Edinburgh Napier University

  Design/methodology/approach – Themes emerging from 40 interviews of project practitioners based in Brazil, China, Greece, Nigeria, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States are integrated with literature evidence to design a survey instrument. 1313 practitioner survey responses from the eight countries are analysed using multi-group, structural equation modelling.

Findings – Ten project success/failure indicators (PSFIs) are found to reduce to two main project success/failure factors (PSFFs): (1) project control and extra-organisational goals, and (2) project team management/development and intra-organisational goals. Beyond gender and age, it is found that the level of importance attached to both of these factors is affected by differences in Hofstede’s dimensions of individualism, masculinity, power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Research limitations – The snowballing method used to gather survey data reduces generalisability.

Practical implications – The results reveal insights on how best to match culturally-diverse project participants to project characteristics. They also increase knowledge on the likely perceptual differences among culturally-diverse individuals within projects.

Originality/value – This research contributes to the literature on culture in project environments by defining a factor structure of multiple-dependent project success/failure indicators and increases insight on how specific cultural dimensions may impact on the perception of the so-defined project success/failure factors.