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The effect of cross‐cultural uncertainty and complexity within multicultural construction teams

journal contribution
posted on 2016-12-09, 12:42 authored by Edward G. Ochieng, Andrew Price, Ximing Ruan, Charles O. Egbu, David Moore
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine challenges faced by senior construction managers in managing cross-cultural complexity and uncertainty. The rationale was to identify the key strategies that are considered essential for managing cross-cultural complexity and uncertainty. Design/methodology/approach - Interviews with 20 senior construction managers, ten in Kenya and ten in the UK, were recorded, transcribed and entered into the qualitative research software NVivo. Validity and reliability were achieved by first assessing the plausibility in terms of already existing knowledge on some of the cultural issues raised by participants. The findings were presented to the participants through workshops and group discussions. Findings - The emerging key issues suggested that project leaders need to learn how to control their own characteristics and to use them selectively. An effective multicultural construction project team should focus on team output and attributes that characterise a multicultural team as a social entity. Practical implications - Findings indicate that the role of construction project managers has significantly changed over the past two decades. In order to deal with cross-cultural uncertainty, project leaders must have superior multicultural and interpersonal skills when managing global multicultural heavy engineering projects. Originality/value - The research shows that leaders of global construction project teams need a good understanding of their culture, environment and the value of their individual contributions. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Published in

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

Volume

20

Issue

3

Pages

307 - 324

Citation

OCHIENG, E. ... et al., 2013. The effect of cross‐cultural uncertainty and complexity within multicultural construction teams. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 20 (3), pp.307-324.

Publisher

© Emerald

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2013

ISSN

0969-9988

eISSN

1365-232X

Language

  • en