Cultural Challenges Of Managing Global Project Teams In Brazilian Multinationals

Brief Description of the Paper Being Evaluated

Describe about  an examination of the theoretical framework developed in the Journal Article: “The Cultural Challenges of Managing Global Project Teams: a Study of Brazilian Multinationals"?

A new reality was brought in by the internationalization of Brazilian companies. There was a need of execution of global projects that help to bring a new reality. But there is a competitive situation of managing multicultural group. This is a current event with small-scales theoretical development. This study seeks to conclude the relationship between management groups of global projects and cultural characteristics in Brazilian multinationals. Six cases of Brazilian multinational companies are mentioned in this study with the aim of growing the development of the global management teams. It involves deployment, development, planning and management of human resources.

In this project, it was established that there is very low concern with the identified issues of multiculturalism and small size inter- cultural motivation for development of team member. The Brazilian multinational companies started performing successfully with global mind set. Bearing this entire situation each and every managerial process mentioned were granted with a number of activities to be tackled by the project manager in these three elements: the organization, the project itself and the global environment. It contributes toward the maximization of work. Thus it authorizes Brazilian multinational companies to control their global group in order to increase the advantage of global group like increase innovative and creativity capacity but keep away from the problems that can escort multiculturalism which differ from disagreement between people to project failure.

• National culture and intercultural competence: The effect of national culture in the management of an organization has been a continuous query of scientific studies. One of the scholars declares that there is no need of globalization in the business to lead the globalization of culture. So, there is no need of generic managerial solutions in the specific cultural contexts. Intercultural competency has been studies by a broad diversity of academic view and professional ground. One author recognized eleven different terms that are: intelligence, competency, understanding, adaptability, appreciation, expertise, terrain, cultural intelligence, astuteness, literacy and appreciation (Jackson, 2006).
  
  
• Cultural distance between countries: As per the authors, the cultural distance is the amount of factor such as the difference between legal, education, culture, language, business practices etc. that obstruct with the course of information in the market. Companies lean to do international business, primarily with the smaller markets magical distances, only to involve other market (Gerhart, 2008).
  
  
• Global projects: In general definition projects are temporary attempts to create service, product or unique results. Their features are non-permanent; it means every project has a set of beginning and end point. The uniqueness of service, product and progressive development means extend by which the increment and development can occur in every stage. Global and domestic projects are generally common in relation of temporally effort, progressiveness and uniqueness. But it only differs in the locations. The main difference is, global projects occur globally and traditional projects occur locally.
  
  
• Managing global team: Global teams have been depending on various talents within each of the team members, to achieve the organizational goals of outstretched overseas markets and to implement and execute multiple business strategies. It is also known as multinational teamwork. People come from two or more cultural and national background in this type of teamwork. In the organization the members of the working groups are geographically distributed (Cross, 2008). Thus in the organization there exists cross-cultural team.
  
  
• Cultural impact: Cultural dimensions have important suggestion for running a global team. By study the cultural differences performance, management styles and motivations of team member can be recognized (Keller, 2012).
  
  
• Intercultural competence management: There are basic aspects that need to be appraised in the choice of international talent like foregoing experience in interacting with other culture, openness to new experiences, experience in international travels and interest in international work.

Main theoretical framework of the study:

The internationalization of Brazilian companies has brought about changes so that global projects can be implemented. This brings the challenge to effectively handle multi cultural teams. The theoretical development studied the main objectives to analyze and understand the relationships between cultural features and the global projects should match the standards in context of high and low cultural distances with the level of performances of project teams. To understand the team management process a field study was conducted in which 22 countries participated which consisted of 34 global projects handled by 15 Brazilian multinationals. The outcome of the results proved an effective relationship between team performance and various aspects of culture. It was pointed out there should be more association with less level of performance and homogeneity of teams across different cultures. The teams that were performing well were close to hierarchical structure in the organization. There was a final recommendation given to the companies so that they could manage their global teams and generate better results (Akande, 2008).

Hofstede’s model was proposed to see the various aspects of cultural dimensions. He suggested four different dimensions to see the outcome of the results which are as follows: a) Power distance b) individualism vs. collectivism c) masculinity vs. femininity d) uncertainty avoidance. This model states the various differences of cultural aspects among countries and each dimension portrayed different research.

Theories or models relevant to the topic but not mentioned in the case study:

Theory and Literature

Researchers like B. Shore and B.J. Cross indicated the following dimensions in respect of outcome that are being delivered by the global teams. Here three key aspects were been highlighted: future orientation, performance orientation and human treatment. Future orientation includes the various activities of society that are to be done to plan the activities of the future. Performance orientation involves the zeal to accomplish the tasks effectively. Human treatment includes the degree to which behavior is rewarded in the society (Immi.se, 2015).

1. R. Gesteland defines culture in the following four categories:

Deal focused which are focused to tasks that are been done. Relationship focused involve a culture which is people oriented that is adherence to human relations is given. This lowers the level of misunderstanding and brings clarity of work.

Formal and informal cultures basically deal with the structure of hierarchy in the organization. Rigid time and fluid-time cultures define respect and freedom that are necessary to be given.

R.D. Lewis describe culture in two aspects: one is linear active that focuses in achieving targets and the other one is multi active where thrust is given to the people working.

The model presumes as conceptual theory that the procedures of managing global groups are affected by organizational processes of human resources management but have particular attribute that must be examined. The conversion of traditional personnel management is necessary to the favorable outcome of global project and should incorporate aspects like training, selections and others. There are impacts of cultural factor that are required to be taken into the report so that the global projects have more possibilities of favorable outcome. Relationship can be negative or positive and understanding between them is necessary to the presentation of the teams. The process of managing teams which is given below is recurrent and not linear.

In this case study the nature of the study is investigative quality. It is conducted in original global projects of Brazilian multinationals. There is a direct contact between the situation which is under study and the researcher. At that time, in Brazil there were about 70 Brazilians multinational companies in national capital. in this project six different companies populations are consider as a sample size were six cases of global projects are define. All the data collected by a personal interview session. This session were conducted for 120 minutes each. Key informants were managers of the global project, to make sure the fulfillment of the benchmark for participation with the projects, professional experience and organizational knowledge. The interviews were conducted as one to one basis by the researcher. All the interviews were register and later put it on a paper. After reading every data, it was orderly organized according to the group of analysis involved in the study model. In this model the organized categories are followed as: planning, deployment, development, management and demobilization of staff (Rodrigues & Sbragia, 2015).

Researcher’s Findings and Conclusions:

Researchers acquired some qualitative data from one to one interview session with the managers of six global projects. Researcher has to find and analysis the impact of global culture on Brazilian multinational companies. Thus, for analysis of all these data they used the reason of sample replication. Which look for verify differences and similarities between the cases and theoretical replications, which look for a constructing result with these theoretical advise. So, researchers search for an alternative representativeness rather than statistical representativeness (Taylor & Lennon, 2012).

Research Studies and Models Used by Researchers

Orderly organized analyses involved in this study model are as follows:

Planning- According to the definition of responsibility and roles, planning is an important part of a team. In global projects intercultural competency is very important success factor of a team.

Deployment- The process of recruitment and deployment of staff is very important because, a project manager could not locate necessary human resources, for this action project may be affected in budget, quality, risk customer satisfaction and team schedule.

Team development- Project team’s development is an important responsibility of the manager who should in a position to identify, maintain, build, inspire and lead a project teams to attain high performance level.

Team management- In this segment the attributes of the management are presented. In this stage it is necessary that the manager lane the performance of each and every team member and manage required changes which should not affect the result of the projects (Deeprose, 2002).

Demobilization- This means that managers never wanted to relocate themselves from their current work profiles (Mariano, Mohamed, Mohiuddin & Ghauri, 2011).

It was necessary that a set of activities is to be implemented in this research that could help in managing the global teams to make them face to face with each other. It is also necessary to follow a particular culture that is relevant to the process of project management (Tonelli, 2012).  It plays an important role in managing and taking necessary decisions at various levels that can be implemented. From different interviews conducted it was observed that all the project managers did not have the same view of solving the problems in the management structure. In this case it was said that there are various aspects of a culture in a nation that adversely affects decision making process. It is also implied that culture affects the outcome results of the projects. Therefore it is necessary to maintain high dignity and morale to avoid conflict among teams and enhance the work ability of managers (Singh, 2012).

Conclusion:

It is concluded from the above case study that project management is highly influenced by the culture that is represented in an organization. The main aim of this paper was to conduct interviews and suggest evidences and facts that can be supported as a means to connect with the organization. It is concluded that the various dimensions of Hofstede made it easy to provide a link to the hierarchical structure of the companies and guide the behavior and decision making process. This knowledge may also help project managers to explore all the complexities and diversities of the management process. This method can also be used to bridge the gap between assumptions and reality in international projects. The expenditures included in the findings of this report were several billion US dollars. But there was a need of more integration of larger companies to come up and cooperate effectively maintaining a cultural dignity. Culture is the best way by which problems can be solved effectively within a group of people. It is very much important for exchange of ideas across different cultures so that there is amicability of ideas, facts and emotions. In any large MNCs of particular country, the human resource policies are difficult to be implied if there is no ethnicity of culture maintained. Therefore it is necessary for the corporate HR team to influence strategic factors in the process of management. The role of subsidiary employee to achieve corporate objectives enhances the capability of an organization.

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