Improving the cooperation of a mixed US-Turkish project team

In times of globalization, countries all over the world have transformed to an interdependent economic system. Especially rising economic powers, such as Turkey, and the largest economic powers in the world, like the USA, face an increasing collaboration due to their economic importance to each other.
The aim of this paper is the improvement of the cooperation of a mixed US-Turkish team by giving the reader an understanding about these two apparently very different countries.
In order to understand the foundation of a cultural comparison a definition of culture is given. Then, some general information about the countries is provided. After explaining Hofstede’s cultural theory the Turkish and US American culture are analyzed according to three of Hofstede’s dimensions. Due to the scope of this paper and because of the aim of giving not only surface information it focuses on the dimensions ‘Power distance’, ‘Long-term orientation’ and ‘Individualism vs. Collectivism’ which are most important to a project team. These dimensions show not only differences but also similarities as a common base. Personal experiences and quotes from scientific literature underline the differences or equalities.