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Chapter One: Introduction
1.1 Background
Primarily driven by developments in information systems and information technology, IS/IT projects are now operating in a global context. The âglobalizationâ of IS/IT now means that project teams are increasingly diversified culturally. Such diversity, as one might imagine, serves as a major catalyst in the creation of uncertainty. In fact, the view of the growing importance of culture in the organization is re-emphasized by scholars such as Javidan et al. (2006), who, in their quest to provide an integrated relationship theory of culture encompassing not only the organization but leadership effectiveness, point out that hardly any organization will be âimmune to the effects of globalizationâ (p. 67). For this reason, there is a compelling case for a research exercise that focuses on how cultural imperatives impact perceptions of success and failure in projects. In the first place, although existing studies that infer a cultural focus in projects do exist, they have not been extensively addressed in literature; neither have the studies conducted been truly global (for example, most studies are limited cases on Africa, South America, and South Asia). In addition, we also highlight that although a number of case studies have been carried out within the area of project failure, they have either been explored at a distance by researchers who do not truly understand the cultural imperative (by being part of this cultural makeup) or by teams that do not truly represent the cultural diversity that characterizes today's global projects.
1.2 Development
The topic of failure in projects and IS/IT or IS/IT-enabled change projects is important, especially for organizations that have sought to incorporate IS/IT into their core competitive capability framework. Research not only highlights projects as a proven approach to the successful organization and implementation of operations (Hobday, 2000; Ruuska and Teigland, 2009; Shenhar and Dvir, 1996), but also that their failure has a major impact on the operational viability of organizations (Nightingale, 2000; Poon and Wagner, 2001), especially when lessons are not learnt (Engwall, 2003; Williams, 2008). Today's projects, especially those being deployed to facilitate change, are characterized by their complexity (Dvir et al., 1998; Tatikonda and Rosenthal, 2000), innovativeness (Lhuillery and Pfister, 2009), and differences in managerial practice. With the increase in the number of multinational corporations (MNCs) and the popularity of enterprise resource planning (ERP), projects with a substantial IS/IT content are likely to cross national boundaries. On the other hand, even if the firm engaged in project delivery is not an MNC, there is every chance that its suppliers, subcontractors, or partners are based outside national or cultural borders. It is also possible that a significant number of of the firm's employees and staff have origins from different national, regional, cultural, ethnic, tribal, and religious backgrounds (de Bony, 2010). Although diversity no doubt creates a project environment that is extremely intense and dynamic, it is also fraught with dangers for the project. This is because differences in national, regional, cultural, ethnic, tribal, and religious backgrounds, if not âmanaged,â have the potential to become the focus of discord and segregation within the project. This is due to the fact that these attributes form an essential element of our personalities, which ultimately shapes individual perceptions (Belout and Gauvreau, 2004; Heine and Buchtel, 2009; Markus and Shinobu, 1991; Zwikael, Shimizu and Globerson, 2005). Because of the challenges they face, project teams, although heterogenous, must work towards a homegenous project objective. For this reason, sharing and maintaining a shared vision of the project is of paramount importance.
1.3 The Study
In the middle of 2009, while employed as a Lecturer in Project Management at the University of Southampton, UK, along with nine other scholars from seven countries across the globe, Dr Udechukwu Ojiako responded to a request for research proposals from the Project Management Institute (PMI), USA, with a proposal to explore the effect of global cultural perspectives in perceptions of project success and failure. The grant for this study was awarded in January 2010.
Our study has been inspired by work on cultural imperatives in management pioneered in earlier work by scholars such as Hofstede (1980a, 1983, and 1984), Checkland and Scholes (1990), and Stull and Von Till (1995). Hofstede's work is particularly relevant as it demonstrated that management practice was primarily conditioned by cultural imperatives; in effect, she argued that patterns of behavior, beliefs, attitudes, and values can be influenced by a range of environmental factors. Checkland and Scholes, on the other hand, discuss changes brought about by IS/IT implementation that need to be both âsystemically desirableâ and âculturally feasible.â We utilized the work conducted by Stull and von Till (1995) to then measure interviewee disposition towards the first four dimensions of Hofstede.
The importance of cultural imperatives within the context of projects and project management is well recognized in existing scholarship (Checkland and Scholes, 1990; Hofstede, 1980a, 1983, 1984; Stull and Von Till, 1995). The recognition is particularly important because projects are fundamentally delivered by peopleâand culture, which is manifested in various parameters, such as language and communication, represents, in the words of Swidler (2003), âthe most poignant symbolic form of expression of the human experience.â In effect, it is highly unlikely that meaningful research that has a human dimension can be undertaken in a concise form without an element of cultural discourse. The degree of this discourse is, however, dependent on the focus of the research. In this case, a focus on perceptions is seen, based on earlier work of scholars such as Rohner (1984), Boykin et al. (2005), and Spencer-Rodgers et al. (2007), to be heavily laden with cultural imperatives. For this reason, culture has been identified as a parameter that can influence whether a project is perceived to have either succeeded or failed (see Muriithi and Crawford, 2003).
Nevertheless, existing scholarship on the cultural dimensions of project success and failure perceptions that are largely determined by cultural differences in value (see Hofstede, 1980a, 1980b) and evaluation (see Heine, Kitayama, and Lehman, 2001) have remained limited in scope. Although it appears that cultural issues have been discussed widely in empirical research (Henries and Sousa-Poza, 2005) and formal analysis (Chan and Tse, 2003), our review of project management research conducted between 1960 and 2003 shows that such studies are both infrequent and limited. Scholarship on the cultural dimensions of project success and failure perceptions also suffers from the fact that most research in this area is not representative of the global nature of project management since it tends to present a single view, which is based predominantly on Western outlooks (Baumeister, 1987). The reality, however, is that the configuration of most projects and project teams is changing, especially with increased globalization. Based on this brief review, the aim of this study will be to: (i) examine whether current project failure measures are still viable; (ii) examine how cultural context impacts on our project failure understanding; and (iii) examine, using a three-staged mixed research approach, whether different nationalities (cultures) view success/failure differently. To address these aims, we set out to answer the following specific research questions.
1. Research Question 1 (RQ1): Are current project failure measures still viable in a global context?
2. Research Question 2 (RQ2): Does cultural context impact on project failure understanding?
3. Research Question 3 (RQ3): How do different country stakeholders perceive project failure? Are there trends in national and cultural perceptions?
The study is of particular relevance because as projects increasingly take on a global dimension, provision of global perspectives to stakeholders becomes more crucial. Such perspectives will also ensure that project managers are more likely to place culture (and its social impact) at the forefront of their management endeavors (Trompenaars and Williams, 1999).
Dr. Udechukwu Ojiako (University of the Witwatersrand, RSA) served as principal investigator for a research team comprising the following scholars: 1 Dr. Vittal Anantatmula (Western Carolina University, US), Dr. Maxwell Chipulu (University of Southampton, UK), Dr. Paul Gardiner (British University, United Arab Emirates), Dr. Stuart Maguire (University of Sheffield, UK), Professor Peter Nwilo (University of Lagos, Nigeria), Dr. Caroline Mota (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil), Dr. Vachara Peansupap (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand), Professor Terry Williams (University of Hull, UK), and Dr. Shou Yongyi (Zhejiang University, China).
The book is divided into seven chapters, beginning with this chapter (serving as an overall introduction to the paper). Chapter 2 provides an outline to the research focusing for example on the reality of projects. While in chapter 3, we review relevant literature on culture, in chapter 4, we review literature on cognition and the framing of perceptions. In particular, we explore cognition from a cross-cultural perspective. Chapter 5 is the research methodology, while in chapter 6, we conduct an analysis of the data and also present our results and findings. The conclusions are presented in chapter 7.
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Chapter Two: Outline of the Research
2.1 Introduction
This chapter describes the results of the literature review that covers the three main building blocks of the study: the first building block focuses on failure in projects, the second focuses on culture, and the third focuses on imperatives and cognition. To undertaken the review of the literature, searches were conducted within major scholarly databases that included Google scholar, sciencedirect, Emerald, Wiley, the Index of PMI Periodical Publications: 1996- 2002 (supplied by the PMI), and jstor (material ranging from 1960 to 2010). In addition to searches conducted on these databases, keyword (projects, project management, project failures, critical success factors, triangulation, culture, cognition, perception) searches were conducted on various quality journals. These journals were primarily chosen from The Association of Business Schools (ABS) Academic Journal Quality Guide, both Version 3 (2009) and Version 4 (2010); in addition, the authors reviewed the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, although it was not listed by the ABS. The journals reviewed (primarily electronic holdings) include:
- Academy of Management Journal
- Academy of Management Review
- Administrative Science Quarterly
- California Management Review
- Construction Management and Economics
- IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
- International Journal of Managing Projects in Business
- International Journal of Project Management
- Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
- Journal of Management in Engineering
- MIS Quarterly
- MIT Sloan Management Review
- Organization Science
- Project Management Journal
2.2 Rationale
Over the years, the global economy has become more integrated, reflecting increasing relationships among the national economies of numerous countries (Bekaert et al., 2005). As a critical contributor to the delivery of business (and, by extension, the delivery of economic benefits), projects have as a result come under increased pressure to reconfigure their capabilities for enhanced global effectiveness and efficiency (Lewis et al., 2002; Shenhar and Dvir, 1996; Shepherd and Cardon, 2009; Srivannaboon and Milosevic, 2006; Van Der Merwe, 2002). It should therefore not be surprising that the need to emphasize such a reconfiguration was highlighted as a major exploratory theme on the 2006 re-thinking project management agenda (Winter et al., 2006). The importance of successfully deploying, implementing, and introducing projects cannot be overstated in light of numerous opportunities and business benefits that successfully completed projects deliver (Keil, 1971; Rivard et al., 2005; Somogyi and Galliers, 1987).
Organizations are not necessarily solely challenged by the impact of globalization. Due to the recent global economic crisis, many organizations are increasingly dependent on seeking customers who may emerge from outside their traditional range of interest. Given the complexities associated with customer acquisition, it is reasonable to assume that some organizations may on occasion struggle to appreciate how cultural imperatives impact the perceptions and expectations of their newly acquired customers. The lack of such knowledge may result in projects being âincorrectlyâ conceptualized (from the perspective of the client or customer). It is also possible that the overall social impact of the project may be misunderstood, leading to a misalignment of priorities between the project team and the customer. For example, the project team may fail to adequately recognize and address complexities associated with balancing the relationship between cultural and technological parameters that exist in a projectâparticularly if the supplier project organization has had no prior experience of working with globally diverse teams. It is also questionable whether project organizations will be able to develop mutually beneficial and value-oriented relationships with their customers without a clear understanding of these cultural imperatives. Although it is quite clear that projects offer exciting opportunities for the global economy, the delivery of projects may also represent threats depending on outlook and perceptions. One such threat might be ambiguity in authority definitions (Goodman, 1967) and a breakdown in communication and trust (Davidson, 2002; Diallo and Thuillier, 2005; Lievens and Moenaert, 2000). If neither of these possible outcomes is appropriately addressed or managed, this could have serious negative consequences for the project. It is perhaps important at this stage to highlight that over the years, scholars such as Kirby (1996), Metcalfe (1997), and Barki and Hartwick (2001) have emphasized a social imperative of the project, questioning cultural and by extension social imperatives that have an impact on projects (and project management). Our study sets its foundation on these imperatives. The reason for adopting this position will, however, be addressed by clearly articulating the contextual dimension of projects.
Projects are now being conceived to represent the intensely dynamic nature of today's global business environment. The dynamic nature and intensity of this environment means that most projects, especially those of an international dimension, are conceived to be implemented through teamwork (Miller et al., 2000). Teams exist in a social context, which is characterized by intense human interaction (Richards, 2007; Wilkins, 1999). The intensity of human interactions within teams brings about a highly emotional dimension to projects (Church and Waclawski, 1998; Clarke, 2010; Leban and Zulauf, 2004). The intensity of projects coupled with the diversity of project team members (and stakeholders) is further complicated by well-known characteristics of projects. Projects are known to be generally delivered by teams that are temporary in nature (Scott-Young and Samson, 2009; Turner and Muller, 2003); increasingly, these teams are becoming not only physically separated (Lee-Kelley and Sankey, 2008) but virtual (Lee-Kelley and Sankey, 2008; Yang and Tang, 2004), creating more difficulties in their management. It is also not unusual for both project team members and stakeholders to possess varying political agendas (Pinto, 2000; Rost, 2004), or, in some cases and for a number of reasons, to desire slightly different goals and objectives from the project (Bryde, 2005). These goals and objectives may be explicitly stated, but in some cases, they are implicit. The potential impact of changes brought about by projects may also be of a political nature (Pinto, 2000). It is possible that some stakeholders may perceive the project as a threat while others see the project as an opportunity, especially as projects end up transforming not only patterns of communication and organizational processes, but power structures, perceived influence, and authority (Graham, 1996). It is important to highlight that apart from culturally-oriented challenges, projects which are IS/IT-enabled may also face additional difficulties due to their primary component functionality: technology.
There are two fundamental problems with the technology component of IS/IT-enabled change projects. The first relates more to usability and questions about the appropriateness of the technology being built into the project's deliverables. Theories of the âDiffusion of Innovationâ (see Rogers, 1962) and âTechnology Adoptionâ (see Venkatesh and Bala, 2008; Venkatesh and Johnson, 2010; Venkatesh and Zhang, 2010; Venkatesh et al., 2004) highlight that the user's acceptance of technology is generally influenced by numerous contextual factors that might include, among others, the familiarity of their profiles with suppliers. The second problem with the technology component of IS/IT-enabled change projects relate more to usability and questions about the impact of change. Technology is a dynamic entity that changes constantly (Teece, 1988). This process, although rapid, can actually last for a substantial amount of time, creating a scenario in which the customer organization appears to be under constant technology-driven change. During this period, the composition of both the stakeholder and the project delivery team may have changed (or is changing) in terms of personnel, the overall business environment and project drivers.
For these reasons, stakeholders in a project need not only an appreciation of the environment within which projects are being deployed, implemented, or introduced, but also need to know what value is being derived from the project. They may need to understand the nature of required information to facilitate the success of the project, and may also need an understanding of what, how, who, and when decisions are made, how requirements are prioritized (Karlsson and Ryan, 1997) and how the project will impact the organization (both in terms of internal operations and externally). There is also a need to understand what happens when the project has been deployed, and cruciallyâwhen the project is regarded as completeâwho makes this determination, and, of course, who defines success and (or) failure and what criteria are taken into consideration before this determination is made. It is important to point out that these considerations do not in any way represent an exhaustive list. This, however, demonstrates that the study of projects must involve an understanding of complexity. There is, therefore, a compelling case for this particular research because although existing studies that infer a cultural perspective of projects have been conducted before, most (if not all) have been conducted through the lens of Western culture. In most cases, such studies (see de Camprieu et al., 2007; Muriithi and Crawford, 2003) have sought to place Western perceptions as a benchmark, and then conduct studies in other cultural contexts in order to compare findings against this perceived benchmark. In this study, by using a research team drawn from seven different countries, this research will investigate influences of cultural perspectives on IS/IT and IS/IT-enabled change projects. The focus is on the perception of failure. It is perhaps pertinent to acknowledge a âlensâ limitation of the research that specifically relates to the composition of the ten-man research team. In this case, although originally from seven different cultural backgrounds (nationals of six different countries), eight of the researchers obtained their doctorates from Western higher institutions. Either way, the output of the research will be an agend...
