With the advent of the global economy comes an increased interaction between people of different countries and an increase in the need to deal with cultural differences. A project manager needs to understand his or her own culture and the cultures of the project partners along with stakeholders participating to project activities. A thorough understanding of other people from other countries and civilizations that work with us is a challenge that all project managers face daily. And this might create questions, if not issues, in management because of the varying levels of possible misinterpretation. Instead of denying or running away from this puzzle, it must be viewed as a challenge or a positive test and embraced.
How can we define cultural differences?
The key to success in international business is the sincere desire to integrate into a new and different culture. Being part of a multicultural team has a lot of advantages like accumulating diversified skills, beliefs, and experiences that help make us unique. Every organisation has a business culture unique to itself, and this is true of divisions within large corporations. The important thing to understand about culture is that, in most cases, there is nothing absolutely right or wrong about cultures – they just are. It is only in a relative sense that you can say something is wrong in another culture (Lewis, P. James, 2008).
Culture can be defined as a shared set of attributes (values, rules, habits, costumes, societal roles, etc.) of any group, by which this group organises its living together, its environment, and its solution to the questions of life and society. There are distinct features in which cultures differ from each other: the national character, perception, thinking, language, non-verbal communication, behaviours, and social grouping to mention but a few.
Dean Martin identified the following seven major elements of culture, which significantly influence the project management strategy and team development process:
- Material culture (refers to physical objects or the results of technology).
- Language (helps develop a common understanding among team or partner members).
- Aesthetics (encourages informal and open communication).
- Education (indicates how different team members view the problems).
- Religion, beliefs, and attitudes (affect general approaches toward work ethics).
- Social organisation (helps in networking and setting informal meetings).
- Political life (relates to approvals of permits, labour laws, import/export, and financial transactions).
On the EU level, differences in national culture, influence not only surface behaviour but are also essential conditions for understanding the values adopted by people, especially the ones we address in our projects, generally mentioned as final targets or beneficiaries. Each person or partner comes to a negotiation table with skills and habits that are often not aware of and that there are only subconsciously. At the same time, final beneficiaries “expect” their needs to be addressed according to their own culture, and not necessarily according to what the multicultural consortium might have in mind. At least not as a “one fits all” solution.
Just to mention an example, there are two extreme types of behaviour between Latin and Anglos, the first are followers of speech, and others are likely to listen, Latinos tend to generalise, while Anglos are very analytical, Latinos have a great spontaneity while Anglos show remarkable self-control. But this does not mean we cannot find an analytical Latin or Anglo with spontaneity. Cultures, values, beliefs, and social usages cause a special style of communication, working approach, and achievement of results, for an individual or group of individuals, let them be partners or project recipients (Zait, N., 2002).
General dimensions of cultural differences
Among the many ways in which culture might differ in people, we believe there are some more relevant than others. According to our view, four represent the most noticeable: the community of origin, organisational background, the generational difference among people, and gender issues.
Communities of origin bear cultural uniqueness
We have already mentioned that coming from different European regions might involve different ways of viewing and behaving.
As a project manager, one will find different behaviours when working with a team of people from different countries (and sometimes even from the same country), as the values and norms from the cultural dimensions are often dependent on the nationality or locality of the team members. Indeed, project members can be branded by unique belonging to cultural groups such as regions within the same country, ethnic origin, educational level, language, traditions and habits, the law system, history, and values. And all the above can then further be declined through the individual experience/knowledge of each project manager defined by personal history, work dynamics, social relationships, satisfaction or dissatisfaction in life, etc.
1. Organisations and their working cultures
It is hard to acknowledge, but institutions and working places have their own culture. Being a consultant or an employee of organisations and businesses must have put us in contact with different working approaches, inter-organisational values, acceptable or non-acceptable behaviours, working habits, office traditions, etc. These and other matters which define the internal culture of working bodies are carried into the project activities and play a role (positive or negative, accordingly) in the execution of deliverables and the creation of the working atmosphere. It is inevitable, that all working members of a project will try to replicate, as much as possible, the working culture of his/her company as well as job functions in the consortium. This is because it represents a known – and in some shape a comfortable – area of operation and procedures and because it allows continuity between two different working groups in which the staff operates. However, this might be also the reason for some clashes among project members since the different organisational cultures (affected also by the other three dimensions here described) might raise conflicts, disagreements, and different points of view.
2. Generational differences
Another dimension to take into consideration today is the examination of three generations that are in the labour market today:
- The Baby boomers, who were born between 1944 and 1960.
- The Gen. Xers, who were people born between 1961 and 1980.
- The Millennials, who were born between 1981 and 2002.
Many project managers belong to the first group, which is arguably not as diverse as the last two groups. Gen Xers are culturally diverse and were born to working women. This group perceives the world differently than the first group and usually does well in understanding issues with multiculturalism and is better able to resolve conflicts quickly.
Millennials are highly cultural and may be the most productive of all the groups. They need little or no need for diversity training because they have grown up with it. They constitute about 45% to 55% of the current workforce.
In many consortia, the age difference between staff members becomes more and more a visible matter. When we started our profession (over 25 years ago) project managers were all about the same age. The professional profile was not existing and many of us were just pioneers in the world of EU funds: young, inexperienced, and building up our knowledge and know-how. We did not have seniors in our teams, we were generally not working with much elder people. Nowadays, the profession is quite a demanded one, and more and more youngsters are pursuing this interesting career. This means that we, who in the while became seniors, are daily confronting our activities with younger people, and today consortia involve different ages and expertise. This is the richness of our work and the fortune of projects to be implemented. It comes, however, with the need for regular exchange of views and approaches, and the demand of constantly finding the good mean among the cultural background of younger and less young professionals. The former is less experienced, but faster, highly digitalised, and brilliantly minded, the latter with experience, wisdom, with holistic views over matters, but in need to listen and let go.
3. Gender issues
We believe that being male or female infers also to different cultural backgrounds. Each sex has a universe of sensitivities, attitudes, behaviours, and perspectives which are peculiar to its gender and much influenced by the above-mentioned contexts. Being male or female in different countries and national contexts (cultural contexts) stresses specific lines of values, thoughts, and manners which play a role when discussing matters or taking decisions. Especially with regards to gender matters, there is a case to assure proper representation two both “sides of the moon” to assure complementarity and all perspectives on the project implementation. Project managers need to exert the ability to value both female and male cultures keeping always in mind what the gender issue represents in partners’ traditions, starting from his/her perspective over this challenge.
Stay tuned for the second part of the article which will be published next week on Thursday.