The Culture Map: a useful tool for effective teamworking in small & diverse space projects?

抄録

Satellite projects bring together people from around the world. Cultural diversity can act as a catalyst for new technologies, yet multicultural teams are also vulnerable to cultural misunderstandings. These may negatively impact outcomes in a “Tower of Babel”-type scenario, especially in small and short-duration satellite projects. Members have limited time and resources to get to know each other before engaging in highly interdependent collaboration. The Culture Map, an analytical framework developed by Erin Meyer, is widely used to facilitate global teamwork in the corporate sphere. To the authors' knowledge, it has not yet been applied to small space-related projects. This paper presents one case study. The Culture Map is applied to a six-month university satellite design project, SEIMEI, comprising members from several countries. It is used in an interactive workshop among the team, after project completion. The workshop provides an accessible interface with relevant concepts in cross-cultural communication, for members of a small space project with a skillset concentrated in STEM. The objective of the analysis is to assess whether instances of smooth and non-smooth collaboration can be traced to cultural mechanisms, and whether outcomes can be enhanced via an understanding of such effects. The workshop focuses on building awareness of other cultures and individual perceptions, as a starting point for increasing the competence to deal with cultural differences. Lessons learnt are summarized, on the usefulness of The Culture Map for effective teamworking in small, culturally diverse space projects.