This chapter provides an overview of the research problem, study design, research activities, and conclusions. The problem explored in this qualitative exploratory case study was twofold. The first part of the problem was the lack of understanding of the challenges posed to the project managers by culture in relation to interpersonal conflict within a multicultural software development team. The second part of the problem was the lack of project managers who were skilled at managing the cultural diversity of the project team members by maximizing the benefits of diversity and minimizing the eruption of conflict from it.
The purpose of this study was to explore the challenges faced, and the cultural competencies needed by software development project managers leading multicultural project teams to successfully manage and resolve cross-cultural interpersonal conflicts amongst members of a software development project team. The study was designed to add to the research on cross-cultural interpersonal conflict resolution in a software development project team setting. The use of a qualitative method and an exploratory case study design allowed data collection through interviews and archival documents. A qualitative method also allowed the analysis of the data collected for identification of patterns leading to themes. This analysis provided qualitative results that deepened an understanding of the challenges faced by project managers and the skills needed by these project managers to resolve conflict in multicultural software development teams.
The study explored research question one regarding the perceptions and experiences of software development project managers with cross-cultural complexities/challenges and causes of cross-cultural interpersonal conflicts
in multicultural software development project and research question two addressing the perceptions and experiences of software development project managers with the
multicultural skills needed to resolve cross-cultural interpersonal conflict effectively within multicultural project teams. The findings of the research revealed that the project managers perceived challenges including language barriers, cycles of mistrust, and competitive attitudes when leading multicultural teams. In order to mitigate these differences, the participants reported that project managers require excellent communication, negotiation, and emotional intelligence skills.
Interpretation of the Findings
This section reviews the findings of this study, discussing them in relation to the theories that framed this study and the literature reviewed in Chapter 2 of this
dissertation. The purpose of this section is to compare and contrast the findings related to the specific themes that emerged from this study with the postulations of the theories that framed the study and the findings from relevant studies reviewed in Chapter 2. The findings helped provide a better understanding of the theories that framed the study. This section also draws conclusions from similarities or distinctions. The theories that framed this study are Avruch’s Conceptualization of Culture, the Human Needs Theory, the Rational Choice Theory, and the Cross-Cultural Adaptation Theory. The findings are interpreted as they relate to each of these theories.
Avruch’s conceptualization of culture. According to Avruch (2013), individuals in societies are distributed across many different sorts of social groupings—regional, ethnic, religious, class, occupational, and so on. Each of these groupings is a potential container for culture. The findings of this study illustrated Avruch’s assertion of culture
based on social groupings. An illustration of this in the findings is with Participant H’s account. According to this participant, Muslims have a religious culture to pray several times a day. While at work, they grouped with other Muslims to pray together. After prayers, they would regroup with their project team members to perform project tasks. These various social gatherings were different buckets of culture that were carried from one social group to another and influenced the way a team member interacted within the project work team. As revealed by the results, bringing religious culture into a work culture caused conflict. Non-Muslim team members perceived prayers as an interruption to work and demanded to be given the same amount of time for their personal use. Muslim team members, on the other hand, perceived prayers as part of their culture. In another example, Participant D confirms the existence of cultural buckets for individuals based on their social groupings. This participant stated that:
Thinking of value structures from different countries and cultures, they are carried over into family and professional life. For example, military kids have their culture from moving around the world. This culture moves with them in all they undertake. The biggest challenge and source of competition is the lack of
understanding of the existence of different value systems. It was hard getting team members to understand that other people think differently and that their
experiences shaped their perceptions.
The findings of the current study also supported Avruch’s (2013) theory that despite the traditional or customary base of culture, culture is to some extent always situational, flexible, and responsive to the exigencies of the worlds that individuals confront. Participant H provided a clear example that concisely illustrates Avruch’s
theory. According to this participant, in a project team made up of US team members and team members from other national cultures, it was common to see team members with accents other than the American accents clustering together and trusting themselves more than they trusted their American colleagues. These team members considered themselves outsiders whose accents influenced their communication and the way they interacted with their US colleagues. These outsiders also perceived their accents as posing language barriers to them communicating effectively within the project team.
Although these team members were of various nationalities, their situation of language barriers brought them together. Faced with their exigency of language barriers, these team members went against their traditional or customary base of their respective national cultures and exhibited flexibility by choosing to interact with team members from other cultures facing a similar situation like they did. This example from the findings of this study provides a better understanding of Avruch’s conceptualization of culture as situational, flexible, and responsive.
The participants who were the project managers handled this situation by empathizing with and encouraging empathy for those team members with language barriers. The participants noted that with emotional intelligence and empathy, the
participants encouraged team members to show understanding and be accommodating to those team members with language barriers. In this situation, the team members with language barriers became flexible and collaborated more with the team members who empathized with them. This improved individual, team, and project performance.
The findings of this study also supported Avruch’s (2013) claim that the mere existence of cultural differences is usually not the primary cause of conflict between
groups. However, culture is always the lens through which differences are refracted and conflict ensued. Understanding the concept of culture is therefore a prerequisite for effective conflict analysis and resolution. The findings of this study revealed that culture and individual experiences shape perception. This was illustrated by the example of Muslims being awarded prayer time and US team members complaining about this practice. To the US team members, a culture of fairness means treating everyone equally. They perceived the extra time used by Muslims for prayers as being unfair to those team members who were not Muslims. They therefore demanded to be given equal time for their own personal use.
On the other hand, the Muslim team members perceived fairness to mean that the PM and the rest of the team would be understand their religious beliefs and would not complain about the time required for prayers. In their culture, the Muslims pray several times a day without anyone complaining. They expected their fellow team members to be understanding of their practice. While these different perceptions were shaped by the respective experiences and cultures of Muslims and US team members, the perceptions caused conflict that affected team performance.
The findings of this study further revealed that an understanding of the cultures represented on a given team is required to successfully resolve team conflict. According to them, understanding the cultures of team members entails learning their values and how to communicate with team members in ways that are meaningful to them.
Understanding project team members’ culture and values and knowing how to communicate with them help pave the way for better negotiation.
Human needs theory. The findings of this study also supported the Human Needs Theory and helped provide a better understanding of this theory. According to it, cultures are characterized by certain needs, which if absent, threatened, or scarce, oftentimes result in conflict (Maslow, 1970). Burton’s version of the Human Needs Theory states that humans are characterized by certain qualities, the absence of which can result in conflict (Burton, 1979). Such needs include but are not limited to identity, recognition, security/safety, belongingness, freedom, self-esteem, personal fulfillment, and distributive justice.
The findings of this study affirm this theory by revealing that, when project team members perceived their leaders as discriminating against them based on their culture, this caused resistance from the team members and conflict. An example of this is a situation in Participant H’s narrative in which US team members were unhappy because of the extra time awarded to Muslim team members for prayers. The US team members felt that not giving them a corresponding amount of time for their personal use and giving time to Muslims for prayers was an indication of lack of recognition and discrimination against them. This caused tensions and conflict as the US team members demanded fairness by asking that they be awarded extra time for their own personal use.
Rational choice theory. The findings of the current study also supported the Rational Choice Theory and helped promote better understanding of this theory. According to this theory, humans generally base their decisions on their own strategic interests (Ritzer & Goodman, 2004; Scott, 2000). This means that when humans are confronted with a situation, they make a cost/benefit analysis of the situation. Based on the outcome of the analysis, humans then make intentional decisions regarding the
situation. In agreement, the findings of this study suggested that when team members who were not native speakers of English were faced with challenges communicating, they made an assessment of the situation (Participant E). The team members weighed the cost of speaking up openly against the benefits of staying silent. Based on the findings,
participants with language barriers usually preferred staying silent, with the benefit that it saved them the embarrassment of language mistakes. This was an example of a culturally motivated intentional decision to stay silent and reserved during team meetings. Their decision to stay silent exacerbated the cultural and language barriers and caused conflict amongst the team members.
Cross-cultural adaptation theory. Though the findings of this study support the previously mentioned theories, the findings differ from both the Cross-Cultural
Adaptation Theory and the research conducted by Panggabean et al. (2013). The Cross- Cultural Adaptation Theory suggests that, when strangers from different international cultures have a purpose-related encounter such as a software project, the individuals try to adjust their culture to adapt to the other culture (Kim, 2001). This enhances
communication for the purpose of the encounter. In contrast to this theory, the findings of this study suggest that language barriers -an aspect of culture- exacerbated
communication difficulty and differences. According to those findings, team members did not automatically adjust their cultures to accommodate team members from different cultures as suggested by the cross-cultural adaptation theory. The study showed that, in cases where such adjustment took place, the project manager used skills such as empathy, emotional intelligence, negotiation, and communication skills to help the team members tolerate and adjust to their fellow team members for the benefit of the project. The
findings attributed the lack of adjustment of team members to each other to a lack of skill on the part of project managers to nurture the team members to adjust to each other.
The findings of this study also differ from Panggabean et al. (2013). These researchers found that competition had a positive impact on the outcome of a project. Their findings revealed that the competitive attitudes of one culture motivated all team members to succeed. The competitive attitudes of some team members attracted the admiration of team members from another culture. This finding contradicts the ones of the current study since it was found that competition and competitive attitudes presented risks that jeopardized project completion. This is exemplified by the example of
generational differences. Older team members felt that younger team members did not pay enough attention to detail and took a lot of time off. As a result, older team members had to do work not completed by younger team members. This created competition as younger team members felt that they were being falsely accused by older team members who did not want to accept their way of life. Both sides felt they were right. This
competition diminished collaboration on the project work, putting at risk the completion of the project. Contrary to the authors cited just above, competition here seems to have been harmful to the project.
To summarize, the interpretation of the findings sections connected the findings of this study with the theories that framed the study. This connection helped provide a better understanding of those theories, thus contributing to the literature. The section also pointed out an example of how the findings differed from the literature reviewed for this study. The theories connected to the findings of this study are Avruch’s