Influence of culture and trust on international projects

Date
2002
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Abstract
Companies are increasingly depending on international projects to remain in business. The need to be faster, better, and cheaper than the competition drives the need to explore new grounds for improvement. The projects that a company decides to pursue will impact the risks it incurs. Culture is one of those risks. As a factor in the success of international projects, practitioners all too often undermine its importance. The objectives of this research were to explore the intercultural business and social dimensions that contribute to project risks, and derive a general check list that will benefit companies conducting international projects to help them in their planning and managing of such projects. The results presented in this thesis are based on current practices from a survey conducted on Canadian and Egyptian projects that spanned Oil & Gas, construction, Information technology, and development industries. The research was focused solely on the big picture of the project management field, so was not restricted to any one industry. The developed questionnaire and associated in-depth interviews addressed the five main phases of an international project's life cycle and considered the perspective of two cultures involved on the same project. The findings of this research could be divided into two distinct tracks: Cultural risks on an international project, and the influence of culture on how people appraise trust. However, the two tracks are parallel and the results demonstrated that the issue of trust is an essential ingredient that contributed to the increase or decrease of cultural risks on international projects. A checklist and trust models of the two sample cultures for this research are proposed. This research provides valuable results and recommendations for projects between Canada and Egypt and a guide for future work in those countries.
Description
Bibliography: p. 116-129
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Citation
Sennara, M. (2002). Influence of culture and trust on international projects (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/17831
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