Communication in Multicultural IT Project Teams : A Qualitative Study from a Project Management Perspective

This study aims at exploring the ways project managers can communicate within a multicultural team in an IT project. The purpose is to make the project process understandable and to ensure that the instructions are perceived by everyone in the same way, regardless of their cultural differences. A qualitative study has been conducted to gain more insights from both IT project managers and team members working in Finland, France, Italy, Uganda, and the USA. The empirical findings allowed the authors to gather enough information to present a set of skills that will help project managers develop their communication abilities when working with multicultural teams in IT projects. The majority of competencies found to be useful are soft skills related to interpersonal communication and their implications for team dynamics: empathy, clarity of thought, respect and responsibility, cultural awareness, and multicultural leadership. The findings contribute to both confirming existing theories and providing new information that could be implemented in academic articles, especially concerning skills useful to project managers