allowing its members to divert their attention away from their possibly conflicting cultures and focus on the task in front of them (Berger, 1996). The synergy strategy differs from the mutual adjustment strategy, which assumes alterations in both cultures’ scripts, in that it can make use of both scripts entirely or transcend them to develop a script not typical

of their cultures. It is not unusual that a third culture’s script be used. For their implementation of a large development project, a Middle Eastern and an Eastern European partner agreed to bridge their divergent cultural backgrounds by integrating their teams. The integration involved planning, focusing on key team-building issues, and tracking and correcting the integration problems. In the planning action, a result was an integration manual rooted as much in the Western PM script as in the partners’ scripts. Joint visits to local historical sites and joint offices were some of the actions concentrated on building interpersonal relationships. Team spirit was also emphasized through the development of joint progress reports and celebration of key events completion. Down the road of the integration, many problems were recognized and solved in a disciplined manner. Although bits and pieces of the partners’ scripts persisted, the strong flavor of cosmopolitanism was always visible (Milosevic, 1990). Multicultural teams in both the European and Middle Eastern case deployed the synergy strategy when their desire to capitalize on their high-level competencies was only feasible by venturing outside of their cultural homecourt. While there is an element of uncertainty in such a venture, their risk-taking attitude was rewarded in the form of effective project delivery. With potential benefits, however, the teams also encountered some challenges. As in any joint strategy, the concern here was the need for both parties’ cooperation. If any party attempted pushing the strategy unilaterally, like taking a wrong way on a two-way street, the whole thing might have been fatal. Risks like this may be outweighed by what Deming so emphatically advocated as a major management task, a predictable process, in this case, a MPM interaction (Evans and Lindsay, 1993). For both the European company team and Middl Eastern–Eastern European team, the interaction was a fathomable, harmonious, and synchronous process. 5.3. Jam with the counterpart With this strategy the project manager and the counterpart are expected to improvise, without an explicit mutual agreement, and to transform their ideas into an agreeable scenario for their work. In this sense, they are like members of a jazz band following the loose rules of a jam session. Jazzers jam when they begin with a conventional theme, improvise on it, and pass it around until a new sound is created (Kao, 1996). The counterpart’s new sound is a distinct, culture-transcending PM script. An executive five-member team was formed to manage a small but global company. Because they were allowed to choose where they wanted to live, the team spread across Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and England.

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Although each member was multilingual, they spoke in English during their weekly teleconference. Every month the team met at one of company’s divisional headquarters and spent the next day with the managers from that division. Members were encouraged to be part of every discussion, although their individual roles were very clear, so that interaction on a day-to-day basis was unnecessary. Even though the team never went through a formal team-building process, its emphasis on an agreed team mission, shared business values, and high performance goals for all members made it a true model of a well-jammed multicultural team (Snow et al., 1996). This strategy implies what is apparent in the executive team — all team members are highly competent in each other’s PM script. Such competency enabled them to fathom the counterparts’ assumptions and habits, predict their responses, and take courses of actions that appealed to them. Another condition was met for jamming to work with the executive team, in particular, understanding the individuality of counterparts. A counterpart’s fluency in several scripts clearly meant that he or she might propose any of the scripts’ practices. Knowing the individuality then meant anticipating the practices. That the counterpart was analyzed as a person with distinct traits, and not only as a representative of a culture, was the key to jamming. The jamming approach may well be used in situations where parties have successfully worked together in other multicultural projects as occurred in the executive team case, or the same approach has been repeatedly used between their two organizations. When senior executives make critical project decisions with their counterparts, jamming is often used. The strategy is an effective way to create a bond between the project manager and the counterpart, which is easier to accomplish in affective cultures that show their emotions than in neutral cultures where people are neutral in their approach (the executive team was more on a neutral end, but still successful), where relationship comes before task, and originality over routine (Trompenaars, 1994). When they first went to work on a product development project in a small high-tech company in the US, it appeared that they would forever be at odds over every aspect of managing a project. A few projects and many fights later, however, a German, an American, a Mexican, and a Macedonian looked as cohesive as any other team. As they marched through their projects, they acquired an in-depth knowledge of each other’s cultures and PM scripts. Not only did they know each other’s religious holidays and eating habits, but they also reached a point of accepting American concern for cost tracking, German obsession with precise schedule management, Macedonian dedication to team spirit, and Mexican zeal for interpersonal relationships. The road to their masterly jamming was not paved by deliberate actions. Rather, it evolved from patient learning, many

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dead ends in their interactions, and the need to be successful in their work. There are intrinsic risks in the use of the jamming strategy. As it occurred in the initial phase of the above high-tech team, some counterparts did not read the jamming as recognition of cultural points, but rather as an attempt to seek favor by flattery and fawning. Although the team never faced it, it is also possible that jamming may lead to an ‘overpersonalization’ of the relationship between the project manager and the counterpart, characterized by high emotional involvement, loss of touch with and ignorance of other team members, and reluctance to delegate. As already hinted, jamming’s basic design may not be in tune with all cultures and may not even be appropriate for the execution by teams composed of members with varying levels of competency in other people’s PM scripts. While in its early stage of development the high-tech team members’ varying levels of competency were a significant roadblock, their further learning and growth got them over the obstacle. Still, the number and intensity of cultural runins that the team experienced before maturing supported the view that this strategy tends to be shorter on specific instructions for implementation and higher in uncertainty than any other unilateral strategy. However, its plasticity may be such a great asset to multicultural project managers that many of them view it as an ideal in the development of a culturally responsive PM strategy.

6. Implications Multicultural project managers have a menu of options to choose from; they do not necessarily have to go with the flow and do as the Romans do. The menu has nine culturally responsive strategies, each of them with varying ingredients such as the competency in PM scripts, effort for coordination, and transparency to the counterpart. As a result, project managers have the freedom to choose, flexibility to act, and chance to adapt to the situation. For example, Alan DeLuca might have adopted strategies other than ‘embrace.’ His counterpart was Westeducated and at least moderately competent in Alan’s PM script. Accordingly, an adapt strategy that values meeting schedules might have been an option. In Fig. 6, we suggest several alternatives for unilateral strategies that Alan and other project managers with a domination and present-time background might have employed. The approaches are related to time, scope, and cost management with the counterpart from the subjugation and pasttime oriented culture, as was his counterpart. Given the long duration of the project that would provide enough time for a fastidious review, selection, preparation, and execution, other possibilities might have been considered. For example, they could have looked at a ‘com-

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Fig. 6.

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Recommended unilateral approaches for American project managers interacting with the subjugation and past-time oriented cultures.

bo’ strategy beginning with a proposal for the jamming option, and then, if not accepted, shifted to an adapt, and eventually chosen the embrace strategy. To summarize, this situational approach offers flexibility in different situations, and a project manager’s performance depends on their choice of strategy and the situation. Also, the approach recognizes counterparts as an important situational factor — and treats them differently depending on their competency. One point should be made clear — only the project manager who is highly competent in the counterpart’s PM script can be a good candidate for utilizing all the strategic options. Whether they already possess competency in the counterpart’s script or intend to acquire it, multicultural project managers should clearly understand its power and value. Equally significant power and value lie in the project manager’s willingness and ability to use the cultural approach and concentrate on the counterpart’s individuality and situation. Culture is not only a powerful medium for interpreting the intellectual framework and actions of counterparts, but also for comparing them and extracting their similarities and differ-

ences in how they function in a particular multicultural project setting. Focusing on the similarities and differences of various counterparts may help the project managers learn invaluable lessons and use them to improve their MPM expertise in their future work. In that context, culture is an enabler of learning. It is as instrumental in figuring out a multicultural team chemistry as it is in foreseeing the team members’ behavior. The situational approach also implies that project managers themselves can do something about their situation. They can be trained to be more competent in the counterpart’s script, and as a consequence their choice of strategy may evolve over time from one strategy to another. Based on the published empirical evidence, it seems that cross-cultural training is effective in developing important skills, in facilitating cross-cultural adjustment, and in enhancing job performance (Black and Mendenhall, 1990). For example, project managers who are to be subjected to an intense exposure to a foreign culture may need an immersion-based approach to the training. The extensive language training, sensi-

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tivity training, field experiences, and simulations are the recommended training techniques (Mendenhall et al., 1987). The menu of strategic options that have been presented in this paper is built on two pillars: the competencies of the project manager and competencies of the counterpart in each other’s PM scripts. The levels of the competencies are, therefore, a dominant factor in deciding which strategy to use. This relative simplicity of the situational approach and its clear link with real, practical, everyday MPM problems are a crucial forte of the model. The simplicity is also a major weakness of the model, for it ignores other factors — such as the positional power of the project manager and counterpart, the relationship between the two parties, disrespect for culture, circumstances, and the approach that Romans intend to pursue — that may also have an impact on the situation. The major message about the menu, however, is that a winning strategy is in tune with the reality of the world, that is the knowledge that those involved in a multicultural project situation have about their scripts. Michelangelo, Titian, Modigliani, Picasso, and Dali were all extremely successful managers of their painting projects, but each had an original and distinctive script (read style) rooted in who they were. In MPM, like in art, what distinguishes winners from losers is the ability to capitalize on who you are.

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