The single greatest cause of difficulties in global business transactions is not a lack of technical expertise, hard work, or good intentions—it is a lack of `people skills' for relating successfully with counterparts from other countries and cultures.
The most a significant factor behind the failure of crossborder mergers and acquisitions is "cultural nuances". The controversies that surrounded in mergers cases like Arcelor Mittal or General Electric proposal to acquire Honeywell International highlights increased efforts of company's globalization and their joint ventures and the consequent importance of effective cross-cultural communication. As globalization is an inevitable process and so is the cross-culture. As the world market is becoming more homogeneous and distinctions between national markets are not only blurring and for some products it is disappearing altogether.
The ever-increasing competitive transnational activities are impacting profoundly on project management activities. As international boundaries for businesses are passé and transborder flows of capital, multi-cultural projects are becoming the norm. Against this backdrop, more and more projects are being accomplished by using multicultural teams. The general saying "the strength of chain lying in its weakest link", similarly a project's success depends on the performance of its team members as a whole and the challenge to sustain the attitude, commitment and abilities of team members to ultimately lead to the success. |
