Discuss bout the Project Management and Culture Innovation.
A project is whole work of developing a new product or service. In order to get succeeded in a project, the project managers need to manage all the activities and the team members of the project. After the post development analysis of many projects, it has been found that the projects have exceeded that the planned time and costs that was preplanned. Behind of the success and failures of the projects, the organizational culture and project culture play a vital role. The success factors of a project are associated with the project culture, organizational culture and the culture of the team members of the project. The attitudes of the managers towards the cultural management is very important in the area of a project management. In the era of globalization, the cross cultural management has gained a high level of importance to complete international projects.
In this paper, the concepts of project culture and organizational culture have been analyzed in details at the beginning. Different types of factors associated with the project culture management in general have been discussed with the help of previous literature available in this area. The importance of project culture management in the international projects and different types of challenges faced in this area have been reviewed and analyzed in this paper.
What are the important components of project culture and what are the possible ways to minimize the challenges regarding the project culture management?
Project culture is a very important and influential factor for getting success in project implementation in organizations. It is actually a part of the overall organizational culture defined by the general attitude to the project within the business. Maximum projects do not implemented in separate environments. The project development activities should be operated in a business environment in a collaborative way. The project culture has great impacts on the strategic planning, management, implementation and all other necessary activities of the project.
According to Yazici and Hulya Julie, the project culture determines the way of interacting and supporting each other in a project development phase for achieving the corporate goal of the project. In this context, Larson et al. mentioned that commitment of the employees towards the achievement of the project goals are influenced by the overall culture of the organization and the project. This also has significant level of influence on the whole planning process of the project and the estimation of the required resources for the project. After concluding all the viewpoints of the researchers in this topic, it can be said that the overall management and evaluation of the projects by the project managers is highly affected by the project and organizational culture.
As per Henrie et al., co-operative culture is the most wanted one for supporting each other in a project development team. The interface between the project managers and the line managers should be efficient enough for getting the desired level of success in a project development. In a co-operative culture of project development, both the line managers and the project managers are responsible for establishing a good culture for the project development and to built high level of trust among the employees. Schwalbe and Kathy mentioned another important aspect of the project culture, which are the organizational tools and principles. The project management methodology must be aligned with these.
Organizational culture is one of the most responsible attributes of the working environment and the prime force for driving a business of an organization. It is associated with the method of realizing the tasks, setting the goals of business activities and guiding the people for achieving the objectives of the business of the organization. The organizational culture affects the decision making approach, thinking and feeling of the employees regarding the workplace activities. The project culture is the part of the organizational culture. Crawford and Kent mentioned that culture is rooted in the people and affects their behaviour. In the workplace of an organization, the overall organizational culture get influenced by the individual culture of the employees. The culture is formed by a set of values such as beliefs, values, norms, thinking methods, way of understanding, attitudes and tradition of the people.
In the area of project management, the organizational culture influence the way of selecting people for the managing the projects, the way of thinking and setting the objectives of the project work and the methodology chosen for completing the project. According to Mir et al., the way of getting succeeded in the organizational business activities the individual culture of the employees should be respected. However, the employees need to work within a unique organizations developed in an efficient way by managing all the factors related to the people’s individual cultures.
In most of the cases, it can be found that people with different cultural backgrounds are working in a same project. In this type of case, managing the cultural differences in the project teams is a vital job of the project managers. They are needed to clarify the cultural differences also for facilitating their understanding for enhancing the team performance of the project. Discussion of the extremes of cultures and stereotypes may be helpful for understanding these cultures. The different aspect of the cultural difference management in the project teams are described in the section given below:
Power Distance: This attribute describes the degree to which the members of the organization with less power can be accept and expect that the power has been distributed unequally within the organization. The fundamental problem faced in this context is the degree of inequality of the human, which underlies the functions of each of the particular society. The attitudes and values are mostly found at the time of contrasting “low-PDI countries” with “high-PDI countries” at the national level. This is mostly found in case of international projects.
Uncertainty Avoidance: This refers to the degree of cultural fact that the members are comfortable or uncomfortable in unknown, novel, surprising or unstructured situations regarding the project management settings. It is also associated with the degree to which the society tries to control the situations.
Individualism and Collectivism: This factor refers to the extent to which individuals are expected to look after themselves for remaining integrated into groups. Individualism refres to the tendency of looking after only about themselves and the collectivism refers to the tendency of looking after the whole group. Generally, the project management activities are group works, where great level of support from the team members is required. In order to get the desired level of success in the project development work, the collectivism is required among the team members.
These two attributes of culture are different in many aspects. According to (), convergers are mostly try to work in the manageable framework and with well-defined problems. They tend to find out one best solution for the workplace problems. In the area of problem solving they try to use the general ideas. The problems and objectives of the activities are non-specific, but convergers try to use the specific solutions. They are good at using the conventional methods for concluding one best solution for the workplace problems. The way of thinking of these people are more analytical and focused on the information gathering for identifying the well known factors of the problems and scope of applying a known set of techniques to solve those. They focus on some specific parts of the problem rather than thinking about the whole picture of the problem. They are able to manipulating the abstract solutions for the different types of problems. Basically they give the focus on the pattern of problems and try to solve the similar types of problematic situations at their workplace.
On the other hand, the divergers have the ability of working on unstructured and vague problems. They try to find to best possible solution from a set of alternative solutions. They try to understand the root of the problematic situations and develop several alternative solutions for solving one specific problem. According to Hill and Gerard, the divergers are more creative and their substantiality is also better regarding the problem solving techniques. The thinking method of these people are more synthetic and use the combination of several process of problem solving method. They used to try open ended tests for solving the difficult problems. Liu et al. also mentioned the creativity of the divergers as they are able to develop and use several ways of problem solving for one problem. The divergers are associated with continuous learning as they work regarding different types of new problems in the area of the workplace problem solving.
In the practical field of the project management, the employees need to face different steps of problems. The problems cannot be expected before the occurrence at the practical field. In this context, the project managers need to understand the convergers and divergers at the project development team. They need to assign the members according to the types of the problems for solving. Divergers are able to solve the difficult and unknown problems by applying their ability of critical thinking. If the problems are well defined and follow a similar pattern, then the convergers are able to solve the problems within short time period.
Shields et al. have distinguished between the cultural pattern at three different levels. The levels are organizational, professional and national level. In the context of globalization, the cultural aspects expand over the national boundaries. When the project management works are associated with different organizations and people with different types of nationalities, then the cultural aspects like the PDI, individualism and collectivism affect the sustainability of the projects. The concept of the convergers and divergers also has some crucial impact over the project management at the international level. As an example of this fact, have argued that American and Europeans have different types of thinking ways. The method of thinking of the Americans can be considered as the convergers and the thinking way of the Europeans as divergers. As discussed in the earlier section of the paper, both the divergers and convergers are used in the project management. However, it is quite difficult to manage the project culture in the international projects. The international project management works consist of team members with different national culture. According to Anantatmula, Vittal, and Parviz Rad, the important factors of the international project culture are: cultural awareness or knowledge of the project management professionals and empirical research on the culture of the project management professionals. Jeston, John, and Johan Nelis have said regarding the outsourcing of the IT projects. The outsourcing of the these projects is highly associated relevance of culture and underlying factors that are associated with the general project management context.
According to Baía, Amândio, and José Marques, one of the primary causes of misunderstanding in between the members of the project team is essentially the differences in cultural and social practices that exist between them. On the other hand, Carvalho et al. has commented that such misunderstandings tend to reach the peak, often affecting the progress of the project in consideration, when employees belonging to non western cultures are made to work with those who belong to the western society.
Researcher Gido, Jack, and James seconds the ideas expressed by the authors mentioned above. In his scholarly article, the author describes a situation that he experienced in China. The author speaks: “it was difficult to get participants to answer to questions in class”. Although the scenario appeared to be quite strange to those belonging to the western society, the Chinese are used to with the policy of prioritizing groups way above individuals and thus do not express their interests in such activities that might highlight an individual over the others. The author has also pointed out the strategy that can be effectively utilized in such circumstances: any project activity, instead of being assigned to an individual, should be assigned to an entire group.
On the other hand, researchers Hill and Gerard point out the fact that in the regions that lie Sub-Saharan Africa, the extended family is considered as one of the essential parts of the work culture. However, the researchers have also pointed out the fact that although the influence of this very concept is not much beneficial to organizations that conduct business in this region, yet all training facilities made available to the workers are developed while considering this factor.
Thus, it can be said that the motivation and training facilities are available to the members of multi cultural project teams require to consider the cultural traits of the team members.
This section of the essay would highlight those challenges that are experienced by managers in charge of international projects. The task of developing an unified team is the first and foremost challenge that the higher management of an international project experiences. The authors are of the opinion that the most challenging issue lies in the process of making the dispersed team work together in spite of the differences in geographical locations and time domains. Besides, making the team members support each other in troubled situations (all the while working from remote locations and not pointing fingers at each other) before difficult when the team members are practically unknown to each other.
On the other hand, researches () consider the maintenance of effective communication processes as one of the most commonly indentified issues associated with international projects. The researchers are of the opinion that maintaining efficient and fast communication processes in between the members of an international project becomes difficult due to the very fact that the members of the team besides being located in distant locations, also speak in different locations.
Language is indeed one of the strongest barrier to the process of effective communication in between the members of a dispersed project team, but it is definitely not the single one. Along with language, the differences in the cultural practices of the team members affect the communication process to a considerable extent. Researchers Kerzner, and Harold point out that the working hours of professionals operating in the non western countries are significantly longer than that of those who work in the European nations or in the US. Thus, effective communication and collaborative work procedures are indeed affected significantly due to the differences in the working culture that exist in between the said regions.
On the other hand, researchers Binder and Jean have commented that even in cases in which the above mentioned cases can be avoided, there exists one particular challenge that is near about impossible to overcome. The authors say that members of dispersed international project teams indeed experience huge differences in time domains, thus making the task of making arrangements for team meetings significantly difficult.
According to Henrie, Morgan and Andres, the primary difference that lies in between members of an international and dispersed project is that of the differences in culture existing at the various locations at which they are based. The authors have also commented that in spite of being the most important factor that leads to other differences, much effort has yet not been noticed in avoiding the same.
Conclusion:
Project culture is one of the most important factors that affect the development and management of various types of projects. As per the analysis of many researchers it can be said that the project culture is an integrated part of the overall organizational culture of the organization. The individual culture and attitudes of the members of a project development team are the important parts of the project management activities. Different factors of the project culture are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, convergence, divergence, individualism and collectivism. The project managers should manage these cultural factors properly for fulfilling the project objectives. As per the analysis of this report, it can be concluded that the project culture management in the international project is very difficult as there exist project team members from various national cultural background. It has been also found that the culture and behavior of the project team members is highly associated with the nationality. Because of these issue, same type of project management methodology cannot be applied in a different project with national difference without checking the compatibility of the culture of the nations. This is basically associated with the convergence and divergence tendency of the project team members of different nations. In this area, he project managers have the high level of responsibility regarding the selection of the members for solving the different types of workplace problems with their ability of critical thinking.
References:
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