The book is truly useful to anyone having a practical interest on project management (PM) practice as well as on global management regardless of their level of study, age, or position. It may be interesting for both undergraduate students holding an initial interest in international business or PM and graduate students in search of a more practical approach to PM practice. It is also an interesting tool for PM professionals who look more for a practical approach backed up with straight‐to‐the point pieces of theory and not the opposite.
Several operational aspects on international projects are well developed and detailed, both on the practical and theoretical side, by keeping a good balance and giving a rather ample variety of examples on the way globalization may impact on a given project. Leadership, knowledge, sustainability, and ethics all show a very practical approach that make the book easy reading and entertaining when linked to the real world of projects in distant locations where foreign nationals often hold very different expectations and views on what the future may bring – along with a number of implications.
The book clearly sets the importance to operate within the guidelines of a collaborative project enterprise (CPE) scheme whereas it highlights the relevance cross‐cultural management and cross‐cultural leadership intelligence hold for a project manager pretending to achieve international goals. The examples on potential international project scenarios with multiple global vendors, contractors, bankers, governments, and agencies give the reader a pretty good idea of what an international PM is about. Aspects to be taken into account by PM practitioners on nationalities, cultures, religions, as well as various perspectives on how to classify and interpret people's attitudes with respect to ethics, authority, chaos, change, uncertainty, lack of vision, and other complex issues are explained well and duly backed up by a good number of practical examples as well as some pieces of theory.
“The cost and progress management” chapter as well as the “risk management” chapter are, for example, two brief chapters that concentrate on explaining the various aspects of cost estimations, currency fluctuations, liability sharing, and risk filtering alternatives that give the reader a very good notion of these topics without having to go through an extensive volume of theory or examples of unnecessary complexity.
The book is, in general, very suitable for those who intend to better understand the complexities of the PM world from both a corporate view and a human perspective in an ever‐growing internationalized environment. It provides a current or future project manager with a potential reflective learning toolkit to work with as well as it may ease the way toward changing the way he perceives his immediate project context.
In brief, it is a good mix of examples on international projects along with cultural, operational, and managerial variables that make no other thing than enriching the book's contents.
