Exploring Cultural Dimensions of Mexican Project Managers

Abstract

Research on multicultural management is extended. Much of the work is based on Hofstede's studies which address four cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1983). However, not much has been done focusing on project management and even less about the cultural dimensions of Mexican project managers. Octavio Paz in his prized novel Labyrinth of the Solitude (1976) and Samuel Ramos in his classic The Profile of Man and Mexican Culture (1951) have pointed out common traits associated to Mexicans like solitude, improvisation, and low self-esteem as. These do not happen to be the best qualities for project managers; therefore, the main purpose of this research is to explore and understand Mexican's project managers behavior under three specific cultural dimensions (Kets de Vries, 2001): private-public space orientation, competitive-collaborative relations, and monochronic-polychronic time orientation. A survey was applied to more than a hundred project managers. Results show that they are oriented towards public space and a collaborative relation rather than a competitive one. Although available literature on the subject refers that Mexicans have a polychronic time orientation (Moran, Harris & Moran, 2007), this belief was not supported by the data. The resulting orientations are discussed and compared with some project management competences described in the IPMA-ICB v3 Standard, trying to unveil an indication of Mexican project managers’ performance. The results shed light on Mexican and perhaps also Latin American project managers’ performance when working in multicultural teams.