Pathology and Modeling of the Impact of Cultural Elements of Institutional Environment on the Performance of Infrastructure Megaprojects

Megaprojects have an important effect in economic growth of countries. However many of them face problems, such as cost overrun, delay, financial failure, negative impact on environment and surrounding society. One the fundamental reasons of the poor performance of the megaprojects, is the impact of cultural factors of institutional environment of megaprojects. In this paper, the impact of various cultural factors on the performance of some of Iranian megaprojects in the fields of oil, gas, petrochemical plants, dams and urban tunnels are studied, the most of which are financed by public budget and are implemented by governmental (or public sector) contractors, so they may be considered as a temporary governmental organization.

This research was conducted by grounded theory strategy through interviewing of nineteen managers and senior engineers, and the cultural factors are identified and a model is presented for this impact.

The findings of the study shows that the cultural variety of staff and managers, cultural issues of the staff, and also the cultural differences of different nationalities and Iranian ethnics, such as difference in calendar of actors' origin countries (difference in weekends and new year holiday), staff solitary life while stationed in project camp and the personal and societal consequences of camp life (such as alcohol and drug use, prostitution, etc.) and their work-personal life conflict, cultural diversity of staff, religious and ethnic prejudice, local society culture, local workers culture and communication problems (language and accent differences) have impact on the performance of megaprojects

Difference in the culture, hase impact on performance and shall be considered in planning of these projects.

The interviewees were mainly experienced in oil, gas and petrochemical projects. Therfore there is a limitation for extending the results to all kind of projects which may be considered in future researches.

This paper concentrated on the impact of cultural issues on the performance of megaprojects and modeling the impact which has rarely been investigated in Iran.