Author

Salman Tawfik

Degree

Master of Business Administration Executive

Faculty / School

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Year of Award

2015

Project Type

MBA Executive Research Project

Access Type

Restricted Access

Executive Summary

Companies are increasingly utilizing projects in their daily schedules to achieve their organizational goals. In recent times researchers have become interested in factors that may have an impact on project management effectiveness. This thesis studies Culture, as a critical factor in effective project management, in different organizational contexts.

jhis research is based on the premise that; teams can be recalibrated to optimize their performances - for which culture is a significant factor. The Lewis Model of Cross Cultural Communication was utilized to analyze the project teams of Pakistan and to show the impact of Culture on team performance. It is a tool that was developed to aid organizations in understanding the causes and effects of different cultural dynamics across the world and how these impact their businesses.

The effectiveness of Project Management teams in Pakistan in terms of organization structure, segmentation and competency were investigated through this study. The subjects, under this survey, were modern day Project Managers with a minimum qualification of Bachelors. Using the snowball sampling method, these subjects were approached. They were required to provide responses related to demographics and behavioral aspects of their project teams; the resultant of which was a highly complex qualitative dataset.

Using the Exploratory Data Analysis methodology of Dr. John Tukey, the data was analyzed using pie charts, ternary plots, descriptive analysis tool and correlation tool in SPSS. An interesting series of behavior was seen In the data. The research also raised a few questions related to: a) applicability of the Lewis Model on the project management teams in Pakistan; b) the difference of behavioral pattern in private and public sector teams; c) the overall team behavior in different phases of project management; and d) the effect of education on behavior.

The overall behavioral pattern of project teams, in Pakistan, was more towards Linear-Active trait in contrast to the findings of Richard Lewis. This was probably due to the biases built in this research, i.e. focus on white collar project teams and research subject being a Project Manager with a minimum qualification of Bachelors. In terms of education, the result was statistically significant with a positive correlation between team education and Linear-Active trait.

Study on behavior around project management phases produced interesting findings. Amongst all the stages, the Initiating and Planning phases showed the least values of Linear-Active trait. However, it is better to have this trait at its maximum during these stages, since these 2 stages require the more creative approaches.

Pages

73

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