Using scripts to address culturaland institutional challenges of global projectcoordination

摘要

Complex project work often is carried out by groups spanning national and cultural boundaries. This work is vulnerable to poorly understood coordination breakdowns that can lead to project delay and failure. We conceptualize coordination breakdowns tobe driven by differences in cognitive and behavioral scripts for coordination of the task. We propose that script differences emerge from cultural and institutional influences on role structures, temporal structures, and cues. This conceptualization integrates theory concerning cultural differences and institutions to understand coordination breakdowns. We also propose that coordination scripts draw on overarching sociocultural templates for coordination, and we provide examples from four cultures. Theconcepts of coordination scripts and cultural coordination templates open new avenues of research and benefit global project coordination and mitigation of risk.