Communication Effectiveness In Multicultural Project Teams:Antecedents And Propositions

The increasing nature of globalization in project management has highlighted the importance of multicultural project teams and new challenges bring to project execution.However,there is no prior research that quantifies explicitly the extent to communication effectiveness in multicultural project teams.This study examines the effect of communication effectiveness in multicultural project teams.The study analysis cultural,organizational and technological factors:that influence communication and examined how communication can be made effective in cultural diverse project teams.Using data from 15 semi-structured interviews,results show that communication can be made effective in multicultural project teams by properly managing the factors such as language,cultural differences,trust,organizational structure and quality of technology infrastructure.Participants further highlighted that language is the critical element in multicultural project teams so,by providing training and use of common language communication can be made effective.Similarly,cultural differences have reversed U shaped effect on communication effectiveness but properly managed cultural differences can influence communication positively.Furthermore,study investigate that building team trust in multicultural project teams will leads towards communication effectiveness.Participants further highlighted that clear reporting structure from top to bottom towards project objectives make communication effective in multicultural project teams.Moreover,study investigate that the quality of technology infrastructure impact on communication use of rich media tools make communication effective in multicultural project teams.Potential limitations of this study are relevant to the fact that,data has been collected from fifteen participants with the total of fifteen different organizations.Although these participants are highly expertise in multicultural projects but in order to make it more validate and beneficial large sample study will be required.An emphasis on communication effectiveness on multicultural projects is a limitation but as much as it is strength.As for the limitation the results of this study may not be pertinent to the other type of multicultural projects without additional research.This study provides a future opportunity to expand the research on multicultural projects around the globe in project management domain.