Abstract
Research on international joint ventures (IJV) finds managers experience difficulties in working with cross-cultural teams. Our research aims to understand how cultural differences between Japanese and American firms in IJV projects effect team performance through computational experimentation. We characterize culture and cultural differences using two dimensions: practices and values.Practices refer to each culture’s typical organization style, such as centralization of authority, formalization of communication, and depth of organizational hierarchy. Values refer to workers’ preferences in making task execution and coordination decisions. These preferences drive specific micro-level behavior patterns for individual workers. Previous research has documented distinctive organization styles and micro-level behavior patterns for different nations. We use a computational experimental design that sets task complexityat four levels and team experience independently at three levels, yielding twelve organizational contexts. We then simulate the four possible combinations of USvs.Japanese organization style and individual behavior in each context to predict work volume, cost, schedule andprocess quality outcomes. Simulation results predict that: (1) both Japanese and American teams show better performance across all contexts when each works with its familiar organization style; (2) the Japanese organization style performs better under high task complexity, with low team experience; and (3) process quality risk is not significantly affected by organization styles. In addition, culturally driven behavior patterns have less impact on project outcomes than organization styles. Our simulation results are qualitatively consistent with both organizational and cultural contingency theory, and with limited observations of US-Japanese IJV project teams.
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This paper won the best Ph.D. student paper award at NAACSOS 2004, Pittsburgh PA. NAACSOS is the main conference of the North American Association for Computational Social and Organizational Science.
Tamaki Horii is a Ph.D. candidate in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Stanford University. His research focuses on various aspects of cultural and institutional influences on team performance. He is currently developing new models to capture and distinguish the cultural factors that emerging in global projects. He received a MS in Architecture at the Science University of Tokyo and a MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University.
Yan Jin is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Southern California and Director of USC IMPACT Laboratory <http://impact.usc.edu/>, and a visiting Professor of Civil Engineering Department at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Naval Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1988. Prior to joining USC faculty in the Fall of 1996, Dr. Jin was a Senior Research Scientist at Stanford University. His current research interests include design methodology, agent-based collaborative engineering, and computational organization modeling. Dr. Jin is a recipient of National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1998), TRW Excellence in Teaching Award (2001), Best Paper in Human Information Systems (5th World Multi-Conference on Systemic, Cybernetics and Informatics, 2001), and Xerox Best Paper Award (ASME International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology, 2002).
Raymond E. Levitt is a Professor of Civil Engineering Department at Stanford University, a Professor, by Courtesy, Medical Informatics, an Academic director of Stanford Advanced Project Management Executive Program, and a Director of Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects (CRGP) <http://crgp.stanford.edu>. His Virtual Design Team (VDT) research group has developed new organization theory, methodology and computer simulation tools to design organizations that can optimally execute complex, fast-track, projects and programs. VDT is currently being extended to model and simulate service/maintenancework processes such as health care delivery and offshore platform maintenance. Ongoing research by Professor Levitt’s Virtual Design Team research group attempts to model and simulate the significant “institutional costs” that can arise in global projects due to substantial differences in goals, values and cultural norms among project stakeholders.
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Horii, T., Jin, Y. & Levitt, R.E. Modeling and Analyzing Cultural Influences on Project Team Performance. Comput Math Organiz Theor 10, 305–321 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-005-6283-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-005-6283-1