Business Commons^™

Global Project Management - Chinese And American Cultural Differences, Kosin Chen, Gerhard Steinke

Communications of the IIMA

This paper investigates cultural differences between Chinese and American project managers in the IT industry through a pilot study of interviewing six professional project managers with qualitative and quantitative questions. The interview questions were developed to compare core Chinese values and cultural styles with American cultural styles. Initial results found that Chinese and American project managers in the IT industry have similar ideas regarding resistance to corruption but have differences toward the idea of trustworthiness, harmony, avoiding confrontation, and non- competition.