Effects Of Culture Differences On Project Performance Of International Construction Joint Ventures From The Perspective Of Conflict Management

With the national strategy of "going global" and "the Belt and Road Initiatives" actively promoted,many Chinese contractors have gradually transformed themselves into international contractors and expanded their domestic businesses into international businesses.In the background of global integration,enterprises are placing more emphasis on international cooperation.Focusing on the field of international engineering,on the one hand,the way of undertaking projects in the form of international construction joint ventures has become a strategic choice for contractors seeking great development in a highly competitive market environment;on the other hand,the international engineering projects are characterized by large investment,long construction period,complex technology,numerous stakeholders and many uncertainties.In order to maximize the success of the project,the joint venture mode can exert the advantages of resource sharing,mutual complementarity and risk sharing.However,there are many cases of failures of international construction joint ventures in practice.Cultural differences have been frequently cited as a major source of risks for international joint ventures.Cultural differences may cause extensive conflicts in technology,norms and emotion among the international joint venture partners,which eventually lead to project failure.In order to undertake the projects,the contractors do not have many choices in choosing partners.Faced with the objective cultural differences which is hard to change,how to reduce the impact of cultural differences risk on the performance of project management is an important issue that managers should pay much attention to and solve urgently.This research is based on the perspective of conflict management,exploring the interactive effects of national culture differences and conflict management approaches on the performance of international construction joint ventures by empirical research methods.In the process of research and implementation.Firstly,this paper begins with a review of practical issues and references,establishes a theoretical research framework model of national cultural differences,conflict management and international construction joint ventures project management performance.Secondly,puts forward four hypotheses.Thirdly,through the pre-experiment to improve the related measurement scale in the existing research,then determine the final official questionnaire.Fourthly,using the combination ways of snowball sampling and nonprobability sampling to determine the sample in this paper,distribute questionnaires and collect raw data by online survey.Finally,using SPSS 19.0 multiple-adjustment regression analyze technique to analyze collected 143 valid questionnaires and verify the hypotheses.It was found that ICJV performance declined with a high degree of national culture differences.The negative effect of national culture differences on ICJV performance was mitigated by adopting the cooperative conflict management approach;whilst it was aggravated by adopting the competitive conflict management approach.This research focuses on the management process of joint venture project contractors,it expands the research literature on the national cultural differences and the ICJV management performance in theory through the introduction of the relatively mature conflict management methods in the field of psychology and joint ventures.From the perspective of conflict management,it is found that the negative effects of reducing cultural differences.Meanwhile,the findings have practical significance and reference value,it may provide an alternative way to address the cultural conflicts in the multicultural project management teams.It helps to optimize its own cultural risk management and reduce the possibility of ICJV project failure.