How
Would Communication Affect Multicultural Projects in the UAE?
By Alex Y. Lim
Abstract
Project
management is a complex multi-disciplinary undertaking that needs to overcome
several hurdles while in progress, most of which have to do with managing team
members to deliver results as expected.
And critical to the effort is communicative competence – a social linguistic
skill that predicates just about every aspect of project management, from
planning to execution, from interpersonal coordination within the team and
outside, to reading related documents and writing reports. This gets a significant aggravation when done
in the multicultural environment where the team members, suppliers and other
stakeholders to the project are from different countries with varying cultural
and social backgrounds, temperaments, persuasions and social behaviors that must be set aside
for them to work together to achieve a common objective. This is the kind of project management that
implements new buildings, mega-structures, and systems in the United Arab
Emirates, a 21st century mecca where migrants far exceed the local
population and which is now on the road to meet the challenge occasioned by the country’s leaders
embarking on Vision 2021.
This paper
explores the various aspects of communication in a multicultural project
management setting to assess its roles and how it can best be used to create a
smooth transition into the changes that will need to be implemented in such
project management undertakings. The
study used both quantitative and qualitative methods to extract common themes
to confirm its hypothesis that communication has a heightened role in a
multicultural project engagement.
Several literatures were explored to create the conceptual framework
within which the primary data collection using survey questionnaire and
personal interview was undertaken to arrive at a thematic body of opinions.
The results
of the survey and interview affirmed the hypotheses and ends with a couple of
recommendations that can better enable project managers to deal with the
challenges presented by cultural diversity in their work – ensuring 2nd
language competence and implementing team building mechanisms prior to the
start of any project. These
recommendations are already in place in many companies across the UAE. But this paper, based on the survey and
interview results, reiterates the need to implement these solutions at the
earliest possible time for those that are not aware of or have yet to adopt
them. Companies in the UAE sharing the
same set of effective communication skills that can harness the benefits of
cultural diversity and overcome its potential for internal strife can bring the
nation to further heights of progress as defined in its Vision 2021.
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