Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation
Selecting a culturally responsive project management strategy
D.Z. Milosevic
Department of Engineering and Technology Management, Portland State University, 1900 SW 4th Avenue, ll55-10, Portland, OR 97207-0751,
USA
Received in revised form 10 April 2001; accepted 15 May 2001
1. Introduction
A meeting was drawing to a close in a joint product
development project somewhere in Asia. “O.K. We meet
again tomorrow at five p.m., project room, my com-
pany’s headquarters,” said the local project manager,
his bearing full of power and authority as is appropriate
for the highest official in the project. “O.K.,” responded
Alan DeLuca, a Western counterpart, his demeanor equ-
ally abounding with power and authority. Since their
past meetings were in the local language, Alan, whose
experience with the language included a year of intense
training, four years of residence locally, and numerous
trips for the previous six years, spoke in the language
during the meeting. The next day after a four-hour drive
Alan reached the meeting venue only to discover that
his counterpart did not show up. In their next meeting,
after shaking hands, the two briefly exchanged greetings
in the spirit of the local culture, and went on to talk
about the project affairs. Midway through the meeting,
the local project manager commented, “By the way, how
about meeting tomorrow at five p.m., project room, my
company’s headquarters?” His counterpart’s words sur-
prised Alan, and he hesitated to respond. In a split
second, the counterpart, in fluent English, said: “You
look confused, what’s the matter?”
Alan’s approach to this multicultural project manage-
ment (MPM) situation is essentially an application of the
centuries old paradigm, “When in Rome, do as the Rom-
ans do,” a widely espoused approach in the West. The
approach appeared to come across as a thoughtful way
to demonstrate harmony, fluency in local culture, and
esteem for his host. But like many others who have pro-
moted or pursued this approach, Alan missed other
meaningful opportunities.
* Tel.: +1-503-725-5465.
E-mail address: dragan@etm.pdx.edu (D.Z. Milosevic).
0166-4972/02/$ - see front matter  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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*
Managerial style differences between Alan and his
counterpart are apparent. Given his counterpart’s cultural
background, one may wonder what the source of the dif-
ferences may be. Several schools of thought — univer-
sal, economic, and cultural — have attempted to inter-
pret differences in management styles like the ones
described in the above story. Although this issue was
first tackled in the 1920s, it is in the 1960s when an
intense debate started. However, the decade of the 1970s
witnessed a shift in the debate. More and more scholars
and practitioners viewed cultural variables as having the
most effect on managerial differences. Although the
1980s and the 1990s seem to have brought even a
stronger dominance of the cultural school, the voices of
the other schools of thought can still be heard (Child,
1982).
The thrust of the universal school is that there is no
difference in managerial behavior across cultures. In this
view, when management functions are the same, the
manager’s behavior should be the same regardless of
cultural differences (Likert, 1963; Blake and Mouton,
1970). Management theory and practice, the view goes,
can be applied in every culture and situation without a
need for adaptation to specific cultures (Haire, et al.,
1966). According to the universal school, the source of
the differences in managerial approaches is in individual
managers’ perception and cross-organizational differ-
ences, rather than in cultural variations.
The economic school of thought views economic and
industrial development as the predictor of managerial
behavior. The school’s proponents do not dispute the
impact of culture on managerial behavior and style, but
they consider it less important than economic and indus-
trial development (Kerr et al., 1962) The proponents also
think that cross-cultural management differences will
disappear as the differences in the level of industrializ-
ation among nations disappear and as managers around
the world are forced to employ the same managerial
practices (Neghandi and Estafen, 1969).
494 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
Since there is a substantial degree of interaction and
overlapping between sociological, psychological, and
cultural factors, these factors may be viewed as one
group, and cross-cultural studies related to such a group
are often labeled cultural cluster. Proponents of the cul-
tural school put a strong emphasis on the cultural influ-
ence on management style differences (Schaupp, 1978;
Laurent, 1981; Adler, 1991; Triandis, 1992). They con-
sider culture the major predictor of managerial behavior
and attitudes. “The premise is,” as Shaw put it, “that
intercultural difficulties may occur between managers
and employees from different cultures because of their
differences in how they collect, process, store, and use
information about one another’s behavior” (Shaw,
1990). The reason for this, Hall believes, is that man-
agers around the world have worked out and integrated
into their subconscious literally thousands of behavior
patterns that impact their managerial styles (Hall, 1960).
In other words, as Hofstede put it, organizations are cul-
ture-bound (Hofstede, 1984). The view we are taking in
this paper is one of the cultural school, where culture
means ethnic culture, not corporate or professional cul-
ture. Although in the works of many authors ethnic cul-
ture is equated with the country or nation, we will live
with such imprecision in the belief that it does not essen-
tially impact our discussion on the subject.
Most project managers recognize that managerial
styles in their own culture are difficult enough to handle
effectively. However, the risks posed by the different
styles used by their counterparts from a different culture
are even more challenging (Badawy, 1980; Tokunaga,
1982; Enshassi and Burgess, 1990; Michalak, 1992;
Simkoko, 1992; Schneider, 1995; Breen, 1996). When
ignored, cultural diversity causes problems that diminish
the project team’s productivity (Enshassi, 1994). The
bottom line is obvious: there is an extraordinary risk for
misunderstanding project management styles, project
failures, and productivity losses (Dadfar and Gustavsson,
1974; Konieczny and Petrick, 1994).
What is less obvious though is what underlies the
styles and how to correctly interpret what a project man-
agement style from a different culture means. Think of
the style as a set of project management practices or
actions taken by the project manager. Using tips from
the usual survival strategies such as watching more
attentively, listening more carefully, asking those with
experience for advice, etc. will certainly help (Lane et
al., 1997), but it would not make the problem of dealing
with a project management practice from a different cul-
ture go away. To successfully resolve the problem, you
first have to examine the very heart of it — cultural
values. In the next section we will examine cultural
maps, essentially a framework for cultural analysis that
helps one understand the values and the choice of a cul-
turally responsive project management strategy.
To make ideas of cultural maps more accessible to
managers, we have opted to simplify their terminology,
fully understanding that such an approach may distort
the original meaning of the authors. Their basic idea is
that there are common issues that different cultures have
faced throughout time, and that the issues (often called
cultural dimensions or variables) provide a way of view-
ing culture more objectively (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck,
1961). These are: (1) relationship to the environment;
(2) time orientation; (3) nature of people; (4) activity
orientation; (5) space orientation; (6) power distance; (7)
uncertainty avoidance; (8) focus on responsibility; (9)
universalism; (10) affectivity; and (11) specificity (Fig.
1). There are certainly more of these issues, but since
they are less used than the above ones we chose not to
include them in the paper.
Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck found that cultures can be
classified according to their relationship to the environ-
ment — subjugation to nature, mastery over nature, and
harmony with nature. In some Middle Eastern countries,
people view life as essentially preordained. Everything
happens by God’s will and, consequently, people are
subjugated to nature. In contrast, Americans strive to
harness nature’s forces and change them as needed
(Hornblower, 1997). In between these extreme views lies
the third way — one seeking harmony with nature (Lane
et al., 1997).
Cultures also differ in how they value time. Some cul-
tures, like some Southern Mediterranean peoples,
emphasize a focus on the past. They hold dear their tra-
ditions and seek to preserve their historic practices.
Americans are present-time oriented, primarily focusing
on the immediate effects of a challenge or action, which
can be seen in Wall Street’s immense emphasis on the
quarterly earnings of corporations. In contrast, the
Japanese concentrate on a long-term performance that is
so well-reflected in their development of business goals
with a 20+-year time horizon (Hamel and Prahalad,
1989; Chang, 1995).
Hall identified two distinct notions of time: polych-
ronic and monochronic (Hall and Hall, 1990). People
with monochronic orientation focus on and perform only
one task at a time, proceeding in a sequential or linear
manner. They are task-oriented, emphasize promptness,
and stick to their plans. Monochronic time is viewed as
being almost an economic good — time is “spent, saved,
wasted, killed, lost, and time is money” (Graham, 1981).
Monochronic people, accustomed to short-term relation-
ships with other people, tend to be low context. Once
involved in communication, they seek explicit and verbal
background information (Hall, 1983). Examples of coun-
tries dominated by this concept include England, Switz-
erland, and Germany (Hall, 1983).
In contrast, polychronic cultures are able to act in a
parallel mode, doing several things at a time. People with
a polychronic orientation tend to change plans, emphas-
ize relationships rather than tasks, and build long-term
 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
Fig. 1.
relationships with business partners (Hall and Hall,
1990). They experience time as intangible. These cul-
tures, in which people tend to build extensive infor-
mation networks with those surrounding them, are high-
context. Consequently, in communication with others
people do not expect much in-depth background infor-
mation because it is already in them. Mediterranean,
Latin American, and Arab peoples exemplify the polych-
ronic perception of time and high-context culture.
Does a culture perceive people as good, evil, or
mixed? In many African cultures, people view them-
selves as being essentially sincere, truthful, and honor-
able (Robbins, 1993). In contrast, some Mediterranean
cultures believe that the character of the human species
is inherently evil. The third way is taken by those who
see human nature as essentially good but are cautious so
as not to be taken advantage of (Robbins, 1993). Amer-
icans tend to follow the third way.
495
Cultural maps.
Activity orientation is how people focus on their
activities. Some cultures, like American, stress doing or
action. They view work and work-related activities as
being crucial to their existence. What matters to other
cultures, Russian, for example, is being or living for the
moment. They concentrate on experiencing life and pur-
suing immediate fulfillment of desires. In between the
being and doing positions are cultures, such as French,
with a focus on controlling. They strive for a balance of
feeling and thought, mind and body.
Space orientation is concerned with how one is ori-
ented toward the surrounding space, especially the sense
of the ownership of space relative to others (Lane et al.,
1997). Some cultures, American, for example, place a
strong emphasis on keeping things private. In contrast,
other cultures, like Italian, favor doing business in pub-
lic. Still, others — Japanese come to mind — mix the
two and take the middle ground.
496 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508

Hofstede defined power distance as the extent to Bjorn-Andersen, 1990; Blair, 1992; Grinbergs and Rub-
which a society accepts the fact that power in institutions enstein, 1993; Watson et al., 1993; Enshassi, 1994; Kon-
and organizations is distributed equally (Hofstede, ieczny and Petrick, 1994; Smith, 1994; Tse et al., 1994;
1984). Russian and French cultures are often described Al-Arjani, 1995; Balachandra, 1996; Keller et al., 1996;
as ones with high power distance, where managers wield Granrose and Oskamp, 1997). Using dimensions of the
significantly more clout than subordinates. Known for maps we will explain and illustrate the variations
its low power distance, American culture features subor- through several examples.
dinates who are on a first-name basis with their man- Fig. 2 presents the span of PM practices caused by
agers. variations of dimensions in cultural maps. Let us look
Cultures high on uncertainty avoidance tend to feel at examples of scope, cost, and time management. As
threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations mentioned earlier cultures can be classified according to
(Hofstede, 1984). In response, they design management their relationship to nature — subjugation to nature, har-
systems based on rules and regulations, minimizing risks mony with nature, and domination over nature. These
and emphasizing stability; Germany is an example. On different perspectives are certain to impact scope man-
the other end of the uncertainty avoidance spectrum are agement practices such as goal setting and work break-
cultures thriving on uncertainty and risk taking, as is the down structures (WBS) (Berlew, 1993; Schneider,
American culture. 1995). In a subjugation culture, project managers tend
What responsibility does one have for the welfare of to define both goals and WBS in an implicit, unwilling,
others? Individualistic cultures, like American, value a and ambiguous way (see Fig. 3). After all, why bother —
person’s responsibility to take care of oneself. Malaysia everything is preordained and they cannot do much
and Israel are examples of the group cultures, which about accomplishing them. In a domination culture, pro-
emphasize group harmony, unity, and loyalty (Pant et
al., 1996). The British and French belong to another vari-
ation on the focus on responsibility dimension — hier-
archical (Robbins, 1993). They also rely on groups, but
the groups are hierarchically ranked and their position
is stable over time. This is typical of aristocratic and
caste cultures.
Universalism/particularism deals with the degree to
which a culture is universalist, willing to follow general
rules and obligations as a source of moral reference, as
opposed to particularist cultures in which particular cir-
cumstances are much more important than the rules
(Trompenaars, 1994). While the American practice of
scrutinizing the private lives of public officials is an
example of the former, special treatment for the privi-
leged in some Eastern European countries exemplifies
the latter culture.
How much displaying of emotion is sanctioned by the
society? While in affective cultures people show their
emotions, people from neutral cultures are neutral in
their approach (Trompenaars, 1994). While Italians, who
use a lot of body language to make their point in conver-
sations, tend to be on the affective end, the English, with
their ability to talk without facial expressions, are more
on the neutral end.
The degree of involvement in a relationship is the core
of how we define specific vs. diffuse cultures. Members
of specific cultures easily make close contacts without
involving privacy in relationships (e.g. Americans),
whereas in diffuse cultures people begin from a foun-
dation of great privacy and take a long time to build a
personal relationship (e.g. Russians).
This short tour of cultural maps hints that project man-
agement practices may vary across cultures. There is
abundant evidence for such variations (Kumar and Fig. 2. Spectrum of cultural features of project management.
 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
Fig. 3. Cultural impact on project scope and cost management practices.
ject managers are expected to define SMART (Specific,
Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely) project
goals (O’Connor, 1994). A harmony with nature project
manager would rely on tentative goals and WBS, reco-
gnizing appropriate contingencies for environmental
parameters (Schneider, 1995).
The hidden workings of culture may also be demon-
strated in cost management practices such as project
budgeting (see Fig. 3). Project managers from a harmony
culture are likely to consider budgeting as an elegant
practice that prepares a project for the future but does
not really count; it is only actual costs that count (Lane
et al., 1997). In a subjugation culture, budgeting might
be an unfruitful act going against fatalistic, predeter-
mined outcomes. In contrast, project managers from a
domination background look at budgeting as a factual,
essential, and fruitful practice that empowers them to
keep project costs in check.
Knowledge of time orientation helps one understand
time management practices such as scheduling (see Fig.
4). Present-oriented schedulers are likely to develop a
precise schedule for near-future activities, while the
longer-term activities will be detailed as more infor-
mation becomes available — the rolling wave approach
(Harrison, 1995). Preserving deadlines is crucial. Con-
trary to this, the importance of deadlines would be low
in the past-oriented cultures where schedules are of a
Fig. 4. Cultural impact on project time management practices.
497
‘God willing’ nature, with a summary level of detail, and
based on past projects (Al-Arjani, 1995). To the future-
oriented schedulers the project is a marathon race where
the start, finishing line, and milestones are known but the
terrain between them is unknown (Hamel and Prahalad,
1989). Schedules will be of a not-so-detailed level and
deadlines will likely be treated as tentative.
Given all these variations, it is apparent that multicul-
tural project managers are in need of direction. Every
project manager and team member belongs to a culture.
The culture is the collective mental program of the
people in an environment and encompasses a number of
instructions (Hofstede, 1984) that permeate their
behavior and everything that they do, including project
management (PM). How do the instructions get created?
We begin to learn the instructions through our
upbringing, then through education and life experience,
which are all unique to our cultural environment. These
past experiences are categorized and encoded into
schemas, cognitive frameworks composed of a network
of expectations learned from experiences and stored in
memory of an individual. Essentially, schemas are a
built-up repertoire of tacit knowledge that provides a
basis for the interpretation of information, events, and
actions in a specific culture (Sims and Gioa, 1986). One
of the schemas, called the script, has a distinct purpose.
It guides our action on the basis of knowledge that
498 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
schemas contain. More specifically, when one experi-
ences a new situation in a muliticultural project, the
script triggers a set of actions to handle the new situation
(Sims and Gioa, 1986). And that set of actions will be
based on one’s culture, whether the situation is compat-
ible or not with the culture.
The new situation, whether project goal setting and
WBS development, or cost budgeting and scheduling,
will be directed by the script — that is, a set of
behavioral instructions. The script also influences other
practices such as the project and team process, the meth-
odologies they employ, and their anticipation of their
team members’ or other project persons’ conduct
(Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey, 1988). Consequently,
project managers and members bring into their teams
different PM scripts that are obscure and possibly incom-
patible (Milosevic, 1999). To make this point clear, look
back at Fig. 2. We drew the solid line to identify domi-
nant American PM practices. Then, we added a dashed
line to indicate dominant PM practices of another cul-
ture. In essence, each line illustrates the dominant script
of named cultures; note that some members of the cul-
ture may not use the dominant script. The distance
between the lines indicates the differences between the
scripts. Consequently, the larger the distance, the larger
the differences and the greater potential for encountering
problems. In a nutshell, every bit of a person’s PM script
is shaped by the culture in which they live.
A look at the script lines from Fig. 2 reveals that doing
as Romans do demands knowledge of the Romans’
script, which may be a privilege that only few non-Rom-
ans may have. Besides, the approach wrongly assumes
that Romans are culturally homogeneous (note again that
not all members of a culture subscribe to the dominant
script) and, as a result, “a Roman acts Roman with a
non-Roman in Rome” (Weiss, 1994).
The world of multicultural project and team manage-
ment is much more complex than a simple do as Romans
do approach presumes. The world is a whirlwind where
vigorous challenges such as globalization of business
operations, globalization of labor, and domestic multi-
culturalism reign. In the wake of business globalization,
in the period from 1993–1995, US foreign direct invest-
ments increased 33%, while foreign direct investments
in the US grew by 82% (Witherell, 1996). For globaliz-
ation of labor, human capital moves across national bor-
ders just as cars, computers, and financial capital do
(Johnston, 1997). Today, more than 100 000 technical
experts from India, China, Israel, and Europe help keep
Silicon Valley at the leading edge of global technology
(Engardio and Burrows, 1997). Domestic firms are
multicultural when their or a client’s employees come
from more than one cultural background (Adler, 1991).
Many US companies often have employees of Hispanic,
Asian, and Anglo-Saxon descent (Morganthau, 1997).
The combined outcome of all these challenges – glo-
balization of business operations, globalization of labor,
and domestic multiculturalism — has created a whole
new world of multicultural projects and scenarios in
which an American, the leader of a worldwide team, may
meet on Wednesday with a group of his German team
members, and travel on Thursday to meet one-on-one
with an Italian member in Italy. A week later, through
a video conference, the project manager will communi-
cate the project status to members in Singapore, Switzer-
land, and Florida. Another continuous improvement pro-
ject manager and her team members born in China, Iran,
and Russia, work and live in Portland, Oregon. Some
teams need several weeks to complete the project; others
have several years to do so. This variety of people and
project scenarios requires a menu of thoughtful stra-
tegic approaches.
2. The menu of culturally responsive strategies
Some companies deploy multicultural teams, task
them with performance challenges, prepare them to navi-
gate past their cross-cultural pitfalls, and, in return,
receive outstanding performance results (Neff, 1995;
Solomon, 1995; Snow et al., 1996). Unlike them, experi-
encing horror stories of MPM is commonplace for many
project managers. Aside from debunking feelings of con-
fusion, uneasiness, and embarrassment, the stories
prompt multicultural project managers to ponder their
possible behavior in similar situations. Consider what
may happen to a multicultural project manager.
Perry Smith, an international project manager,
arrived at his counterpart’s office for their regular tour
of the manufacturing plant in a remote developing coun-
try. A few minutes later, they ran into an unusual scene.
A young man, offering no resistance, was repeatedly
slapped by another man. “Was this the end of a fight or
was the young man being abused by a bully?” Perry
wondered. After getting closer, Perry recognized the
two. It was the local resident engineer who beat the
young man, a local project engineer. Perhaps the best
word to describe Perry’s feelings regarding the scene is
speechless. His confusion grew bigger as he heard the
explanation for the beating given by the resident engin-
eer. “He,” his finger pointed to the engineer, “Did not
turn in the progress report and deserved to be disci-
plined like this.”
Experience and research indicate that a primary con-
cern in an intercultural interaction is that the interaction
makes sense to those involved (Cronen and Shuter,
1983). For a PM interaction to take place, both a project
manager and a counterpart have to distinguish concepts
and conduct that the other side deliberately uses as part
of the project process. Furthermore, parties need to
decipher the conduct to the point of discerning right from
wrong, agreement from conflict, and behave otherwise
 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
to keep the interaction alive. The knowledge to decipher
the conduct and skills to sustain the interaction, however,
typically is not part of a project manager’s PM com-
petencies.
The essence of multicultural project and team man-
agement, then, is to develop a culturally compatible
strategy to align PM scripts of non-Romans and Romans.
The strategy’s purpose would be to enable parties to per-
form their MPM task in harmonious combination with
one another. For the harmony to evolve, a culturally
compatible strategy should have a clear goal and an
avenue to accomplish the goal. In terms of the approach
to its development, the strategy may be either deliberate
or emergent (developed as we go) (Mintzberg, 1987).
Whatever the approach, when executed the strategy
should make it possible to transfuse thoughts from one
party to another in their search for an agreeable solution.
What are alternative strategies for MPM? What could
a project manager do in a typical real-world situation of
having neither the knowledge nor the time to deal with
MPM issues?
(Throughout this paper, the terms ‘project manager’
and ‘counterpart’ are used as shorthand for ‘own-culture
project manager or member’ and ‘other-culture project
manager or member,’ respectively.) How does the pro-
ject manager devise a responsive approach to work with
a culturally different team member or a counterpart PM
team? This paper suggests a situational approach includ-
ing a set of nine culturally responsive strategies (Fig. 5)
for Americans and other cultures dealing with MPM at
home and abroad. In continuation we define boundaries
for the approach, outside which the model should not
be applied.
The proposed model seeks to identify situational vari-
ables that permit certain strategies to be more effective
Fig. 5. Culturally responsive project management strategies.
499
in a given situation. In other words, the project manager
is not expected to use the traditional paradigm of ‘one-
size-fits-all’ MPM. Rather, the emphasis is on a philo-
sophy that what is appropriate is really dependent on the
specifics of the situation.
While many issues are important, this situational
approach focuses on three variables:
앫 the project manager’s competency in the counterpart’s
PM script;
앫 the counterpart’s competency in the project manager’s
PM script;
앫 the potential for explicit coordination of the two.
It is different combinations of the variables that create
different situations and impact the choice of the MPM
strategy. For example, in a situation when both parties
have high competency in each other’s PM script, and
there is no mutual agreement for explicit coordination,
jamming strategy may be an effective strategy to deploy.
To make things simple to comprehend, the model applies
a situation with two interacting persons from different
cultures. Effectively, each one of them may be either a
project manager or a counterpart.
Competency in this context is the competency level
in another culture’s PM script. The competency implies
both the knowledge of the script and the ability to apply
the knowledge in a PM interaction. For example, part of
a script knowledge is the ability to use cultural maps to
understand variations in PM practices. Having a high
competency essentially means a significant prior
exposure to the other culture, a solid track record in deal-
ings with their PM, and often fluency in their language.
To acquire these impressive credentials, a project man-
ager needs an expatriate experience of significant length
and depth. An important thing here is that once they
have achieved a certain level of competency, the project
manager and the counterpart are able to deploy strategies
at their level of competency as well as those appropriate
in lower levels.
The very fact that the project manager and the
counterpart have their own approaches to PM interac-
tions indicates a potential for their coordination. While
it can be implicit — without being spelled out — the
coordination methodology can be explicit too. When
explicit, the project manager and the counterpart identify
and address the issues, and it is for such situations that
the strategies underlined in Fig. 5 are designed.
Respect for other cultures in a sense of viewing them
as being created equal and accepting them as a source
of differences in PM practices is a major element of the
boundaries of this situational approach. Therefore, cul-
ture-free strategies, although frequently used, are outside
the boundaries. While these may work in certain situ-
ations, in others they carry a high potential for failure.
An example of such strategies, unicultural PM, which
500 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
appears to have a significant following, ignores cultural
differences. Its thrust is that PM practices are universally
applicable around the globe. As its name tells, unicultu-
ral PM is associated with one culture, typically Western
or US culture. Taking culture-free strategies for granted
amid multiple cultures involved in a project does not
have rational justification.
For a project manager to respond to a MPM situation,
we propose a model with nine culturally responsive stra-
tegies (see Fig. 5). They can be grouped by the project
manager’s level of competency, a key variable in sel-
ecting strategies. Accordingly, the nine strategies are:
앫 Low competency of the Project Manager in the
Counterpart’s PM script
-Employ an agent
-Employ a consultant
-Engage a facilitator
-Persuade the counterpart to follow your own script
앫 Moderate competency of the Project Manager in the
Counterpart’s PM script
-Adapt to the Counterpart’s PM script
-Adjust mutually
앫 High Competency of the Project Manager in the
Counterpart’s PM Script
-Embrace the counterpart’s PM Script
-Synergize
-Jam with the counterpart
The nine strategies are described below.
3. Low competency in the counterpart’s PM script
The project manager whose resume features low com-
petency in a counterpart’s PM script may select from
three culturally responsive strategies. There is also a
fourth possibility that is contingent upon the counter-
part’s competency in the project manager’s PM script.
When the counterpart’s competency is low, apparently
no party has competency to reliably engage in a PM situ-
ation unless a mechanism is instituted to facilitate the
interaction. That mechanism may be either in the form
of an agent or consultant or facilitator. Each of the three
strategies is essentially an outsourcing strategy whereby
a project manager hires an outside expert to enhance his
or her competency level. The rationale is that an expert
with a reasonable competency in both the counterpart’s
and the project manager’s PM scripts is likely to help
the two parties connect.
The fourth option relies on persuading the counterpart
to play by the project manager’s PM script. Of course,
the option is most likely when the counterpart’s com-
petency in the project manager’s script is high.
3.1. Employ agent
On behalf of the project manager, an agent deals
directly with the counterpart side. In some countries
when a local company works on a project with a foreign
company, using an agent is mandated by law.
In 1989, a German company hired a local agent to
help negotiate and implement the project in Thailand.
Germans were offering the licensing rights and manu-
facturing plant for product X; Thais sought to pay for the
plant in commodities. The agent, educated in Germany,
provided invaluable information, put in long hours, and
coached Germans toward the contract for the project
with cash payments. He then continued to deliver advice
throughout the successful implementation of the project.
The effectiveness of the agent strategy is closely asso-
ciated with the agent’s skillfulness. Highly skilled
agents, as the one in the above Thai–German case, may
be a big part of the cross-cultural PM equation. Drawing
on his fluency in both scripts, this specific agent helped
the two parties with low competency in each other’s
script accomplish their conflicting goals. Germans
received a cash payment contract, while Thais enjoyed
a successful transfer of technology.
Thais and Germans did not encounter multiple trade-
offs that may come out of engaging an agent: compro-
mised development of the relationship and trust between
the project manager and the counterpart; convoluted
communication patterns; and friction between the agent
and the project manager. Looking at the bright side,
though, an agent who is well respected by the counter-
part can perfectly lubricate the cross-cultural PM interac-
tion.
3.2. Employ consultant
The consultant provides information and recommends
courses of action to the project manager. This approach
is widely used in international projects (Marsh, 1984) as
well as in in-company multicultural teams when an
external or internal consultant advises the team.
Between 1994 and 1997, a city government in the US
used a number of local Hispanic subcontractors for city
projects. Almost as a rule, the contractors were late in
performing their work. Baffled, the city retained a con-
sultant who soon discovered the contractors’ casual atti-
tude toward the project schedule. The attitude created
almost constant tensions between the contractors and
city project managers, almost all white males, to whom
schedule management was the key piece of PM. On their
part Hispanics were puzzled as to why city project man-
agers made such a big deal of delays and penalized
them. Having identified these differences in schedule
orientation, the consultant trained city project managers
to reconcile the differences and provided one-on-one
technical assistance to Hispanic contractors for their
project scheduling.
 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
The appeal of this strategy for the project manager
lies in its autonomy: the project manager can pick and
execute the consultant strategy without the counterpart’s
involvement. The strategy has two distinct features.
Firstly, when chosen this strategy does not offer a clear
PM script, which apparently happened in the city
government case. With the help of the consultant, a strat-
egy was developed in the process of interaction with the
counterpart. It worked so well that it became a blueprint
for preparing new city project managers and Hispanic
contractors, training the former and assisting the latter.
Next, the counterpart often may not even be aware of
the consultant’s engagement, which may make it more
difficult for them to read the project managers’ courses
of action. In the city government case, this did not occur.
3.3. Engage a facilitator
Asking a facilitator to step in has become a legitimate
routine in many cultures, especially in the US. It is a
strategy rooted in a mutual consent of the counterpart
and the project manager to task a third party with provid-
ing a relevant process for PM interaction. In a typical
scenario of this type, a facilitator joins the parties from
the very beginning, with an idea of learning who the
parties are and then directing their interaction throughout
the course of the project. In another scenario, the facilita-
tor’s role is limited to the initial stage of the interaction
when the parties’ PM scripts are harmonized. Once the
point of harmony is reached, the facilitator leaves the
project stage, and the parties take over the responsibility
to synchronize their acts. The scenarios appear to have
a higher potential for success than the one in which the
facilitator is brought in to ease the problems that sur-
faced in the parties’ interaction. All of the scenarios may
be implemented in cross-organizational as well as in-
house multicultural projects. Whatever the scenario is,
the premise is that the level of the facilitator’s com-
petence in PM scripts of the involved cultures is closely
associated with the effectiveness of the interaction.
A corporation in the continental USA formed a quality
improvement team. The project manager and two mem-
bers were from the US, while another two members were
originally from Germany. When it came to developing
the WBS, the American members favored constructing a
tentative WBS with several work packages, which would
make its implementation flexible and easy. In contrast,
the Germans advocated a very detailed WBS, with many
work packages, which would enable a machine-like
implementation. Soon the team was in a gridlock with
both groups insisting that their approach was more
appropriate. At that point, the company brought in an
experienced facilitator who first introduced the team to
cross-cultural PM basics, helped the two parties identify
the gaps between their PM scripts, and a WBS with sev-
eral work packages was developed. Members were then
501
given an option to further break down their work pack-
ages into activities. The team successfully continued and
completed the project.
Like any other strategy, the facilitator approach may
have both upsides and downsides. To begin with poten-
tial upsides, the facilitator in the quality team case edu-
cated both the American project manager and the Ger-
man counterparts about the other side’s PM script. He
subtly designed a facilitation process that inspired both
sides to put out courses of action that generated a well-
oiled and fruitful PM interaction. A potential downside
might have included the facilitator’s decision to go with
the PM script of either of the two parties. Or, the facilit-
ator might have resorted to a third way — one that was
not rooted in either party’s script, which is not an
unusual practice. To reduce the potential downsides and
enhance the potential upsides, both the project manager
and the counterpart should strive to hire a trustful and
competent facilitator that they hold in high esteem.
3.4. Persuade the counterpart to follow your own
script
The viability of this strategy is in the premise that the
counterpart is highly competent in the project manager’s
PM script. Consequently, the parties would be comfort-
able playing by the script’s rules. To make this theory
work, one has to verbally persuade the counterpart to
consent to the strategy.
When an England-based consulting company and an
Arab owner worked on the detailed design of the
research center, they used project matrix organization.
The Arabs went along with it despite their feeling that
the matrix creates confusion for the lack of a single
chain of command. They went along with it because the
English convinced them that without the matrix the pro-
ject could not be completed on time. Although the project
was finished on time, the Arabs decided not to use the
matrix in their research center.
The merits of the persuade strategy are related to the
counterpart’s interpretation of the grounds on which the
project manager uses it. For example, in the English–
Arab case, the Arabs might have believed that the
English are culturally illiterate; assuming or audacious;
culturally rigid but not argumentative. Rather, their judg-
ment was that the English request for the matrix
approach arrangement was no more than an attempt to
deploy a pragmatic approach.
The key in making the persuade strategy successful
laid in the English managers’ skill to communicate that it
was not motivated by a disrespect for the Arabs’ culture.
Acquiring the skill may require an investment of time
and resources, but the investment is probably smaller
than the one of mastering the Arab PM script. And, after
all, for the English to play by their own script, without
the fear of sudden shocks, was a privilege granted by the
502 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
Arabs. In return, the Arabs received a successful project,
which also taught them that, given their cultural values,
the matrix would not fit well with their future work. This
does not come as a surprise, since several studies found
that organizations in cultures with high power distance
such as Arabic tend to have difficulties in applying the
matrix approach (Pant et al., 1996).
An alternative to persuading the counterpart to follow
the project manager’s script is to push your script pre-
suming that the counterpart will tacitly accept your way.
Here is one example of the ‘push’ approach.
In search of a solution to a product design problem,
a US company put together a self-managed engineering
team. Soon an American senior engineer with an envi-
able track record emerged as an informal leader. With-
out the input from other team members, he developed a
fast-track project plan including deliverables, schedule,
and resource estimates. After proclaiming it “our project
plan,” he required that everyone follow it. While other
American members did not object in a belief that the
plan was good, two engineers, one Peruvian and the
other French, almost rebelled. They were outraged that
someone equal to them usurped the project manager role
and imposed a plan that in many aspects they saw as
impossible to implement. Eventually, management asked
the self-styled leader to leave the team.
Indeed, if based on the disrespect or ignorance for
other cultures, such a ‘push’ approach may be con-
sidered a form of the dominance strategy, which happens
when US companies force their culture’s style of man-
agement upon the employees and clients of another cul-
ture (Adler, 1991; Lane et al., 1997). In the case of the
self-managed engineering team, the senior American
engineer exhibited typical behavior of his low power dis-
tance culture — self-initiative and taking charge based
on merit. To the high power distance French and Peruv-
ian members, this behavior meant the violation of their
script — only bosses behave like this, and the American
engineer was not their boss but peer. The result — clash!
And the team was dead. Sometimes one’s own script is
pursued in a belief that PM is universal and culture-free,
which might have been the case here. Note that this
approach is outside the boundaries of our model.
4. Moderate competency in the counterpart’s PM
script
There are two strategic options in this approach,
assuming that both parties’ track record displays a mod-
erately positive experience with each other’s PM script.
In the unilateral strategy, the project manager modifies
his or her script to the counterpart’s. Mutual adjustment
of their scripts is the gist of this bilateral strategy.
4.1. Adapt to the counterpart’s script
At times multicultural project managers tend to not
play out each line in their script. Rather, in dealings with
other players they omit some lines and add others from
the counterpart’s script. While such actions may appear
as a unilateral adjustment, the adapt strategy is more than
that. The substance of the adapt strategy is a set of
intended actions to alter one’s own script in tune with
the counterpart’s.
In the early 1990s, a small US subsidiary of a French
telecommunications multinational established a product
development project led by a seasoned project manager,
a recent transferee from France, and three Americans.
Inexperienced, but willing to learn from their project
manager, the American members prepared by reading
books and articles about French culture, taking cross-
cultural and French classes, and watching French mov-
ies. Then, through deliberate effort they adjusted their
routine approach to managing projects by: (1) accepting
the power distance, formal communications, and hier-
archical team approach that their leader exercised; (2)
adhering to decision making as a right and privilege of
rank; (3) following their leader’s ‘scientific’ approach
to project minutiae; and (4) diligently trying to get used
to the French way of working on many things at the
same time.
The tricky part of the adapt strategy is the decision
about which elements of the script to modify or leave
out or even add to the script. In the above French–US
case, gaps between the two scripts are significant. Not-
withstanding, American members perhaps pushed to the
extreme by deciding to play by the French script. The
risk is that their attempt may not have an apparent posi-
tive impact on a multicultural project interaction, either
because of their inability to execute their desired course
of action or because the French project manager may be
unable to fathom their behavior.
One good way to deal with the tricky part is to look
for help in other cross-cultural management disciplines
coping with similar issues, in cross-cultural marketing,
for example. Researchers have identified parts of some
cultures’ scripts that non-Romans must abide by, others
that may but need not be respected, and still others that
non-Romans are not expected to obey. Whereas an
approach like this certainly cannot be transplanted with
adjustments, it may provide a solid analogy to multicul-
tural project managers’ considerations. The American
members did not pursue this direction. Rather, they
relied on cultural orientation through less sophisticated
means — by taking classes, reading books, and watch-
ing movies.
The case does not offer clues to other possible traps
in the adapt strategy. That a counterpart is attempting to
use the adapt strategy may usually be detected by some
easily discernible elements. Less discernible, however,
 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
are many other alterations. A poorly executed embrace
strategy (described below) may lead the counterpart to
believe that the project managers are pursuing the adapt
strategy. A possibility is also a scenario in which both
the counterpart and the project manager are trying to
play by the adapt strategy at the same time. Then, modi-
fications that both parties make to their own scripts may
choke rather than lubricate their PM work. If aware of
these traps, a project manager’s odds of making a good
choice of which parts of the script to adapt may be high-
er.
4.2. Adjust mutually
Mutual adjustment of the project manager’s and the
counterpart’s PM scripts may unfold as a result of a
deliberate planning prelude, or it may take the form of
an emergent strategy. Whichever approach prevails, the
outcome is a jointly developed script, composed of PM
behaviors acceptable to the interacting cultures. The
adjustment strategy comes in other forms too. A special
case of the mutual adjustment strategy — the compro-
mise approach — draws on management practices that
are similar between the national cultures engaged in the
business dealing.
In a recent joint venture, the French and Hungarian
members of the management group conducted a care-
fully designed workshop that openly addressed cross-
cultural issues by examining management styles in the
two cultures. Through an interactive and dynamic com-
munication, participants successfully built a better
understanding of each other’s PM script, and increased
tolerance and adaptability. Patiently proceeding with a
strategic planning process, the group developed a
shared comprehension of major strategic issues and
business terminology. As a result, a map was charted
for further cooperation (Berger, 1996).
What sticks out in this case is the very substance of
the approach — cooperation by design, respect for each
other’s culture, tactful treatment of differences, and
patient progress. It is quite possible that the substance,
at least partially, may be credited for the successful
development of the strategy for this project. Another
form of this strategy is the ‘bypass’ strategy (Weiss,
1994). When in pursuit of it, the project manager and
the counterpart shun their respective scripts and resort to
a third culture’s PM script in which they are moderately
competent. An example of the script that often fills such
role is PMBOK, Project Management Institute’s guide
to the PM body of knowledge, essentially an American
PM script that appears to be gaining acceptance by the
international PM community. Whether PMBOK or some
other script, the point here is that the parties know how
much they know about the script and how much
additional guidance they may need to successfully steer
their intercommunication.
503
As in many US graduate programs, student team pro-
jects are a class requirement at Portland State Univer-
sity’s Department of Engineering and Technology Man-
agement. Some of the teams face a tough challenge: all
members are often non-American students and have just
arrived in the US for their first term. Driven by their
distinct cultural baggage and pressures of the short 10-
week term, the students rush to work out their own PM
script and deliver results. As an outcome, tensions typi-
cally run high and nothing gets done. Aware that the
continuation of the same strategy would be courting a
grade disaster, the teams opt to implement an American
management script, one described in “The Team Mem-
ory Jogger,” for example (The Team Memory Jogger,
1995).
The compromise approach delineated in the Portland
State case begets a great deal of successes, although
mediocre performance has often befallen teams popu-
lated by freshmen lacking the experience and knowledge
of the American script. The value of this strategy, as
both the French–Hungarian and Portland State case illus-
trate, is that the deliberate cooperation diminishes prob-
ability of non-aligned modifications that any party may
independently seek. While some cultures may favor the
mutual adjustment strategy for its transparency and bilat-
eral nature, to other cultures — because of its verbal
explicitness, for example — the strategy may be unac-
ceptable.
5. High competency in the counterpart’s PM script
To embrace or to synergize, that is the question that
project managers seasoned in their counterpart’s PM
script face. In both options the crucial variable is the
counterpart’s competency in the project manager’s
script. Should the counterpart be incompetent in the
script, the project manager can adopt their script —
which is termed the embrace strategy. If the counterpart
is highly competent in the project manager’s script, the
two parties may bilaterally or independently concentrate
on composing a PM script that will unite their scripts,
cultures, individualities, and situations. This approach,
termed the synergy strategy, and the embrace strategy
may have a powerful impact on the MPM process.
5.1. Embrace the counterpart’s script
Following the PM script typical of the counterpart’s
culture is what this strategy is all about.
In the late 1980s, a US company embarked on its first
exploration geology project in Brazil. The company
hired an American project manager with 20+ years of
experience in exploration geology in the Brazilian rain
forest. Using his strong ties in the local geology com-
munity and a masterly knowledge of the intricacies of
504 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
the local government’s red tape, the project manager
quickly took the project off the ground. He relied on his
own, Brazil-friendly methods to recruit local geologists
and build them into a cohesive team. During the
execution, the project manager was able to motivate his
crew, notorious for its casual time management, to over-
come all hurdles and complete the project on time.
For a great majority of multicultural leaders this strat-
egy is not an option. For its sheer complexity, especially
when there is a chasm between the cultures involved,
only project managers who have acquired personal mas-
tery in other culture’s PM script should qualify for the
embrace approach. The American project manager in the
above Brazil case is an embodiment of the personal mas-
tery. His command of the counterparts’ language, cul-
ture, and PM took 20+ years of dwelling and working
in Brazil to craft.
With a proper execution of the embrace strategy, the
benefit is that Brazilian team members could easily com-
prehend it. In addition, the members enjoyed the advan-
tages of feeling at ease and being in their comfort zone.
The strategy’s poor implementation, in contrast, might
have led to a serious disadvantage: the members could
have mistaken it for the adapt strategy. Playing by
embracing the counterpart’s script is a demanding ende-
avor, which may not always be under the project man-
ager’s full control.
5.2. Synergize
The synergistic approach is a process in which project
managers form a PM script based on but not limited to
the scripts of individuals involved in a multicultural pro-
ject situation (Adler, 1991). Drawing on their high level
of expertise, both the project manager and the counter-
part can stay within or venture outside the bounds of
their native cultures to create necessary solutions.
When a European company formed a team to develop
a new business solution for the international markets,
the team was comprised of 13 nationalities from subsidi-
aries around the world. Many of them were veterans of
several expatriate assignments. To weld themselves into
a cohesive, high-performing team, the members took on
some challenges. These included recognizing that there
are many ways to organize a team, helping people to let
go of old ways of doing things, and appreciating that
other ways of doing things may be more appropriate
to the current situation. As a result, the team built an
‘international microculture,’ allowing its members to
divert their attention away from their possibly conflicting
cultures and focus on the task in front of them
(Berger, 1996).
The synergy strategy differs from the mutual adjust-
ment strategy, which assumes alterations in both cul-
tures’ scripts, in that it can make use of both scripts
entirely or transcend them to develop a script not typical
of their cultures. It is not unusual that a third culture’s
script be used.
For their implementation of a large development pro-
ject, a Middle Eastern and an Eastern European partner
agreed to bridge their divergent cultural backgrounds
by integrating their teams. The integration involved
planning, focusing on key team-building issues, and
tracking and correcting the integration problems. In the
planning action, a result was an integration manual
rooted as much in the Western PM script as in the part-
ners’ scripts. Joint visits to local historical sites and
joint offices were some of the actions concentrated on
building interpersonal relationships. Team spirit was
also emphasized through the development of joint pro-
gress reports and celebration of key events completion.
Down the road of the integration, many problems were
recognized and solved in a disciplined manner. Although
bits and pieces of the partners’ scripts persisted, the
strong flavor of cosmopolitanism was always visible
(Milosevic, 1990).
Multicultural teams in both the European and Middle
Eastern case deployed the synergy strategy when their
desire to capitalize on their high-level competencies was
only feasible by venturing outside of their cultural home-
court. While there is an element of uncertainty in such
a venture, their risk-taking attitude was rewarded in the
form of effective project delivery. With potential bene-
fits, however, the teams also encountered some chal-
lenges. As in any joint strategy, the concern here was the
need for both parties’ cooperation. If any party attempted
pushing the strategy unilaterally, like taking a wrong
way on a two-way street, the whole thing might have
been fatal. Risks like this may be outweighed by what
Deming so emphatically advocated as a major manage-
ment task, a predictable process, in this case, a MPM
interaction (Evans and Lindsay, 1993). For both the Eur-
opean company team and Middl Eastern–Eastern Euro-
pean team, the interaction was a fathomable, harmoni-
ous, and synchronous process.
5.3. Jam with the counterpart
With this strategy the project manager and the
counterpart are expected to improvise, without an
explicit mutual agreement, and to transform their ideas
into an agreeable scenario for their work. In this sense,
they are like members of a jazz band following the loose
rules of a jam session. Jazzers jam when they begin with
a conventional theme, improvise on it, and pass it around
until a new sound is created (Kao, 1996). The counter-
part’s new sound is a distinct, culture-transcending PM
script.
An executive five-member team was formed to manage
a small but global company. Because they were allowed
to choose where they wanted to live, the team spread
across Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and England.
 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
Although each member was multilingual, they spoke in
English during their weekly teleconference. Every month
the team met at one of company’s divisional head-
quarters and spent the next day with the managers from
that division. Members were encouraged to be part of
every discussion, although their individual roles were
very clear, so that interaction on a day-to-day basis was
unnecessary. Even though the team never went through a
formal team-building process, its emphasis on an agreed
team mission, shared business values, and high perform-
ance goals for all members made it a true model of a
well-jammed multicultural team (Snow et al., 1996).
This strategy implies what is apparent in the executive
team — all team members are highly competent in each
other’s PM script. Such competency enabled them to
fathom the counterparts’ assumptions and habits, predict
their responses, and take courses of actions that appealed
to them. Another condition was met for jamming to work
with the executive team, in particular, understanding the
individuality of counterparts. A counterpart’s fluency in
several scripts clearly meant that he or she might propose
any of the scripts’ practices. Knowing the individuality
then meant anticipating the practices. That the counter-
part was analyzed as a person with distinct traits, and
not only as a representative of a culture, was the key
to jamming.
The jamming approach may well be used in situations
where parties have successfully worked together in other
multicultural projects as occurred in the executive team
case, or the same approach has been repeatedly used
between their two organizations. When senior executives
make critical project decisions with their counterparts,
jamming is often used. The strategy is an effective way
to create a bond between the project manager and the
counterpart, which is easier to accomplish in affective
cultures that show their emotions than in neutral cultures
where people are neutral in their approach (the executive
team was more on a neutral end, but still successful),
where relationship comes before task, and originality
over routine (Trompenaars, 1994).
When they first went to work on a product develop-
ment project in a small high-tech company in the US, it
appeared that they would forever be at odds over every
aspect of managing a project. A few projects and many
fights later, however, a German, an American, a Mex-
ican, and a Macedonian looked as cohesive as any other
team. As they marched through their projects, they
acquired an in-depth knowledge of each other’s cultures
and PM scripts. Not only did they know each other’s
religious holidays and eating habits, but they also
reached a point of accepting American concern for cost
tracking, German obsession with precise schedule man-
agement, Macedonian dedication to team spirit, and
Mexican zeal for interpersonal relationships. The road
to their masterly jamming was not paved by deliberate
actions. Rather, it evolved from patient learning, many
505
dead ends in their interactions, and the need to be suc-
cessful in their work.
There are intrinsic risks in the use of the jamming
strategy. As it occurred in the initial phase of the above
high-tech team, some counterparts did not read the jam-
ming as recognition of cultural points, but rather as an
attempt to seek favor by flattery and fawning. Although
the team never faced it, it is also possible that jamming
may lead to an ‘overpersonalization’ of the relationship
between the project manager and the counterpart,
characterized by high emotional involvement, loss of
touch with and ignorance of other team members, and
reluctance to delegate. As already hinted, jamming’s
basic design may not be in tune with all cultures and
may not even be appropriate for the execution by teams
composed of members with varying levels of com-
petency in other people’s PM scripts. While in its early
stage of development the high-tech team members’ vary-
ing levels of competency were a significant roadblock,
their further learning and growth got them over the
obstacle. Still, the number and intensity of cultural run-
ins that the team experienced before maturing supported
the view that this strategy tends to be shorter on specific
instructions for implementation and higher in uncertainty
than any other unilateral strategy. However, its plasticity
may be such a great asset to multicultural project man-
agers that many of them view it as an ideal in the devel-
opment of a culturally responsive PM strategy.
6. Implications
Multicultural project managers have a menu of
options to choose from; they do not necessarily have to
go with the flow and do as the Romans do. The menu
has nine culturally responsive strategies, each of them
with varying ingredients such as the competency in PM
scripts, effort for coordination, and transparency to the
counterpart. As a result, project managers have the free-
dom to choose, flexibility to act, and chance to adapt to
the situation.
For example, Alan DeLuca might have adopted stra-
tegies other than ‘embrace.’ His counterpart was West-
educated and at least moderately competent in Alan’s
PM script. Accordingly, an adapt strategy that values
meeting schedules might have been an option. In Fig. 6,
we suggest several alternatives for unilateral strategies
that Alan and other project managers with a domination
and present-time background might have employed. The
approaches are related to time, scope, and cost manage-
ment with the counterpart from the subjugation and past-
time oriented culture, as was his counterpart. Given the
long duration of the project that would provide enough
time for a fastidious review, selection, preparation, and
execution, other possibilities might have been con-
sidered. For example, they could have looked at a ‘com-
506 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
Fig. 6. Recommended unilateral approaches for American project managers interacting with the subjugation and past-time oriented cultures.
bo’ strategy beginning with a proposal for the jamming
option, and then, if not accepted, shifted to an adapt, and
eventually chosen the embrace strategy. To summarize,
this situational approach offers flexibility in different
situations, and a project manager’s performance depends
on their choice of strategy and the situation. Also, the
approach recognizes counterparts as an important situ-
ational factor — and treats them differently depending
on their competency.
One point should be made clear — only the project
manager who is highly competent in the counterpart’s
PM script can be a good candidate for utilizing all the
strategic options. Whether they already possess com-
petency in the counterpart’s script or intend to acquire
it, multicultural project managers should clearly under-
stand its power and value. Equally significant power and
value lie in the project manager’s willingness and ability
to use the cultural approach and concentrate on the
counterpart’s individuality and situation. Culture is not
only a powerful medium for interpreting the intellectual
framework and actions of counterparts, but also for com-
paring them and extracting their similarities and differ-
ences in how they function in a particular multicultural
project setting.
Focusing on the similarities and differences of various
counterparts may help the project managers learn invalu-
able lessons and use them to improve their MPM expert-
ise in their future work. In that context, culture is an
enabler of learning. It is as instrumental in figuring out
a multicultural team chemistry as it is in foreseeing the
team members’ behavior.
The situational approach also implies that project
managers themselves can do something about their situ-
ation. They can be trained to be more competent in the
counterpart’s script, and as a consequence their choice
of strategy may evolve over time from one strategy to
another. Based on the published empirical evidence, it
seems that cross-cultural training is effective in
developing important skills, in facilitating cross-cultural
adjustment, and in enhancing job performance (Black
and Mendenhall, 1990). For example, project managers
who are to be subjected to an intense exposure to a
foreign culture may need an immersion-based approach
to the training. The extensive language training, sensi-
 D.Z. Milosevic / Technovation 22 (2002) 493–508
tivity training, field experiences, and simulations are the
recommended training techniques (Mendenhall et al.,
1987).
The menu of strategic options that have been
presented in this paper is built on two pillars: the com-
petencies of the project manager and competencies of
the counterpart in each other’s PM scripts. The levels
of the competencies are, therefore, a dominant factor in
deciding which strategy to use. This relative simplicity
of the situational approach and its clear link with real,
practical, everyday MPM problems are a crucial forte of
the model. The simplicity is also a major weakness of
the model, for it ignores other factors — such as the
positional power of the project manager and counterpart,
the relationship between the two parties, disrespect for
culture, circumstances, and the approach that Romans
intend to pursue — that may also have an impact on the
situation. The major message about the menu, however,
is that a winning strategy is in tune with the reality of
the world, that is the knowledge that those involved in
a multicultural project situation have about their scripts.
Michelangelo, Titian, Modigliani, Picasso, and Dali
were all extremely successful managers of their painting
projects, but each had an original and distinctive script
(read style) rooted in who they were. In MPM, like in
art, what distinguishes winners from losers is the ability
to capitalize on who you are.
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Dragan Milosevic is an associate professor of engineering and technology
management at Portland State University, USA. He has 20+ years of
experiance as an engineer, manager, and strategist in major international
corporations. He holds B.Sc., M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Univer-
sity of Belgrade, Yugoslavia. His research interests center on management
of technology, and he is currently exploring issues associated with multi-
cultural strategies.