‘no work on sunday!’ boundary-spanning processes in intercultural project management

Kenneth David ‘No work Intercultural Management, on Sunday!’ Associate Professor of Anthropology and

Michigan State University, Michigan, USA Boundary-

spanning processes in intercultural project management

Issues for a boundary-spanning organization

Over the years, executives have been bombarded with practical concepts that offer direct solutions to deeply troubling problems within their companies. Practical concepts like corporate culture and the learning organizution represent problem areas like a photographic negative-in a bright uplifting tone. The flaw, as executives have repeatedly told me, is that various concepts

Many organizational problems involve

strategic, cultural and power issues

represent one aspect of inter-related problems in clear focus while other aspects remain undistinct in the background. To put it briefly, many organizational problems involve strategic, cultural and power issues.

Intercultural management is concerned with cultural and power issues that affect working relationships between people from different organizations (as in acquisitions, strategic alliances, joint ventures and long- term consulting relationships) and even people from different units within an organization (as in the coordination of efforts in a new product model project).* Project teams must work together even though team members’ parent companies differ in their

‘See David, K. and Singh, €3. (1993a, 1993b) for more detailed accounts of intercultural management regarding acquisitions.

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organizational backstage cultures. Further, power imbalances affect coordinated activity even when understandings are relatively well shared. The following case gives a concrete example of strategic, cultural and power issues that affect coordinated activity between two organizations. The case details boundary-spanning processes that are more encompassing than organizational learning.

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MISCO: cultural bridging and power neutralization via interorganizational learning

A long-term consulting relationship is effectively a non-equity strategic alliance. While a cooperative venture between two independent companies can be constructed as reasonably symmetrical in power terms, a consulting relationship is typically asymmetrical: the consultant does the bidding of the client. Consultants recognize that it is their responsibility (not the clients’) to manage cultural and power issues that may arise on a project.

Consultants recogn ize that it is their responsibility

(not the clients’) to manage cultural and

power issues that may arise on a project

The case in point is the relationship between a management information division of a consulting company and its clients. This relationship has many of the attributes of a

’Case materials based on field research by K. David and C. J . Smith, 1986-1987.

K. David

high cultural risk situation (see David and Singh, 1993b): when installing a management information system for a client, the consultant is providing a customized, ambiguous, intangible market offering; projects are medium- to long-term affairs with interaction between a consulting team and a user team; the new system has a lasting impact on the client organization. An interorganizational learning process helps improve service delivery.

The case illustrates a boundary-spanning process between a consulting firm and its various clients. To deliver a very technical project, the installation of a management information system for the client organization, members of the consulting project team learn enough about cultural and power issues in the client organization. Then they modify their product and their interactions with the client so that project objectives will not only be achieved, but will be perceived as achieved by the client.

The core service

The MISCO management information consulting division (MICD) provides complete software systems to manage the business functions (accounting, supplies procurement, inventory, work flow, billing, payroll etc.) of their clients. In a complete project, they diagnose the business functional needs of the client (functional design), design a conceptual framework for the total hardware and software needs (detailed design), produce the necessary software programs (installation), train the software users in the client company, and test, finally install the whole information system (conversion) and maintain the system in use (see Figure 1).

Two tasks are equally important when delivering service. First, the service provider must assure the delivery of a superior service. Second, the service provider must manage client expectations so that the client perceives the service as either meeting or

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Journal of Strategic Change, Aprit 1994

‘No work on Sunday!’ 89

exceeding expectations. I discuss these tasks in turn.

The core service delivery system

MICD has an appropriate set of systems in place to manage the service delivery tasks. First, they have knowledge and skills for the technical side of management information system (MIS) consulting. To learn what is necessary for MIS consulting- knowledge of business functions, industry knowledge and technical knowledge in hardware and software work-active consultants frequently have time out for additional training at a corporate training centre. They have backup research departments. The consulting crew can call in functional, industry, or technical experts if they have ‘challenges’ they cannot handle.

Second, they have a highly efficient method for customizing software solutions to their client’s needs. Superior service businesses usually balance the business needs

of containing costs and meeting the individual needs of clients by having a system that is partially standardized and partially customized. MICD has a vast centralized library of computer software. After a particular client’s needs have been diagnosed, consultants select programs from the library. Then with a highly proprietary procedure, they modify these selections on site to meet client needs.

Third, they have an extensive review method for assuring quality of work in progress. The review process typically travels up the MICD pyramid before presentation to the client at check-off points. (These check-off points accord with the higher levels of client contact shown in Figure 1.) On large projects, outside reviewers from other offices also participate in the review process.

Fourth, they have a well-ordered organizational structure for staffing and supervising projects. MICD organization is consciously pictured as a pyramid. There are

hVC1

of

client

Contact

LOW

*

Figure 1 . and clients.

Journal of Strategic Change, April 1994

Phases of a management information system (MIS) project and level of contact between MIS suppliers

four ranks with different roles.3 Project staffing often includes clients. Client firms often provide a team of workers from their management information department to complement the MICD team. This client team will be in charge of the system once the former system is ‘converted’ to the new system. For the overall project organization, a conscious attempt is then made to create a counterpart pyramid within the client company .*

To sum up, according to normal business standards, the organization has everything in place to deliver this kind of service.

Cultural risk in management information consulting

The problem is that a crucial business task is inadequately done - not only by MICD but

3Partner: Partners are the joint owners of the firm. Partners make contact with potential clients, market projects to clients (in MICD jargon, ‘promote client engagements’), select staff from projects, appear periodically at ongoing projects to check the quality of the service and handle any high-level issues with the top management of the client company.

Manager: Managers are the overall supervisors of projects. They, and the rest of the staff, live in the city where the project is located, maintain contact with top management and the management information director in the client firm, assign subtasks of the project, and continually monitor the ongoing work. Each manager is in charge of several subteams. On a major project, several managers are present.

Senior staff: Senior staffers have attained enough industry, technical and business function knowledge to be the immediate supervisors of subteams of junior staffers performing subtasks of the project. They are in contact with client counterparts within the management information department.

Junior staff: Fresh recruits alternate between the education periods (either at the home office or at the corporate training centre) and the on-site job of coding software. They are in contact with their computers. On a large project, new junior staffers are brought onto the job for the largest and most labour intensive part of a client project, the installation, when the management information system is produced for the client. 4MICD partner and top management of client company, then MICD manager(s) and management information system department director followed by MICD senior staff and management information system department staff.

Designing and implementing a

management information system while managing

client expectations entails not just technical issues but also cultural and

power issues

by the entire industry. Designing and implementing a management information system while managing client expectations entails not just technical issues but also cultural and power issues.

Designing a management information system means finding out what the client wants and needs. The following client cases will show that eliciting such information may be difficult because:

0 Gaps in understanding between the consultants and the clients concerning assent to proposed plans.

0 Gaps in technological sophistication between the client and the consultant.

0 The client firm’s decision processes can aid but sometimes obscure what the client really wants. Information consultants have to work with or around these decision processes.

Implementing a new information system has various cultural problems:

0 An information system guides perceptions of the task environment. A new information technology can create disorientation and hostility in the client firm. Pockets of real incompetence in the client firm are discovered. Consultants may have to train and counsel competent persons who may not wield power in the client firm. An information system is a strategic resource for corporate infighting. Power

0

0

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‘No work on Sunday!’ 9 1

relationships may shift mildly or drastically. Consultants may have to diplomatically negotiate power battle within the client firm.

Part of the information consulting practice is being an organizational change agent to allow the reception of this system. To successfully design and implement an information system, you must be able to find out what organizational changes they can stand and incite only intended changes.

Despite all their functional, technical, industry and interpersonal skills training, MICD consultants have no training for managing these cultural problems. As consultants rise through the ranks, some develop rather strong intuitive ways of analyzing and responding to the cultural problems. Even then, project managers are not necessarily skilled at communicating the problems and solutions to the subordinates but merely tell their subordinates how to operate.

Finally, as Figure 1 schematically represents, in MICD’s normal consulting practice, there is an uneven pattern of contact with clients. They confer constantly with a client in the periods just before the client must give approval and less frequently otherwise. There is less contact during the two design phases and the installation phases. Highest contact occurs during the conversion phase. This uneven pattern causes problems: MICD consultants may lose touch with what the client wants and what social impacts the client organization can stand from the new information system. For these reasons, MICD was having problems on some projects. At the time of final conversion of the information system, the consulting crew sometimes gets in what they call crunch time. They are running overtime and over budget.

During crunch time, hundred-hour work weeks

are common

During crunch time, hundred-hour work weeks are common. On one occasion, a consulting supervisor told her crew,

Good news. We’ll be able to take a vacation this weekend. No work on Sunday!

In short, despite the overall superiority of their service delivery system, MICD and other information consulting companies have a real problem of managing cultural risk of misunderstanding between the consulting crew and the clients.

Project culture strategy

Study of this situation-working with MICD project teams during client engagements- yielded a process of interorganizational learning to facilitate the delivery of the core service. I formed teams of MICD personnel who were working at different client sites and trained them with rudimentary but relevant participant-observation skills. The overall process is summarized in Figure 2.

1. Each team first sought background information about the client firm to determine the degree of cultural risk on a particular project.

2 . Using participant-observation research techniques, the teams learned about the client culture, distinguishing daily rules of etiquette for work with the client from alarm signals of potential problems in the culture that could hinder the project. Next, they sought backstage information about features of the client culture that bear on the problem areas.

3. With this information, they were able to derive consulting solutions to these problems, that is, ways to finesse the cultural gaps between the consulting team and the client team.

This information also allowed them to assess impacts of the client culture and to modify their standardized work plans.

4 .


K. David 92

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Figure 2 . Project culture strategy: supplier-client.

5 .

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To implement these solutions, they developed an effective project culture, that is, an overlap of shared understandings bet ween their consulting team and the client team adequate to implement project objectives.

Lessons learned during early stages of the project become information added to the client background for use in later stages of the project when additional consulting staff are brought onto the project.

Finally, they wrote up key lessons in a project archive for use in similar projects in the future.

Several highly abbreviated examples of (disguised) client engagements will illustrate the process.

A large manufacturing client

0 Background information and preliminary risk assessment. The client headquarters is located in one part of the country and production facilities in three other areas

Corporate

Memory

which differ significantly in regional subculture. Risk is present because MICD personnel is more urbane than client production personnel. MICD also must mediate not only between themselves and the client, but also between differing practices of the three production facilities.

0 Alarm signals. The MICD found too little difficulty in getting approval of functional design features for the proposed management information system. This should have been an alarm signal that the client had neither understood nor bought into the design. At conversion time, the client gave a barrage of negative responses:

That won't work. We didn't want that. We never heard about that one.

0 Backstage information. Superficial acceptance of plans by the client was the result of intense, internal political battles that incited everybody to agree with


‘No work on Sunday!’ 93 ~ ~~

everything on the surface and to work out everything privately.

0 Consulting solutions. MICD developed routines to deal with superficial public discussions and the more effective private discussions.

A government bureau client

Background information. MICD’s strong business culture differs significantly from the legal/government culture of the bureau. Alarm signals. MICD spent months in long meetings with the client. The MICD team did not understand why the client had so many objections to design plans that had been successfully implemented in situations with similar information systems needs. Backstage information. MICD learned that the legal charter for the government unit defines its scope of operations and the procedures for processing transactions. These procedures are not efficient by private sector standards, but the client is legally bound to observe them. Consulting solutions. MICD began to work with these procedures as the outer limits for viable design plans for the new information system.

A very hierarchical client

0 Background information. MICD’s first project with a company that tends to avoid publicity about its internal operations.

0 Alarm signals. MICD could not use several of its normal consulting practices, such as desk-side consulting with key clients and having key clients sell the design plans up through the client hierarchy. Rather, meetings were scheduled for even very small decisions. Every plan concerning the information system had to be cleared through a series of meetings. Backstage information. This client firm was notable for severe hierarchical

0

practice. Everybody was scared of their superiors. No one was willing to take an individual decision and potentially face charges of conspiracy. Consulting solutions. MICD adapted to the client’s style of decision, but revised its estimated budgets for time and money.

In summary, concrete examples of (disguised) client engagements illustrate two forms of interorganizational learning and response. First, project culture strategy improves consulting practice on current projects. Second, project culture memory is a means of transformingfugitive knowledge of the business situation into available knowledge for use on future projects.

Imp Gica t ions Given the globalization of business, interorganizational relationships (acquisitions, international joint ventures, strategic alliances, long-term consulting relationships and multicultural megaprojects (e.g. the European Space Agency) are increasingly dominating competitive strategy. Compared with earlier decades when intraorganizational relationships (MNCs and their wholly-owned subsidiaries) dominated business expansion, interorganizational cooperative ventures now account for the bulk of new ventures (for review, see Terpstra and Simonin, 1993).

Astute international managers no longer brush aside cultural and power issues as vague, non-quantifiable variables that will take care

Astute international managers no longer brush aside cultural and power

issues as vague, non- quantifiable variables that

will take care of themselves if proper

business analyses have been accomplished


94 K. David

of themselves if proper business analyses have been accomplished. Cultural and power issues (together, intercultural risk) make a difference in managing projects in a variety of intercultural situations: domestic and international, profit or non-profit, etc.

Cultural risk poses threats stemming from differences in values and codes of behaviour between companies and regulators, among business organizations and even among divisions within a large organization. Cultural miscommunication is costly because it contributes to poorly coordinated activity.

Power issues also pose threats to ongoing operations. Here, I am not referring to what international business analysts call political risk, the risk that political upheavals in a host country or regulatory action in a host country will disrupt operations. Here, I refer to the risk of poorly coordinated activity stemming from perceived inequity among organizations that are trying to act as business partners.

This paper has addressed issues that occur in one kind of interorganizational, intercultural

relationship: long-term consulting relationships. The focus was on two intercultural project management techniques (project culture strategy and project culture memory) that attend to strategic, technical, cultural and power issues during service deliver. Together, these techniques are a service differentiation that is indeed a source of competitive advantage.

References David, Kenneth and Singh, Harbir (1993a).

Acquisition regimes: managing cultural risk and relative deprivation in corporate acquisitions. International Review of Strategic Management, Volume Four, Wiley, Chichester.

David, Kenneth and Singh, Harbir (1993b). Sources of acquisition cultural risk. In: Allessandro Sinatra, Harbir Singh and Georg Voukrogh (eds), Managing Corporate Acquisitions, Macmillan, New York.

Terpstra, Vern and Simonin, Bernard L. (1993). Strategic alliances in the triad, Journal of International Marketing, 1 (I), pp. 4-25.

CCC 1057-9265/94/020087-08 @ 1094 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


‘no work on sunday!’ boundary-spanning processes in intercultural project management

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