COLLABORATION
AND CRISIS IN MEGA PROJECTS: A STUDY IN CROSS CORPORATE CULTURE CONFLICT AND
ITS RESOLUTION
Karen Smits
FIA Business School, São Paulo, Brazil
E-mail: Karen@crossculturework.com
Robert A. Brownlow
Bakke Graduate University, Dallas, Texas, USA
E-mail: rbrow2@aol.com
Submission: 20/10/2016
Revision: 04/11/2016
Accept: 10/11/2016
ABSTRACT
Projects typically involve multiple partners coming together to
form a temporary project organization that manages project execution. Partners
begin their relationship with soaring aspirations to collaborate but as they
move through the project’s various phases and they experience friction,
especially those related to cultural clashes, their noble aspirations succumb
to creeping, if not full blown, crisis. This, in turn, creates lost
relationality and compromised execution. Thus, the question: How
can project partners manage the integration of differing corporate cultures and
work processes to produce the most effective and efficient outcomes? Using the mega project of the Panama Canal
Expansion Program, the authors explore how a multicultural project organization
moved from dysfunctional relationality to synergistic, self-reinforcing,
collaboration. A “Collabyrinth” (Smits, 2013) model explores how participants
learned to collaborate in a holding environment saturated with layers of
complex cultural difference. The
Collabyrinth is composed of six comingling elements: (1) Conflicting
Conditions, (2) Submarining, (3) Seeking Consent, (4) Storytelling, (5) Crafting
Reciprocal Relations, and (6) Synergizing. Certain aspects of crisis management
are employed to explain intra-collabyrinth dynamics. Those aspects are: (1)
Coming of the Forerunners, (2) Acuteness in the Now, (3) Resolution Seeking,
and (4) Constructing Relationality. Specific examples of the collabyrinth
journey are provided and recommendations are made to harness the positive power
of cross-corporate culture collaboration.
Keywords: cross-cultural
collaboration, crisis management, collabyrinth model, conflict resolution,
Panama Canal Expansion Program
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1.
Theoretical Perspective
Our philosophical grounding for this
study fits within the constructionist ontological and interpretive
epistemological traditions. In these traditions, social realities are seen as
actively constructed, culturally and historically contingent, and laden with
moral, public and personal values (SCHWARTZ-SHEA; YANOW, 2012; YBEMA et al.,
2009). The constructionist-interpretive methodology informs the various methods
through which data for this study was gathered. Central to this approach is
that field researchers are ‘up close and personal’ to better understand the
actors’ lived experiences (i.e., phenomenology).
The first author conducted an
ethnographic study of the Panama Canal Expansion Program. The second author
conducted a phenomenological-ethnographic study of school district disruption
resulting from a work stoppage.
Ethnographic research shows that complex case studies can generate
in-depth knowledge for theory building (WELCH; PIEKKARI; PLAKOYIANNAKI;
PAAVILAINEN, 2011).
From July 2009 to July 2010 the
first author interviewed and observed the project participants’ daily practices
and documented their lived experiences. From June 2006 to May 2007, the second
author conducted interviews, focus groups, and surveys to research how
dysfunctional collaboration and functional difference contributed to crisis and
its resolution. The focus here is on collaboration in the Expansion Program
supported by the underlying influence of crisis.
1.2.
Context
The project owner, the Panama Canal
Authority (further abbreviated as ACP), initiated the Expansion Program in 2006
to expand and modernize the Panama Canal with an estimated budget of US $5.25
billion. A key component in this mega project was the design and construction
of the Atlantic and Pacific locks (known as the Third Set of Locks project).
With this set of wider locks the
Panama Canal became accessible to very large container ships. To execute the
construction of these locks, ACP contracted the consortium Grupo Unidos por el
Canal (abbreviated as GUPC), consisting Spanish constructor Sacyr, Italian
Impregilo (one of the world’s top-ranking construction groups, family owned
Belgium dredging company Jan de Nul and Cusa, Panama’s leading construction
company.
1.3.
Mega Projects and Collaboration
Mega projects are complex
organizational systems composed of multiple, distinctive corporate cultures.
These variables create challenges that are exacerbated by geographical distance
and differing execution strategies must be dispersed across a complex a dense
network of relationships (SCOTT; LEVITT; ORR, 2011). This often creates a highly
unstable, conflicting context in which the project’s work must be accomplished.
Heifetz and Linsky (2002) call this
condition a “holding environment,” meaning that work takes place within an
environment that shapes its execution and the relationality of its project
partners.
Project work is inherently a network
of complex interactions informed by each partners’ culture and established work
practices (BRESNEN;
MARSHALL, 2011; ENGWALL, 2003; GRABHER, 2002; VAN MARREWIJK; CLEGG; PITSIS;
VEENSWIJK, 2008). When conflictive, these
interactions create tensions that imperil collaboration (JOSSERAND;
CLEGG; KORNBERGER; PITSIS, 2004).
Hence, project managers are obliged
to emphasize inter-organizational collaboration (DIETRICH; ESKEROD; DARLCHER;
SANHAWALIA, 2010; HARTMANN; BRESNEN, 2011; VEENSWIJK; BERENDSE, 2008). Project
managers with backgrounds in diverse national and organizational cultures tend
to develop and promote collaborative governance practices (CLEGG, et al.,
2002).
Those without such backgrounds tend
to experience collaboration challenges when integrating work processes extant
in different corporate cultures. That is to say that limited experience with
the diversity of thought, problem solving, and working together can inhibit
one’s insights, flexibility, and option-seeking thus making it difficult to
effectively work with others. It is a form of corporate ethnocentrism that
inhibits effective collaboration.
Originating from the Latin root
words com and laborare, collaboration means ‘to work together.’ Alan Mulally,
former CEO of Ford Motor Company, used the phrase, “Working Together” as a
mantra for developing the 767 when serving as CEO of Boeing Commercial
Airplanes and used it again for leading Ford’s revival (HOFFMAN, 2012).
Dietrich, Eskerod, Durocher and
Sandhawalia (2010) define collaboration as “a recursive process where people or
organizations work together in an intersection of common goals by sharing
knowledge, learning and building consensus” (p. 60).
Himmelman (1996)
is more pragmatic, defining collaboration as, “a process in which organizations
exchange information, alter activities, share resources and enhance each
other’s capacity for mutual benefit and a common purpose by sharing risks,
responsibilities and rewards” (p. 22). We define collaboration as a journey in
which people learn to productively and harmoniously work together to achieve a
desired end.
“Cooperation” and “coordination”
approximate collaboration but are not its equal. Short-term, informal interactions
characterize “cooperation,” as when organizations maintain a relationship to
share information at low levels of risk. Coordination requires more commitment
and formal structures than cooperation.
Gittell (2005, 2016) has written
extensively on relational coordination, a theory suggesting the relationship
between high performance and relationality. Collaboration requires an ongoing,
strong relationship between organizations that allows them to trust one another
and to share knowledge and resources. Collaboration is the strongest form of
working together relationship between organizations (KEAST et
al., 2007).
In holding environments filled with
ambiguity and conflict participants must navigate through their differing work
practices. Sackman and Friesl (2007:145)
argue that “when people join a project team, their individual identities are
still rooted in their various home organizations, their profession and other
groupings that they take part of in their life.” Actors enter an environment
wherein they must integrate their differing organizational cultures and work
practices and let go of some of their cultural assumptions and methods.
Differences in national and
organizational culture challenge collaboration in project organizations because
seemingly straightforward practices and assumptions may be executed differently
in the various project partner organizations (HUXHAM,
1996) and in national cultures
that differ from their own. While the literature recognizes collaboration as a
key element in effective project management, it is unclear on the importance of
partners contributing their own unique corporate cultural perspectives to the
project effort.
Most research on collaboration in
project management focuses on elements that enhance collaboration among and
between project partners. Pitsis et al. (2004),
noted essential elements like trust, leadership, culture, and power for
achieving collaboration.
Cicmil and Marshall (2005)
studied “two-stage tendering,” which aims to improve team integration in the
construction sector. They noted that two-stage tendering does not solve
problems stemming from contradictions among and between partners’ competing
cultures and deteriorating collaboration (CICMIL;
MARSHALL, 2005).
Dietrich et al. (2010)
identified factors influencing the quality of collaboration in multi-partner
projects. These factors included trust between partners, commitment to the
project, cultural proximity and expectations. Scholars rarely address how
project participants manage their efforts to collaborate nor do they reveal how
the culture (i.e.. holding environment) of the project organization shapes
participants’ daily interactions (Jones;
Lichtenstein, 2008).
In the context of cross-cultural
collaboration, where multiple cultures interact and organizational processes
merge, actors draw on their past cultural experiences to develop new
understandings and processes that enable them to make sense of and live in a
world where change is ongoing (BOYACIGILLER
ET AL., 2004; HIBBERT; HUXHAM, 2010).
Sometimes this comes through an
epiphany. Sometimes it is forced through the pain of crisis. In either case, it
is through repeated interactions that project participants develop new common
understandings redefining their collaborative relationship (PHILIPS;
LAWRENCE; HARDY, 2000). Thus, collaboration in a
project organization is not just about discarding old meanings and practices,
it is also about negotiating new meanings and then developing new practices
that adjust existing work processes (HARTMANN;
BRESNEN, 2011) .
Studying how this process works can
enhance our knowledge of the complexity underling collaboration and identifying
crisis forerunner events that may impede collaboration.
1.4.
Holding Environments and Crisis
Some holding environments are more
vulnerable to crisis than others. Mega projects are a case in point and
especially mega projects that are layered with cultural difference (e.g.,
corporate, national, professional/functional). The evolution of crisis hampers
normal operations, potentially harms the reputations of project leaders, and
receives negative press and governing agency scrutiny.
Generally, there are six phases to
managing crisis (BROWNLOW, 2007; 2011). These phases are comingling, do not
necessarily occur as independent or linear events, and are described below.
These phases are described below and comingling and do not necessarily occur as
independent or linear events.
1.4.1. Phase I: Coming of the Forerunners
Forerunners are warnings that
precede crisis. Successfully identifying forerunners can be challenging because
the non-linear dynamics of co-mingling “unique” and “routine” warnings
challenge detection. Crisis symptomology is complex and intermingled with
multiple components in the holding environment. This is made more complex by
corporate and national diversity factors that frame relationality. Successfully
identifying and mitigating forerunners resolves issues before they become
crisis (e.g., recognizing relationships are dysfunctional before they implode
and bring the project to a halt).
1.4.2. Phase II: Acuteness in the
Now
“Acuteness in the Now” is the
persistent, sometimes volatile expansion of negative events accompanied by
concerted pressure for immediate resolution. It includes such unpleasantries as
negative press and unwanted help from overseeing agencies. Working together
relationships are tested and trust becomes a major issue as the holding
environment becomes saturated with dissonance, dysfunction and aanxiety.
1.4.3. Phase III: Technical
Resolution
Technical resolution ends the
immediate crisis and prepares for returning to normal operations. In the case
of relationship crisis, managing aftermath can become its own creeping crisis
because it creates stressor and control issues that require leaders to defend
themselves against charges of incompetence and/or insensitivity. This was
clearly the case in the Panama Canal Expansion Program. It is also often true
in labor disputes.
1.4.4. Phase IV: Post Mortem
Post mortem, sometimes called
“lessons learned” or “after action review,” reveals human or process weaknesses
that caused the crisis and assesses how such weakness can be mitigated to
prevent a recurrence (e.g., learning about cultural difference before being
thrust into a mega project layered with cultural complexity).
Post mortem can reveal information
that humbles leaders. Humbling comes from questions about why certain warning
signs were missed or why mitigating action was not taken sooner or why it was
not more decisive or effective. Lessons Learned commonly morph into lessons
recorded and stored on someone’s hard drive, never to be seen again.
1.4.5. Phase V: Relationship
Recovery/Reconciliation
Relationship Recovery/Reconciliation
involves five integrated, interdependent, and collaborative actions that
re-member a fragmented social and political capital network. Reconciliation
begins with some form of heuristic reflective practice wherein there is the
recognition that relationships must improve for the project to be completed
within its cost and schedule parameters (BROWNLOW, 2011). Phase V crisis
management corresponds to seeking consent in the Collabyrinth journey.
1.4.6. Phase VI: Renewal
For our purposes, renewal is defined
as reconstructing the dysfunctional social and political capital network into a
more harmonious, synergistic, collaborative project organization. More
specifically, it is moving away from the disruption of dysfunction and toward
the synergy of collaboration. Renewal is the end result of synergy.
As noted above, for the purposes of
this study, and working with the Collabyrinth, we have integrated and
synthesized these six phases into the following components, Coming of the
Forerunners, Acuteness in the Now, Resolution Seeking (reconciliation), and
Constructing Relationality.
1.5.
The Expansion Program
Collabyrinth
The project organization of the
Panama Canal Expansion Program was a maze of different cultures (e.g.,
national, corporate, professional). Work practices represented each partner’s
distinctive interests, perspectives, and management structures (SMITS, VAN
MARREWIJK, VEENSWIJK, 2015). This complex holding environment required
interactants to combine, and eventually integrate, their culturally preferred
processes and to let go of some of their traditional methods.
Each had to negotiate their
differences to reach consensus on deployment strategies. Negotiations required
project participants to reflect upon and modify their corporate cultural
preferences to enhance the effectiveness of the project organization. This
reflected a form of group reflective process (BOUD; DOCHERTY, 2006).
In essence, project partners were
homogeneous in their project management values and basic work principles.
Transparency, efficiency, and accountability were paramount. Unfortunately,
applying these overarching values to daily work practices initially failed.
When project partners actually began working together (i.e., collaborating),
their corporate cultures collided. Their level of authority, position in the
hierarchy, identity and ways of operating were challenged when opposing
viewpoints generated friction among and between the project participants and
actors frantically searched for harmony and stability by seeking consent.
The journey towards collaboration is
a collabyrinth (Figure 1). The
neology of ‘collaboration’ and ‘labyrinth’ reflects the complexity of
collaboration. Participants must find their way through a complex holding
environment filled with treacherous terrain.
Figure
1: The Collabyrinth
As noted above, the Collabyrinth
entails six interconnected practices (not phases) that lead to collaboration:
(1) conflicting conditions, (2) seeking consent, (3) crafting reciprocal
relations, (4) submarining, (5) storytelling, and (6) synergizing (see Table 1
for detailed explanation).
Like the phases of crisis management,
these practices involve interactions that participants employ to make sense of
how they can better work together to achieve the project’s mission. The six
practices manifest how participants manage cultural complexity in the project’s
holding environment and how their management of that complexity impacts
subsequent working together relationships when friction occurs.
These practices are evolutionarily
dynamic. That is, as people continuously translate and negotiate these
practices they are simultaneously searching for ways through the collabyrinth.
Further, like crisis management, the collabyrinth journey is based on
transformational learning through reflective practice (MEZIROW, 1991). Put
another way, participants reflect on what they are doing and, if needed, modify
their behavior to effectively negotiate the power struggles that are inherently
part of working together. This can also be seen as a “drilling through the
layers of collaboration process,” as noted in Figure 2.
Figure
2: Crisis Management and the Collabyrinth
2. CRISIS FORERUNNERS HINDERING THE COLLABYRINTH JOURNEY
Some practices hinder collaboration
while others encourage it. Those that hinder can be considered forerunners to
crisis. Noted below are the major conflicting conditions that were forerunners
to crisis in the Panama Canal Expansion Program.
2.1.
“Suspicious”
Tender
On July 8, 2009, during a public
ceremony held in Panama, the consortium Grupo
Unidos por el Canal (GUPC) won the tender for the design and construction
of locks on the Atlantic and Pacific side of the canal. This was the main
component in the Panama Canal Expansion Program. GUPC, a temporary project
organization overseeing the construction, was comprised of four companies:
Spanish constructor Sacyr, Italian-based engineering company Impregilo, family
owned Belgium dredging company Jan de Nul, and Panama’s leading construction
company CUSA.
GUPC’s project bid gained the
highest technical score and offered the lowest price (approximately US$ 3.2 B).
The proposal attracted immediate concern because it was dramatically lower than
the amount the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) had reserved for this aspect of the
project. Frequently, proposed prices for construction projects in the
infrastructure sector are higher than the budgeted price (FLYVBJERG;
HOLM; BUHL, 2002).
It was alleged that GUPC had ‘left
money on the table’ and project partners felt angst over the “suspicious” bid.
The consortium was in uproar (FIELDNOTES, 2009). This forerunner became a
creeping crisis exacerbated by the project partners’ differing motives for
participation. It overshadowed how the expansion project was managed by
exerting tremendous cost performance pressure.
2.2.
Culturally Complex Holding
Environment
The work environment was composed of
multiple corporate cultures, complete with different work processes,
hierarchies, and management styles. This was exacerbated by differing national
cultures and related communication styles. An engineer on the Atlantic side of
the project, noted:
I have worked in many joint ventures
before, but here you can clearly see a difference: the Italians and the
Spaniards work a lot different than the Belgians. They are less efficient. Yes,
they work more hours a day, but they lose a lot of time chatting with each other.
Also, they communicate with drama, it’s like a play in a theatre, and they take
long breaks. That kind of stuff...
(INTERVIEW, May 2010).
In terms of the corporate culture
conflict, ‘Bart’ expresses his opinion about each partner in the project
organization:
Sacyr is simply weak and I think
they have very little international experience. Okay, they have done some
projects in Latin America, but outside of that, nothing I think. Impregilo is a
firm with extensive international experience and they are relatively well
organized. Of course, they are a bunch of mafiosos… Jan de Nul, well, here you
immediately see the difference between ‘the northerners’ and ‘the southerners’:
we go straight to our goal; we don’t walk around the bush (INTERVIEW, June 2010).
“Jerry” underscores the corporate culture
differences:
Jan de
Nul’s people are - they’re very different from the Sacyr or Impregilo or the
CUSA’s people. They’re very different in their approach to the work and their
demeanor is just much different that of the others (INTERVIEW,
June 2010).
Initially, participants disagreed on
process issues but quickly realized that regardless of their corporate culture
preferences, they needed process consensus to achieve the project’s mission.
Participants came to understand that layers of cultural complexity were
impeding the project’s execution strategy. Table 1 describes central components
of their collabyrinth journey and its relationship to our synthesized,
integrated crisis management process.
Table
1: The Collabyrinth Journey and Crisis Management in the Panama Canal Expansion
Program
|
Collabyrinth
Components |
Description |
Illustration |
|
Conflicting
Conditions |
Actors become aware
of conflictive “corporate ethnocentric” practices that obstruct collaboration. |
Discord over bid
proposal, cultural differences, roles and authority created complexity
and friction. |
|
In crisis management:
Coming of the forerunners, early warnings of impending crisis. |
Perceived slights and lost
relationality resulting in poor collaboration and reduced effectiveness. |
|
|
Submarining |
Participants “clung”
to their preferential way of executing work processes rather than embrace new
ways and means. |
Marking boundaries and defending them,
acting autonomously and “below the surface”. To cope with
sustained conflict, participants distanced themselves by focusing on their
portion of the contract and their idiosyncratic knowledge and skills. Reliance on their
corporately defined comfort zone prevented process integration, creating
angst between project partners. |
|
In crisis management:
Acuteness in the now with the accompanying persistent, sometimes volatile
expansion of negative events accompanied by extreme pressure for immediate
resolution. |
Negative press and intervention from
government agencies and the press project progress slows. Stressor and
control issues required leaders to defend themselves against charges
of incompetence and/or insensitivity. |
|
|
Seeking Consent |
Participants begin
searching for work processes and decision criteria that they can share in
common and can agree to. |
Defining cultural
differences, and sharing their passion for their respective professions. |
|
From Crisis
Management: Resolution Seeking/Reconciliation. |
Initiation of
reconciliation behaviors to improve relationality. |
|
|
Storytelling |
Participants use
stories to emphasize the project’s importance and the need for collaboration. |
Participants tell
stories to share examples and forge common ground. |
|
From crisis
management: Ongoing resolution seeking. |
Forming “Emergent We”
emblematic of high levels of collaboration. |
|
|
Crafting Reciprocal
Relations |
Chronic dysfunction
creates a strong desire for collaboration so the project can be completed. |
Organizing activities
and boundary spanning roles are implemented. |
|
From crisis
management, Constructing relationality through dense social and political
capital networks. |
Laying the
foundations for synergy, which creates renewal. |
|
|
Synergizing |
Collaborative
learning takes place as work processes and positive social and political
capital are generated through integrated work processes. Cross cultural code
switching becomes a prominent aspect of working together. |
Dysfunction drives
actors to adapt best practices for project completion. Project achieves high
levels of effectiveness and efficacy through productive working together
relationships. |
|
From Crisis
Management: End phase of constructing relationality resulting in high levels
of effective collaboration. |
Organizational
renewal. |
3. CRITICAL PRACTICES FOR CONSTRUCTING COLLABORATION
Once participants realized that
working together relationships had to be less contentious they needed to
determine how they could construct better relationality. Below we noted
practices employed by the project’s participants.
3.1.
Seeking Consent
Seeking consent is the concerted
desire, coupled to concerted effort, to improve collaboration. In the Panama
Canal Expansion Program seeking consent saw participants reflect on and modify
their known and comfortable work practices to forge consensus-driven
relationships based on overarching common interest.
This was a negotiated process that
included respecting and embracing the cultural complexity in their holding
environment and understanding how comingling networks of social capital work in
multicultural contexts. Project participants had to continuously reframe their
individual corporate work practices and interpersonal interactions to make
sense of a fluxing holding environment filled with coalitions. Putnam (2000,
2004) refers to such coalitions as dense networks of reciprocal relationships
based on shared understandings (which is exactly what participants attempted to
do and is also a crucial element in crisis management).
Seeking consent requires shared
understandings and recognition of common interests. Dysfunction forced partners
to express their feelings about their experiences in a dysfunctional holding
environment and to make a complex, conflictive circumstance understandable to
them. Seeking consent was a way to end the pain of crisis. Morris (2003) notes
that to be in crisis is to be in pain.
In the emotional process of meaning making participants used several
communicative practices that included storytelling and dialogue.
3.2.
Storytelling and Dialogue
As
noted in Table 1, stories were introduced into the project’s holding
environment to promote relationality. Storytelling created new perspectives on
work practices by recognizing participants’ individual experiences and used
that recognition to reshape their collaboration through consensus. Partners
told unifying stories about how their roles connected to each.
This
led to an “Emergent We” wherein a new, “larger” group arose from interactions
among the “smaller” groups that were not cross culturally engaged. Brownlow
(2007, 2011) has defined “The Emergent We” as a community transcendent in its
commitment to its members and its mission. The Emergent We can be seen as a
form of negotiated culture (CLAUSEN, 2007).
Metaphors
and dialogue were key to forming an Emergent We. Metaphors were used to safely
describe thoughts and feeling about events in the holding environment. Dialogue
made storytelling interactive. The meaning-seeking nature of dialogue caused
participants to “know,” and know that they knew together.
Agreed
upon collaboration emerged from “knowing” as people told the truth about their
experiences within their part of the relationship network and what those
experiences meant for them. Being willing to tell the truth about one’s
experience carried the responsibility to listen to and accepting the experience
of others as being valid.
Story
and dialogue revealed that project partners had an event-filled, coherent story
that led them to present circumstance (e.g., forerunners, acuteness in the now,
seeking consent, constructing relationality, synergy). Those in the story were
connected by its drama and had to discern what was essential in themselves and
their organization as the worked in a
challenging holding environment.
Dialogue
crafted reciprocal relations through synergy-seeking which ensured that no
partner was marginalized. It became a distinguishing feature of project
organization governance. This created faith in a future shaped by
collaboration. Wheatley (2003) discusses faith in the future and coming
together to build connection, friendship and collaboration.
However,
there were still challenges because project partners maintained internal
associations of strong friendships (social capital) between persons of similar
position and profession within their group but treated other project partners
with suspicion. The genuine test of friendliness and collaboration is not in
how intra corporate culture members treat each other, but in how they treat
others outside their culture who have differing views on important issues (REEVES,
2004).
Participants’ motivation to build a productive, working
together relationship corresponded to their professional need to collaborate.
Members of the project organization felt the emotional necessity to develop
good relations with their co-workers. Their drive to collaborate generated
engagement in work and social activities that helped them to know one another
better and to learn from each other. This strengthened the nature of their
collaboration and encouraged open sharing of information and knowledge (DIETRICH
et al., 2010; WHEATLEY, 2003, REEVES, 2004; DARLING; ROSS, 2000).
3.3.
Crafting Reciprocal
Relationships
Crafting
reciprocity affirmed the worth of each partners’ contribution to the project
and promoted an emotionally healthy work environment. This is consistent with
the work of Gittell, (2016); Hodson, (2001, 2005); Weymes, (2003); and
Wheatley, (2003).
In
an emotionally healthy work environment each project partner reinforces trust
and interdependence through collaborative problem solving. In the Panama Canal
Expansion Program, collaboration became a pragmatic process wherein project
partners mitigated the dissonance inherent cross cultural collaboration and
over time obviated the need for submarining, or what Towers Perrin (2003) call
“rational endurance.”
In
essence, partners were building social and political capital by building social
trust.
3.4.
Build Social Trust
Trust
is essential to the collabyrinth journey and is dependent on situational and
affective factors that influence how actors commit to their organizations
(e.g., the project organization) and to each other (GITTELL, 2005, 2016). Trust
evolved from execution strategies that were sensitive to the tenor of
relationships among and between partners.
Seeking
consent and crafting reciprocal relations framed the cognitive and affective
character of the relationship network within the holding environment. Moving to
this point in the collabyrinth was based on the antecedent experience with one
another (e.g., from conflicting conditions to seeking consent). Participants
were willing to trust enough to collaborate so each partner’s unique
contribution can be realized and reach synergy.
Nearly
two decades ago Darling and Russ (2000) argued that organizations are no longer
built on economic force alone, but on trusting, collaborative relationships.
This suggests the importance of balancing tasks and relationships, which is
challenging in contentious, culturally complex environments. Collaborative
practices overcame perceived inequities and the negative politics (e.g., the
forerunners of crisis as in the original tender process) associated with mega
projects (e.g., the Seattle Tunnel Project or Boston’s “Big Dig”). This made
social trust a necessary practice for constructing the reciprocal relations
necessary for creating synergy.
Trust
influenced the holding environment’s social structure, the exchanges therein,
and sense of justice as evidenced in shared events especially in regard to
decision making. Authority hierarchy and spatial distance positively correlated
with organizational politics and spatial distance factors were consistent with
Van Marrewijk and Smits (2014).
3.5.
Nurturing Sustainable
Relationships
There is no collaboration without
sustainable relationships. Sustainable relationships reinforce the relational
coordination connecting project partners to one another through understood
rules, behaviors, and purpose. These elements were critical to collaborating on
the project’s execution strategy. Sustainable relationships evolve from dense networks of reciprocal social and
political capital.
They
require dependability and accountability. Dependability is being present to
others through the good and bad times. Accountability is being responsible for
manifesting personal and professional commitment to collaboration and to
mitigating submarining/rational endurance. Links between sustainable
relationships and project identity were affirmed.
Synergy
maintained the goodwill necessary for sustained collaboration within the
project organization. Systemic solidarity flowed from dense relationships that
were connected through social and political capital. The inference is that
social and political capital comes from sustained positive reciprocal relations
(i.e. collaboration).
Synergy forged positive social and political connections
among and between project partners and over time partners formed friendships of
varying strength and intensity. The power of relationality was in the actions
leaders chose to take to promote
sustained collaboration. This made collaboration a choice. Participants chose
to participate or not to participate - which was emphasized by seeking consent.
Social and work events acknowledged individuals and project partners as being
more than their work product alone.
Ultimately, synergy was driven by realizing the
criticality of the project’s mission to make a positive difference. This drove
accountability, job satisfaction and trust. How a collaborative relationship
network actually works in cross-cultural projects is determined by the layered
elements of its culture and is sustained through interdependence, reciprocity
and cultural intelligence (LIVERMORE; ANG, 2015; LIVERMORE, 2011).
Engagement
manifested ongoing, responsive learning based on antecedent experience, as
noted above. High priority was placed on nurturing the trust and collective
intelligence for collaborating in a multicultural social structure within an
unstable holding environment. The Panama Canal Expansion Program suggests that
social structure influences collective knowing and mission performance and
therefor cohesive and ongoing.
In
the conflicting conditions stage of the collabyrinth journey the structural
embeddedness of corporate culture influenced execution-oriented tasks, whereas
relationality in seeking consent and crafting reciprocity influenced
innovation-oriented tasks. This would seem to emphasize that the Expansion
Program ended up being about relationships and results. Indeed, we suspect that
the journey through the collabyrinth is about forming relationships to get to
results.
Those
with process knowledge to influence how resources were used had to integrate
tacit and explicit knowledge with that of other projects partners. Sharing
project partners’ tacit and explicit knowledge promoted genuine collaboration
based on crafting trust and reciprocity.
4. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Future research may prove helpful in
understanding how cross-corporate cultural conflict works in mega
projects, especially those layered with cultural complexity. For example:
(1) To what
extent, if any, do Bolman and Deal’s (2013, 2014) concept of organizational
frames influence collaboration when each corporate culture has a predominant
frame that differs from the other partner organizations?
(2) How
do Edgar Schein’s conceptualizations of Humble Inquiry (2013) and Humble
Consulting (2016) relate to seeking consent and forming reciprocity in the
collabyrinth journey?
(3) If
collaboration depends on ongoing engagement through sustainable relationships,
what are the tools most critical to developing and maintaining sustained
engagement and are they generalizable to most project endeavors?
5. CONCLUSION
Work is where we spend most of our
time and invest in most of our relationships. The Collabyrinth journey mints
the social and political capital necessary to achieve results that are shaped
by a unifying theme that builds faith and hope in actions that build a better
future. In this case, that better future was the increased flow of trade and
goodwill among and between the global trading partners.
When faced with the challenge of
executing a mega project in a culturally complex holding environment partners
must continually re-examine the thematic unity of their project organization’s
culture. Partners must understand that a part of their individual corporate
culture must give way to the “Emergent We” formed by the collabyrinth journey.
Execution
strategy must respect each project partner’s sources of legitimacy. Ignoring
sources of legitimacy undermines the social and political capital structures
within the holding environment and can lead to conflict and crisis. Conflict
and some level of crisis are inevitable in any project endeavor. It is
therefore important to, from the commencement of the project, to recognize the
symptoms of crisis and have mechanisms in place for crafting reciprocal
relations so partners can construct the relational foundation to resolve issues
based on relational values and desired project outcomes. Laying this foundation
supports project partners’ efforts to reach synergy, the ultimate goal of
intercultural collaboration, and to achieve effective and efficient results.
Therein lies the answer to our research question. Figure 2 maps the integration
of crisis management and the Collabyrinth journey.
The
complexity of mega projects politicizes execution strategy due to competing
priorities among and between project partners. This requires adaptive changes
that are entwined with stories, metaphors, and dialogues about the past,
present, and future. Project organization memory is not obliterated by change
but kept alive through adaptation that honors the network of relationships that
brought the project to its present point in time. Honoring that network, and
those within it, drives the synergy that makes working together for something
beyond ourselves worthwhile.
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