ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the cultural dimensions and their implications on global projects, presenting a team building exercise that will help your team members and global project managers to recognise the differences among the country cultures in a participative way. It describes some general recommendations for people working on global projects, and concludes with a real-life experience, to illustrate how you can adapt your management and communication style to working across cultures. There are many studies analysing and defining the challenges of cross-cultural management, most of them based on Geert Hofstede's and Fons Trompenaars' cultural dimensions. These two theories were built around extensive surveys of managers in different countries, working for the same multinational company or in different companies. The chapter focuses on country cultures, not corporate cultures. Project managers must understand human nature and personalities in order to select team members assign correct roles and responsibilities and perform stakeholder analysis.
