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Peculiarities of Managing Culturally Diverse Project Teams

Student: Kutsevol Sofiia

Supervisor: Natalya I. Guseva

Faculty: Graduate School of Business

Educational Programme: Business Administration (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 8

Year of Graduation: 2021

The overall goal of this project was to identify the key peculiarities of a multicultural project team and to elaborate specific strategies to effectively manage such a team. The subject of the research is the key features of effective management of a multicultural project team. The object of the study is the culturally diverse project teams operating in Russia. The study examined the theoretical foundations of multicultural project team management, identified the main problem areas of culturally diverse project teams, systematized data on the identified factors and created a questionnaire based on current theoretical and empirical analysis, conducted structured interviews with 8 participants of multicultural projects to study the central problems and key features of multicultural project team management, it also provides recommendations and specific strategies to improve the overall performance of such project teams. The methodology used was structured interviews (40 minutes each) with Russian and foreign representatives of multicultural project teams based in Moscow and working in various fields. The selection criteria included the role of the potential interviewee in the multicultural team, their cultural background, and gender. The model chosen as the basis for this study was developed by Nancy Adler, an American specialist in cross-cultural management. For the current study, 5 problem areas of multicultural project team management were taken: communication, leadership, motivation, decision-making, conflict resolution. These factors became the basis for further research. As a result, certain results were obtained concerning the features of effective management of multicultural project teams: • Managers working in a multicultural environment should be flexible enough to adapt to the specific situation and cultural characteristics of their team members • Communication is the most significant problem area of multicultural team management • When forming a team, the leader should study the representatives of which cultures will be involved in the project and assess what conflicts and misunderstandings are possible on the basis of cultural characteristics • Make sure that the communication is transparent. There should be open discussions between the participants, as well as between the leader and the team members • The leader must have high emotional intelligence (be able to be aware of their emotions and their influence, be able to control them).

Full text (added May 27, 2021)

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