Crisis project management and the effect of national culture under crisis: A study from Turkey

Abstract

Crisis management is a critical function in organizations, specifically developing and emerging countries dealing with crisis in a minor and major scale frequently. Crisis in projects should be handled immediately and professionally in where the projects threat the reputation of a company. In traditional organizations, most common organizational behavior under crisis seems to take the risk with no supported mechanism. Project management based organizations practice risk management under project management methodologies, surprisingly we cannot find many companies are prepared for crisis. This behavior may associate with national culture, especially Hofstede's extensive work on national cultures. Therefore, this paper investigates cultural characteristics of Turkish business culture under crisis, and identifies the relationship with the natural culture dimensions and crisis project management. Two-stages survey questionnaires are employed and data analyzed using different statistical analysis. Our results indicate that power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientations are the national cultural dimensions observed significantly under crisis situations. Further investigation and recommendations are discussed.