Although many researchers have studied global project management, surprisingly, the concept of a global project has been slow to emerge. Certainly, many researchers have emphasized the pressures and challenges of project management in foreign markets. Yet, there has been far less study of the globalization of the projects themselves.

By identifying global projects as a distinct class of projects with recurring characteristics and challenges, we hope to inspire other researchers of project management, organizations and international business to join us in exploring this new and exciting research frontier.

How are Global Projects Similar to Traditional Projects?

All projects - global or otherwise - share a number of basic characteristics that are distinctive of the project mode of organization. For example, projects typically involve:

temporary organizational structures,

unique, non-routine products,

high coordination costs associated with fast-tracking work,

time vs. quality trade-offs,

simultaneous structuring and operations,

networks of cooperating organizations,

teams that are "learning disabled" because they disband.

How are Global Projects Unique from Traditional Projects?

Global projects are unique from traditional projects because their managers have to cope with at least seven critical dimensions of physical and psychic distance.

Physical Distance

geographical,

time-zone,

Psychic Distance

linguistic,

emotional,

cultural,

normative,

regulative.

These different dimensions of distance give rise to a host of coordination and transaction costs. Physical distance causes latencies in communication, human travel, and resource shipment between globally-distributed participants. Psychic distance results in misjudgments, misunderstandings, and conflicts between participants who do not share the same "thought worlds". Overall, the different dimensions of distance result in substantial:

money costs,

time costs,

relational friction between participants, and

reputational damage when things go wrong.

The Challenge of Global Projects

Large, complex global projects to develop infrastructure, industrial, residential and commercial facilities face all of the same coordination and integration challenges of scale, complexity and multi-skilled human resources as projects built in, and by participants from, a single country. In addition, they must successfully confront and address the challenges posed by physical distance, and by conflicts between the values, cultural norms, work practices, economic, legal and political institutions of participating investors, firms and cognizant government agencies from multiple national origins. The challenge of global projects lies in identifying and developing approaches, strategies and tools to shrink the dimensions of physical distance and to develop governance systems that harmoniously integrate participants with different languages, conventions and rule-systems. Thus, CRGP's research on global projects provides both an exciting new area of study for researchers to begin quantifying the economic impact of the dimensions of distance, and an exciting opportunity to improve the outcomes of multinational projects for the sponsors, investors, regulators, designers, builders and host communities involved.