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The purpose this paper is to examine a prevailing assumption that the culture of organisations is homogenous. It explores the culture of one project organisation with multiple offices.

A quantitative questionnaire and qualitative research method of cultural immersion was used. The ethnographic Douglas grid‐group was used to filter the findings: isolate, competitive, hierarchical and egalitarian positions. Hofstede's dimensions were overlaid to enhance the analysis.

The research found distinct cultural differences in the same organisation. Competitive and hierarchical factors are found with some evidence of egalitarian behaviours. Regional cultural factors affected behaviour and organisational practices. Individuals actively negotiated dominant behaviours and cultural norms. The Hofstede dimensions are in evidence around roles and functions. The findings showed a stronger influence from the dominant social culture of the region than the organisational culture.

Organisations cannot be assumed as homogeneous. The influence of the dominant social culture and competing cultural influences within organisation requires further analysis.

Generating a coherent organisational culture with aligned norms is a difficult management problem, especially for an organisation with multiple offices. Establishing consistent norms also poses challenges for the management of projects.

The tendency to assume cultural homogeneity requires closer attention in organisational research and practice. This paper employed a unique combination of methods to explore the issue. The primary contribution is a demonstration of the need for practitioners and researchers to pay more attention to the dynamic formation and effects of culture in organisations and for projects.

Numerous studies highlight the importance of knowledge transfer between projects, but the influence factors are still debated. As a contribution to the identified gap, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of organizational context, project characteristics and social relations in the inter-project knowledge transfer within the project-based organizations (PBOs).

This paper collects the data through 268 sample questionnaires from Chinese construction sectors and applies the structure equation modeling to analyze knowledge transfer between projects in PBOs.

The results indicate the organizational context (meeting system, reward system and shared culture) and project characteristics (similarity and urgency) are antecedents affecting social relations (communication, trust and reciprocity) between project teams, and their social relations further influence the effectiveness of inter-project knowledge transfer.

The study highlights the role of organizational context and effect of social relations for inter-project knowledge transfer in PBOs, and provides valuable suggestions for knowledge and project management in PBOs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the cultural influences on knowledge sharing behavior in project teams.

In this paper a simulation setting is used to assess the cultural influences on knowledge sharing. All intercultural simulations were part of an educational program, in intercultural management (MBA level) and of executive development programs respectively.

The findings in the paper show that different cultural backgrounds of team members due to different ethnicities, gender, national culture or functions create a context of cultural complexity, which might affect knowledge sharing in a negative way. The results of the simulations show that the different identities of team members have an important influence as they might trigger sentiments of negative stereotyping. The findings also reveal that knowledge sharing is only likely to occur if new project members are welcomed emotionally as valuable contributors to a common task.

Given the exploratory nature of this paper, it suggests using the results as a starting ground for future empirical research. The propositions that were developed on the basis of the research may be tested in subsequent studies applying a different research methodology.

Based on the paper's findings, recommendations for project management in situations of cultural complexity are developed.

The paper extends existing knowledge on cultural influences in knowledge sharing especially in the context of project teams.

This research aims to investigate the impacts of project culture on the performance of construction projects. Cultural issues in the construction industry have attracted growing attention from both practitioners and academia. However, there are few studies on culture issues at the project level. The influence of project culture has not traditionally been on the research radar.

A case study approach, utilising questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews and review of project documents, was used to investigate project culture and its associated impacts in two major hospital projects.

The results indicated that project culture played an important role in achieving harmonious relationships between project participants and better project outcomes in terms of schedule, functionality, satisfaction with the process, satisfaction with the relationships, environmental issues addressed commercial success, further business opportunities and overall performance. Case 1 outperformed Case 2 in these performance indicators. Similarly, it became clear that the project’s culture should be developed from the outset and sustained during the project period. Furthermore, it was also highlighted that the project culture should be translated to all levels of the supply chain, i.e. sub-contractors and suppliers.

The findings enabled the client to understand the role of project culture and actively commit towards the development and maintenance of the project culture from very early on. It also helps project teams to understand how to deal with cultural issues at the project level.

This study is one of limited empirical studies that offer in-depth insights of how project culture affects the performance of construction projects. It is also the first study of hospital projects on the research topic.

The aim of this article is to provide insights into how knowledge sharing between project teams takes place (if formal channels are not provided) and which cultural antecedents influence this process.

The author adopts a qualitative research design using a triangulation of methods (interviews, observations, company data and group discussions) to receive detailed results for one case study.

The findings show that knowledge sharing between project teams takes place even though top‐management did not include these processes in the formal work organization. Project team leaders as well as members share knowledge with other project teams by transferring boundary objects, interchanging team members and directly interacting. Furthermore, this study confirms some elements of a knowledge culture, but also discovers new cultural elements that are favorable and unfavorable to knowledge sharing between teams, such as personal responsibility, intrinsic motivation, top‐management's trust in employees, and output orientation.

Despite the fact that only one case study could be researched with this level of detail, the results provide insights into a research area neglected thus far and show that not all knowledge processes depend on the same cultural antecedents.

Managers and team leaders learn that knowledge sharing between project teams enhances the efficiency of project work and organizational learning.

This study addresses a specific knowledge process, namely knowledge sharing between project teams, and discovers that specific cultural antecedents support and hinder this type of cross‐boundary knowledge sharing process.

Managing the triple constraints of time, cost and scope of the work, to ensure the quality desired by the stake holders, is a daunting task for any project manager. When the teams involved are for accomplishing large-scale projects, spread over different geographic regions and drawn from multi- or cross-cultural background, the task of the project manager becomes even more complicated and complex (Lothar, 2011). The purpose of this paper is to examine some of those challenges as well as the socio-cultural factors’ influence on the outcome of projects.

An extensive investigative survey in these complex aspects has been undertaken, spanning both in China and in India.

Some solutions to the leadership role have been found through the intense study and data analysis.

The scope of multicultural and cross-cultural factors and the number of socio-cultural factors affecting such teams spread in diverse parts of the globe is stupendous. However, the study restricted itself to examining only three important socio-cultural factors out of the several, impacting the outcome of multi- or cross-cultural team executed projects.

The study reveals the causal effect of poor performance outcome for large projects when the team comprises multi- or cross cultural personnel. The limitations for the team leader heading such diverse teams are brought out.

The study will help the future compositions of cross- or multicultural team projects, to know in advance the sensitive areas where they have to focus to ensure seamless execution of large projects with the help of virtual platforms for face-to-face interactions between the team members and their leader.

The literature available on generic behavioural aspects of multi- or cross-cultural teams is plenty. However, very few empirical studies are available in evaluating the influence of socio-cultural factors affecting such large project teams. This study extensively covers both China and India, which is a unique investigative study of its kind.

This study investigates the link between servant leadership and project management effectiveness in developmental projects in non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Further, this study examined the mediating role of conflict resolution and moderating role of organisational culture.

A three-wave survey of 288 non-governmental organisation (NGO) employees was used to evaluate the hypotheses. Hierarchical regression analysis and Hayes' PROCESS macro technique were used for data analysis.

In this study, servant leadership positively affects employee project management effectiveness in developmental projects in NGOs, and conflict resolution mediates the relationship. Furthermore, the results show that organisational culture moderates the positive relationship between servant leadership and employee project management effectiveness. Moreover, the authors investigated the hypotheses via a moderation mediation model. The strength of the mediated link between servant leadership and project management effectiveness (via conflict resolution) depends on organisational culture strength.

Leaders that practice servant leadership care for their employees genuinely and serve them by allowing them to make their own decisions. Every organisation may benefit from this leadership style since it encourages project effectiveness

New empirical data from this study suggests that servant leadership positively and substantially affects employee project management effectiveness in developmental projects in NGOs.

Packaged software companies evolve in an environment characterized by ever‐shorter product life cycles and ever‐increasing competition. Reaching the marketplace first is often the way to gain a competitive advantage. This situation leads many packaged software organizations to change both their (often sequential) software development processes and rely on (often cross‐functional) teams. Reports on the software development practices of Software Corp., an organization developing software products for the travel industry, which experimented with several different approaches and finally implemented cross‐functional development teams. Data presented show that changes in the software development process deeply affect many aspects of the organization. The conclusions emphasize the importance of considering the work culture and organizational history when implementing a new software development method and highlight the importance of clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of all groups involved and the necessity to modify the company’s performance‐appraisal system to promote and support the new organizational objectives embodied in the changes in software development methods.

Cultural differences cause conflicts amongst construction project participants, deterring the success of projects. Understanding such different cultural manifestations could help the removal of the misunderstandings amongst sub-cultural groups and removal of formal irrationalities deterring the progress of construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of project cultures in the public sector construction projects.

An exploratory case study was selected as the research strategy to achieve the research aim. Three public sector building construction projects were used as case studies. Nine semi-structured interviews and observation of two progress review meetings per case were used for data collection.

As per the research findings, contractors believed that construction project culture emerged and transferred through continuous interactions and socialisations with time. Consultants believed that culture was emerged focusing on clearly defined project objectives. In addition, all members assumed that project members at high authority levels were contributing more for the emergence and transfer of cultural aspects. Levels of culture and power existed within the public sector project culture as clients with the highest power, consultants the next and contractors with the least power. Public sector project culture was not leader centred. Shared behavioural norms were not much popular in project culture. Highly differentiated behavioural norms, demonstrating clear professional sub-cultures for the client, contractor and consultant, were available.

The research findings are helpful to construction project managers to enhance the level of motivation, productivity, commitment, continuous interactions and socialisations of project participants and to avoid any negative outcomes in behaviours.