Multicultural Project Management

Globalized Work Teams Present Opportunities and Challenges

Feb 24, 2008 Daniel Workman

An effective project manager will work with culturally diverse team members to overcome all cultural, perceptual and language barriers.

In today’s global economy, multicultural project management is key to the success of many multinational corporations. This is particularly true for manufacturers that assemble components and parts from many countries around the world.

Many international trade consultants agree that the globalization of business will also accelerate in sectors such as engineering, financial, legal and medical.

Highly educated workforces from developing countries including Brazil, Russia, India and China provide a ready supply of less expensive project resources for profit-minded companies in more developed nations.

Multicultural Project Team

Forty years ago, many work teams were homogeneous groups of employees who, like a group of German bankers, shared similar backgrounds.

Today, most project teams are multicultural groups with two or more members from each culture. Each multicultural group has its own unique beliefs, norms, values and observable behaviours.

Multicultural project teams can be highly effective or ineffective.

Guidelines for Multicultural Success

An effective project manager is an essential ingredient that drives a successful multicultural group initiative. The multicultural project manager:

• Must help the team identify and stay targeted on its overall goal.
• Provide positive feedback to the group.

Multicultural project team members can be young or old, male or female and thus represent a wide range of backgrounds. The project manager must select members who:

• Have proven task-related abilities.
• Recognize and are able to adapt to cultural differences.
• Are comfortable with equal power and show a high-level of respect for other team members.

Advantages of Multicultural Diversity

In general, multicultural teams are more effective in solving project tasks that require creativity and innovation.

This is because globalized work teams:

• Generate more and better ideas.
• Are less likely to go along with status quo thinking, also known as Group Think.
• Enhance creativity which leads to better decisions as well as more effective and productive performance.

Potential Problems with Multicultural Diversity

Not all multicultural project teams are successful. One potential problem is that some team members may mistrust other colleagues who behave differently based on their national cultures.

For example, British and German speakers communicate precisely, choosing exactly the amount of words to efficiently communicate the message. These more precise communicators tend to perceive that more elaborate and detail-minded speakers from Arabic countries exaggerate, and that speakers from more succinct Asian cultures who articulate fewer words are ambiguous.

Perceptions and preconceived stereotypes can also lead to communication problems and interpersonal bias.

Not all Chinese team members want to specialize in mathematics. In fact, some Asian business analysts have very strong documentation skills.

And while North Americans use direct eye contact to show honesty and respect, some Asian cultures interpret sustained eye contact as staring and disrespectful.

The copyright of the article Multicultural Project Management in International Trade is owned by Daniel Workman. Permission to republish Multicultural Project Management in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Rainbow colour umbrella symbolizes diversity