- Clear sponsorship
- Agreed goals
- Recruitment of the right team members
- Linking performance measures to priorities
- The kick-off meeting
- Awareness of cultural influences
- The right competencies and skills
- Development of team identity
Trust and Collaboration
In conventional collocated teams, trust is developed through social interaction and information sharing over a period of time. The virtual team does not have this interactive dynamic and therefore must rely upon virtual interaction and information sharing to develop trust (Goodbody, 2005). The following factors are aimed at enhancing an environment of trust and collaboration.
- Ensure consistency
- Encourage collaboration
- Celebrate achievements
Team Communication
Given that the right team has been selected and sensitivities related to language barriers, culture, and geographic or political issues are considered, the team will focus on promoting consistent communication which meets the individual needs of the team. The following points highlight the recommendations from Goodbody (2005).
- Select appropriate technology
- Share information proactively
- Facilitate team meetings
Contemporary work in the field of project management considers not only the geographical and time differences global teams may face, but also strives to recognize the relationships, professional and personal needs of the team members.
Managing Projects Involving Team Members with Multicultural Backgrounds
Communication barriers, unwritten rules, inflexibility, and cultural bias may cause problems that can jeopardize successful teamwork in multicultural environments. Project managers have to deal with these challenges in an appropriate way to avoid and resolve conflict.
Communication problems are among the challenges multicultural project teams face, as members speak different languages. To overcome the problem, project managers need to clearly define language requirements for an effective communication. New team members who are not able to communicate fluently in the declared “team language” need to be trained before entering an international team. This requires good planning and scheduling.
Unwritten rules are work behaviors that arise without being discussed. Every multicultural team has its own set of unwritten rules about how members interact and communicate. This can be confusing to new team members of different cultures who have not the self-confidence to ask about specific roles, how best to make contributions and how to be recognized for their efforts (Tayeb, 2005, p.33). Unwritten rules such as acknowledging birthdays, sitting in certain places at meetings, or the meaning of capital letters in an email can be a source of confusion, tension and low productivity (Denver Business Journal, 2001). Most organizations provide mentoring programs where senior employees are assigned to newcomers to explain unwritten rules. Clear policies on diversity should be implemented by the project manager in order to avoid confusion and tension in the team.
Inflexibility is another difficulty that project managers face when team members from different cultural backgrounds work together. Inflexibility refers to resistance to change or an individual’s inability to respond to changes. Inflexibility is caused by a lack of education, narrow-mindedness and ego. Conflict caused by rigidity can jeopardize the success of the whole team. Excellent team players are flexible; they respect individual attitudes of team members, try to avoid escalations, and know that team goals have priority. Personal matters and private goals do not influence the work of the team. Flexibility cannot be achieved over night. Knowledge through education is one of the fundamental ways in which organizations can deal with inflexibility. Other methods include critical thinking and negotiation skills. However, flexible people are characterized by their ability to make changes immediately and react in an appropriate way. Flexibility is a key qualification that has a significant impact on the efficiency of teamwork and a multicultural workforce.
Cultural bias occurs often when people from diverse cultures work together According to Cox, (1991) cultural bias is comprised of two components: discrimination and prejudice. Webster’s Dictionary defines discrimination as the act of looking at something categorically rather than individually. In terms of prejudice, Webster’s Dictionary states that prejudice is a pre-conceived opinion that is reached before gathering sufficient knowledge. Cox (1991) recommends that teams should go through a bias-reduction training to modify negative attitudes towards people from different cultures. Encouraging team members to arrange cultural events such as art exhibits, lectures, dance performances or other types of cultural shows. These activities help all employees to increase their knowledge of other cultures and ethnic groups. Participation in such activities help to overcome prejudice attitudes (ABA Banking, 1991).
Empathy and willingness to understand individual differences are essential management skills, especially when managing global teams. Project managers need to understand and value team members. A good working atmosphere is one in which every team member is able to retain his or her own personal characteristics. Recognizing individual differences and cultures of team members is a management responsibility. Differences between team members are not just a burden and challenge, they are opportunities as well. “Diversity on a project team can be an asset.” (Miller, Fields, Kumar, & Ortiz, 2000, p. 18)
Competitive versus Cooperative Alliances
Globalization, specialization, fierce competition, and downsizing are increasingly gaining importance in today’s business world. Today’s global marketplace has been opened up to more players than ever. Highly specialized-diversified workforce along with the emerging need to be focused on the core competencies have made project management increasingly important and challenging.
In such circumstances, businesses have realized that no company has monopoly on all innovation which exists within an industry. Consequently, companies have recognized that taking action towards sharing resources, knowledge, and expertise will allow them to better focus on their core competencies in order to eventually improve the end-results. Ansoff (1965) describes the positive effects of such cooperative strategies by introducing the concept of synergy to the management world for the first time. Ansoff’s explanation of managerial synergy simply indicates that under the right circumstances business ventures can achieve; (2+2 = 5). Within the context of project management, organizations can achieve synergy through implementation of outsourcing, contracting, partnering, joint ventures, or other forms of cooperative alliances. Technological advances, globalization, and shorter product life cycles have caused the organizations to become more multi-project driven. Hence, in order to successfully manage projects in this emerging multi-project environment, project managers have to work with various people from different organizations. According to Gray and Larson (2005, p. 383), “a recent study indicates that the average large corporation is involved in around 30 alliances today versus fewer than three in the early 1990s.” Reducing the administrative costs, increasing the utilization of resources, improved communication, improved innovation and performance are among the most significant advantages that the organizations can achieve by implementing several cooperative alliances such as a partnerships (Gray & Larson, 2005).
Organizations and project managers can significantly benefit from the cooperative alliances. However, the final success of an alliance is dependent upon the internal and external factors that should be addressed during and after the implementation process. According to Goold et al (1994), in reality the benefits of economies of scale and synergy will not exist unless the overall strategy of the venture is in alignment with the individual business strategies. In addition, cultural awareness and the ability to effectively manage the cultural differences among the partner organizations, such as the degree of bureaucracy and hierarchy, the decision making speed, and different perceptions of quality, are extremely important (Thomas, 2005). Furthermore, effective communications are crucial to the success of any partnership or alliance. Neglecting the importance of interpersonal relationships and stressing solely the formal communications, will not allow the stakeholders build strong collaborative relationships. A successful alliance requires spending adequate time and resources planning, clarifying, team-building, and aligning strategies. “To be effective, there should be clarity from the outset about what will be done, who will do it, what information will be shared, the standards of work expected, and how charging regimes will work.” (Thomas, p. 8) Figure 1, lists the important factors that may be included in a joint-venture checklist:
Note. From The Business Roundtable, 1999.
Technology Enhancements and Project Management
Just as globalization is a significant influence in the proliferation of virtual teams, another large component is the influence of technology and ease of communication in the business world. Members of such a globally distributed team rely upon information and communication technology to communicate their work in projects. The increased availability and ease at which individuals can communicate also provides teams with increased flexibility and responsiveness, which enables them to form a group of select and disperse experts who can work on an urgent project (Bharadwaj & Saxena, 2006). Although teams have greater ease in which to communicate, Haenttonen and Blomquist (2005) state that technological change affects the organizational forms, processes and structures, and the components of relationship and trust and therefore organizations must be cognizant of these important characteristics when working within a virtual project team.
In order to specifically meet the needs of the virtual project team, technological tools have also been designed to increase the quality of communication for remote groups. One such technology is known as computer-mediated communication. The design of the computer-mediated communication is like much other technological advancement, which aim to provide better quality communication tools for virtual groups. Its design, described by Bharadwaj and Saxena (2006), allows team members to share relevant knowledge and coordinate team tasks in better ways. Specifically, this design allows team members the opportunity to interact in “real time” through teleconferencing, electronic meeting systems video and audio conferencing.
Additionally, this technology allows networked email, group calendar and schedule posting, bulletin boards, web pages, meeting minute databases and workflow applications.
Human Element in Technology
The trend of advancing software programs to assist remote project management teams is not only necessary for the technical requirements of a virtual team but also recognizes the predominant characteristics deemed important, in the software application, from a project’s team perspective. The secondary characteristics which project teams and contemporary literature support in software applications is the ability of the sofware to represent primary tasks of group cohesion which are to assist in creating an environment of “social presence” and “information richness” (Bharadwaj and Saxena, 2006). These requirements demanded of software developers, while successful in extending inter-personal interactions beyond traditional communications, they highlight the need and desire of global project teams to have the most face-to-face and interpersonal working experience possible.
Project Management Trends
Development of an Organizational Wide Project Management Culture
The surge in the project management profession is following the track taken by the quality movement of the 1980s. Quality control evolved into quality assurance, by inspecting the process rather than the individual parts, and eventually into today’s total quality management. Project management has concentrated on managing single projects effectively. However, with the advent of enterprise project management (EPM), the focus has changed to the more holistic management of multiple projects. EPM is the “centralized management of a portfolio of projects to ensure that the allocation of resources to projects is directed and balanced toward the strategic focus of the organization” (Gray & Larson, 2003, p. 518). Organizations are awakening to the applications of project management. In the future, companies will perceive themselves not as hierarchical, functional organizations but as fast tracking entrepreneurial ventures made up of a portfolio of projects, which are constantly changing and renewing (Gassmann & Von Sedwitz, 2003). Moreover, compensation will be tied to project performance and project auditing will become the norm (University of Phoenix, 2004). Further, companies may outsource the recruiting of personnel for projects to companies which specialize in projects personnel (University of Phoenix, 2004).
One of the important characteristics of the project management organization of the future will be the need for projects to move faster, more efficiently, and less costly. As a result, companies will embrace a project management culture. Today, project managers have replaced, in many organizations, middle managers. Company teams, at all levels, will be versed in the basics of project management and will naturally apply the concepts for both single and cross organizational projects. Project management will be part of the organizational culture. This new organizational culture will be supported by the project management office, which will be the backbone for the different projects by providing information systems and organizational wide standardization. The culture will be reinforced by institutionalized support in terms of integrated systems, trained personnel and a corporate culture which will perceive itself more as an enterprise than a traditional organization.
Globalization
The globalization movement will continue to shape businesses across the globe. The greater dispersion throughout the global marketplace makes the accuracy and timeliness of information essential. Globalization will continue to create cross cultural issues. The global perspective of management has created a need for global standardization. The Project Management Institute is currently working with companies such as Siemens to create world standards (Project Management Institute, 2005). The concept of using project groups to improve functional effectiveness is relatively new and generally accepted information sources to draw conclusions have not been established. Benchmark organizations will be used as a model for others to emulate. Benchmarking will be useful, as long as the situations being faced by the companies are similar.
Further, project management organizations around the globe will tend to network even more to mitigate the challenges of globalization. The project manager of the future will look at the needs of the project and staff it from a global pool of company project human resources. (University of Phoenix, 2004). Databases of containing information on global resources and suppliers connected by intranets will revolutionize the field of project management (University of Phoenix, 2004).
Quicker Turnaround
Projects are moving faster and deadlines are being met at different physical global locations, often simultaneously. The impact of this trend is that parallel activities are being conducted at the same time and there is a need for quicker response time. Today’s global companies are carrying projects around the clock - 24 hours a day. Thus, design can be performed in Canada, while procurement is carried in Argentina and fabrication takes place in China. These activities are analogous to the British Empire where the sun never sets. This tendency will continue to grow as globalization is entrenched.
These trends will continue to be supported by the growth of virtual projects and developments in telecommunications (Gassmann & Von Sedwitz, 2003). Enterprise wide systems will aid in the prioritization of projects and dovetailing the project to the organization’s strategy and resource availability (University of Phoenix, 2004). Technologies which help project teams collaborate will be further developed allowing workers in multiple time zones to coordinate activities (University of Phoenix, 2004).
Conclusion
The relatively young discipline of project management is entering a new dimension of global project management. The enormous changes are obvious. Global teams can work on projects faster, cheaper, with greater flexibility, and more intelligently in terms of managing resources, risks, and changes. Nevertheless, international project teams are facing considerable challenges that require special attention. Language barriers, different cultural attitudes and values, biases, different working times and styles as well as problems of building trust without personal contact are some of those challenges. Modern technology such as the internet and international alliances unquestionably support virtual teams and companies that never sleep. Nowadays technology enables teams to communicate via voice and picture effectively around the globe and makes personal contact redundant. Without question, global business will change our daily routines. How much those new trends will change our life will depend upon the people primarily and not just on the technical possibilities. Without acceptance technology is powerless.
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