Crossing digital frontiers with cultural intelligence - a new paradigm for project managers

The evolution of the international business environment during the past twenty years due to globalization and the recent pandemic determined an increase in international projects requiring new organizational and individual capabilities to ensure project success. Cross-cultural competencies have been analyzed within the cross-cultural management field and organizational behavioral studies, with limited research available in the international project management field.

Through a comprehensive literature review, the current research outlines the gap within the project management domain concerning the need triggered by the pandemic to acquire cross-cultural and digital abilities among project professionals. We disclose how the existent globalized virtual environment differs from the new one triggered by the pandemic due to the forced shift to the digital setting with a strong impact on in-person interactions, verbal and non-verbal communication.

The originality of this work resides in the development of a novel project professional ability framework, including digital and cross-cultural components that emerged during the pandemic. Secondly, we propose the application of the identified cross-cultural and digital abilities within the project process group of the life cycle based on their scope and outputs.