Exploring Linkages between National Culture and Conflicting Styles of Management - Research Proposal Example

The Multicultural Project Manager: Exploring Linkages Between National Culture And Conflicting Styles Of Management Name Institution The Multicultural Project Manager: Exploring Linkages Between National Culture And Conflicting Styles Of Management Introduction Over the past years, there have been exponential increment of both immigration and global travel contributing to increased diversity in the workforce (Pride, 2017, 161). Increased internet and global mindset within the business environment means that organizations are undertaking their activities across the national boundaries. As a result, there is need for the managers with the ability of handling multi-cultural and multi-national projects and projects and acquiring the required competitive advantage for the organizations through the mixed cultural values (Minavand, 2013, 59). In most cases, international projects are usually considered large in terms of the people and budget. These projects seem to be complex, with varied time zones, differences in the legal needs, language barrier, and cultural differences (Walker & Prabhakar, 2006, 72). Besides the cultural differences, project management team needs contentment with logistic issues, language differences, legislations, and resistance associated with important changes needed within the business. The cultural difference value systems that work closely or together could increase the potential conflict and disagreement and methods used to handle conflict differ between the cultures (Kern, 2002, 44). Based on such differences, it is important that the project managers be in a position of managing conflict through various styles depending on the situation to manage effectively the diversified team. Problem Statement Business culture has gained use since its inception in the 1980s, and associated importance and effect on all manners of organizations has been able to achieve considerable significance especially as the business engage in international exploits (Akande 2002, 118). Even though internationalization of business seems to provide opportunities associated with economies of scale and growth for instance presentation of special managerial difficulties. In most cases, organizations that fail in handling the diversity and complexity resulting from host cultures and integration with the existing and intended organizational culture could be catastrophic (Dupont & Eskerod, 2016, 782; Ramos, Mota & Corrêa, 2016, 907). The potential results of cultural differences are poor employee motivation, marketing ineffectiveness, low retention of the employees, and loss of the competitive advantage. Consequently, successful management of culture could foster various innovative practices, organizational creation of knowledge, and becoming the potential source of competitive advantage (McCoy, 2003, 1005). Throughout the years, organizational culture has become increasingly important to the organizations and business disciplines especially multicultural and international project management (Rees-Caldwell & Pinnington, 2013, 215). In most cases, cultural differences often result in varying levels of conflicts and require adequate consideration. Rational of the Study There are several competitive advantages associated with effective cross-cultural project managements. It is important that multi-cultural team access the wider range of knowledge, skills, experiences, and abilities due to differences in cultural frameworks (Prabhakar and Walker, 2006, 72). Hence, it is better to equip the managers with the abilities of solving problems and making effective decisions. Various research indicate that groups that have numerous cultural views seem to have considerations of wider range of alternatives before arriving at decision. Besides, a diverse group of people could use their creativity, judgments, innovation, and intuition have the capacity of doing jobs better in the modern world with constant changes than set of formal controls administered by any remote and centralized management (Shore & Cross, 2005, 58). Cultural differences could encourage creativity and innovation in thinking through allowing the employees to think outside their cultural backgrounds. Any team that celebrate and enjoys cultural difference seem to have freedom with embers being open on the assumptions they make and greater effects of communicating clearly (Earley & Mosakowski, 2004, 145). Additionally, exposure to difference cultures has the ability of greatly enriching the experience of team members and understanding of the business environment around them. Research Objectives 1. To prove of disapprove the existing correlation between national cultural value system and style if conflict management 2. To define the current profile of the multi-cultural project manager with focus on behavioral competence needed for effective management of the projects with different cultures 3. To propose the training programmes for the development of competencies need for effective management of multi-cultural projects Literature Review The proposal will cover various areas including culture, conflict management, and project management with the focus on the multi-cultural projects. In multi-cultural project management, it is also important to consider emotional intelligence and management training. Culture Culture refers to the pattern of traits, patterns, and products considered being the expression of particular class, period, population, or community. In most cases, the most predominating attitudes and behaviors, which seem to characterize the functioning of the group and organization, are considered culture. Since 1980s, culture has been used in the business jargon while referring to the attitudes and behaviors of organizational members (Daft & Marcic, D2014, 242; House et al., 2004, 47). However, culture has been able to acquire greater awareness over the decades as businesses seem to continues interacting at the global level and the needs of understanding different cultures which is becoming a business necessity (Mohammed, White & Prabhakar, 2009, 111). Researchers view culture as a collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group from another. In addition, research identified three levels of mental programming: universal, individual, and collective (Eriksson, Lillieskold, Jonsson & Novosel, 2002, 58). Individual level of culture holds that the programming is unique to every person and to some extent partly inherited. The universal level holds that it is common to every human or inherited such as the survival instincts. Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence recognizes the set of skills and features considered important for the success within the workplace. Power distance (PDI) is the attitude of individuals towards the authority. A culture that has high power distance, the subordinates often consider their superiors powerful: autocratic and paternalistic. However, in the low power distance culture, there is need for the boss to be familiar with ways of delegating the knowledge to the team member with the subordinates having the authority of questioning the authority of the boss. On the other hand, individualism vs. collectivism (IDV) seems to describe the relationship between the individuals and other members of the team and manifest itself in a manner that individuals work for the glory of the team. In cultures with valued relationship, there is greater attention to the team bonding and building of the relationship (Danarson, & Jules Harris, 2015, 177). Emotional intelligence could also refer to understanding ones feeling and being in a position of handling such feelings without being swamped and being able to motivate oneself to getting the job done, being creative, and performing at the peak. Emotional competences are important in contributing to the excellence considered pure intellect and expertise. Multi-cultural Project Management Inter-cultural competency is important for the success of the managers and involves understanding the major cultural differences between individual’s cultures and that of the others and adapting to one’s behavior accordingly (Prabhakar, 2005, 57). In addition, multi-cultural project management also involves recognizing, respecting, and valuing the cultural differences and making them work together, and working together with the multi-cultural teams. International managers often experience two major challenges: cultural diversity and organizational complexity with research suggesting working successfully within the multi-cultural environment, there is need for managers to have high level of personal security to ensure that they are able to see themselves and their beliefs within the context (Brett, Behfar & Kern, 2006, 85). Such association links with the concept of self-awareness. It is important to note that projects often promote change, which makes it significant for the managers to be the agents of change. While defining competencies needed by the international managers, it is important to consider the warnings associated with the risk of acceptable emotional competency, which to some extent might be biased culturally. Research indicates that the multi-cultural project managers require high level of self-awareness to understand the cultural difference and contextualize their associated values (Vereen, 2004, 17; Yang, 2012, 69). Such practices require flexibility and awareness for provision of leadership needed by each of the members of the team. In addition, the managers have to respect and value the differences within the employee and being in a position of utilizing the differences for the benefit of the project (Prabhakar and Walker, 2005, 129). The framework of managing the multi-cultural projects depends on the level of multi-culturalism and complexity of the project. International project managers should not expect voluntary information of the problems by the subordinates (Thibault, Lynch, McBride., & Walsh, 2014, 251). To such end, the team building skills would play significant roles on the multi-cultural project. Leadership Styles for Multicultural Project Teams With continued increment of globalization in various business operations, there is need for greater awareness of leadership among the project teams with multi-cultural people (Savelsbergh, Havermans & Storm, 2016, 560). Considering that an effective leadership is important in ensuring the success of any international project, internationalization of various business operations has been able to create different challenges of leadership and operations. Research views project leadership as the availability of processes that take place within the organization assuming the responsibility for the needs and rights of the team members involved in the accomplishment of project goals (Chevrier, 2003, 145). Rapid changes with the structure of multicultural project teams should be in a position of putting to the test the leadership while the leaders adopt both the task and relationship oriented style of leadership. Studies among the European firms suggest several universal features for the leaders in the multicultural project teams. The multicultural project leaders need to make efforts of managing the cultural diversity, team negotiations, and social responsibility of various team members (Schein, 2012, 107). Such feature requires concentration on the people rather than the responsibility and trying to handle the extreme situations for the achievement of harmony in the multicultural environment. Any successful multicultural leader should be able to display psychological maturity, emotional energy, and cognitive complexity (Adler, 2002, 142). Psychological maturity refers to the skill that embraces open approach instead of distrustful approach while dealing with other cultures; emotional energy is important among the multicultural leaders in dealing with the stress associated with the uncertainty within the multicultural environment (Hoffer, George & Valacich, 2002, 63). On the other hand, cognitive complexity involves the ability of the leader to interact, empathize, and learn from the members of the team and their cultures. Method and Results The survey was undertaken among the 150 project managers within multinational organizations. To minimize the cost of data collection and time of distributing the survey samples, the research posted the survey tools on the internet, which were directed towards the hyperlink within the mass email. Based on such data collection method, 116 online questionnaires were completed by the respondents which reflects the response rate of 70%. To maximize the validity of the analyses, the research focused on different nationalities; however, those, which were represented by less that fifteen of the respondents, were left out of the analysis. As a result, the study focused of the features of cultural features and conflict management within project management in countries such as France, the UK, and India. Research indicate that most of the countries with high percentage of project management such as France and those with low percentage like the UK often adopt the competitive style of conflict management. The propensity of taking such approach in countries such as India is low. Another important factor to consider is the tendency of the project managers in India to adopting an Avoid style of leadership management (32.68%) and less prevalence in countries such as France and UK (18.38% and 27%). While focusing on the conflict management across the 116 respondents, it is important to note that there is no dominant style of conflict management among the project managers used as samples. The proposal used the correlation-coefficient in identifying the existing correlations between the results, and dimensions presented by Hofstede. References Akande W., (2002). The Drawbacks of Cultural Globalization. Yellow Times, Global Policy Forum Publications. Adler, N.J. (2002) International dimension of organisational behaviour. 4th Ed., Cincinatti: South Western. Brett, J., Behfar, K.& Kern, M.C. (2006) Managing Multicultural Teams. Harvard Business Review, 84, 84-91. Chevrier, S. (2003) Cross-cultural management in multinational project groups. 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