Introduction

1. Introduction 

The word “project” can quite obviously be considered a buzzword of today. Working in projects as a form of completing tasks, has clearly gained more and more popularity in recent decades. The world around us is continuously growing more global, which in turn brings international co-operation and international projects into the focus of attention. Today, numerous businesses are conducted globally and a multinational company might have subsidiaries in dozens of different countries. Furthermore, moving from one country to another has increased remarkably. (International Organization for Migration 2011).

Consequently, it is not unusual these days to have people with greatly varying cultural backgrounds, values, habits and skills working in the same projects. Moreover, as a result of rattling technical development in the past decades, the members of a working group do not necessarily have to be physically on the same continent to be able to work together on a project. However, even if diversity and other aspects brought by internationality can at their best be great assets and make working easier, internationality is bound to set a number of challenges for a project group to overcome. (Henrie, Sousa-Poza 2005).

In this work, the challenges faced in international setting are divided into seven categories. The challenges that an international project group commonly face were examined from the perspectives of the general nature of projects, culture, time, cost, communication and co-operation, people, risks and quality. In order to reflect on the theory found in the literature, two interviews were conducted with international project managers from two different countries. Their answers were analyzed and compared with the literature. Thereafter, conclusions were made based on the comparison of the theory and the interviews.

Figure 1. Characteristics of International Projects. (Köster 2010.)

1.2 International projects

Globalization has brought its own challenges for project management. Opposite to non-international or standard projects, international projects can cross several national borders and members of the teams come from several different nationalities: international projects are multicultural. International projects differ from standard projects mainly in the following fields: purpose, scope, the main stakeholders and risk intensity. Multinational companies use international projects to gain new stakeholders and to extend to new geography areas. When they have more stakeholders in different countries it is easier to influence decision-makers. Via international projects it is possible to increase the global market share, market power, and global political power or global effectiveness. Nowadays, it is common to transfer production to cheaper countries cutting manufacturing costs. That may be seen as an attempt to acquire efficiency gains. The goal of international projects can also be to access to scarce and unique resources such as workforce, minerals, oil and water. International project may reduce risks sharing different phases of the project to partners around the world, for instance. (Köster 2010:12-14.)

 Figure 2. The main purposes of international projects. (Köster 2010.)

The scope of international projects differs from standard projects as well: many locations, countries, organizations and headquarters are involved in international projects. When the scope is bigger, the complexity is larger as well and the organization’s survival could be critical if projects cannot be managed, due to the strategic importance of projects. International projects are riskier than standard projects because there is more complexity in the environment, stakeholders and multitudes of interfaces. Because of the bigger scope, changes and difficulties are harder to forecast so they can be sudden and unpredictable. (Köster 2010:12-16.)