Managing Cultural Knowledge in Project Execution Heli Aramo-Immonen * Department of Industrial Management, Pori Unit Tampere University of Technology Pohjoisranta 11, 28100 Pori, Finland Helinä Hietaoja Department of Industrial Management, Pori Unit Tampere University of Technology Pohjoisranta 11, 28100 Pori, Finland Jari Jussila Department of Information Management and Logistics Tampere University of Technology Korkeakoulunkatu 8, 33720 Tampere, Finland Salvatore Ammirato Department of Mechanical, Energy and Management Engineering University of Calabria, via Bucci, 42\C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy * Corresponding author Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the factors through which the project implementation phase could be enhanced by cultural knowledge. The importance of studying this subject is that the exploitation of cultural knowledge (Hofstede & Hofstede 2005, Schwartz 1999, Ng et al. 2006, Hall 1976, Lewis 2006) and competence (Koskinen 2001) is still limited in the constantly increasing project-based business (Turner 1999, Artto et al. 2011, PMBOK 2004) in the international field. Two objectives exist in this study: understanding project complexity through the main challenges in project implementation and evaluating the impacts of the cultural factors behind them. We propose the multiple case study approach (Eisenhard & Graebner 2007, Yin 2014). The prominence of cultural knowledge in project implementation is difficult to determine, so the research design has exploratory features. Case project A was implemented in Sub- Saharan Africa and Case project B in the Near East. Interviewed managers worked either from distance and only visited the target country periodically or represented the perspective of an operational level manager working in the host country. The main cultural challenges that occurred in the projects are defined by these interviewees. This methodology gives evidence of the main challenges in the two case projects and clarifies the multiplicity of cultural issues in the project context. The importance of the