Transnational partner meetings in the face of the pandemic – the case of Strategic Partnerships implementing international projects

During the pandemic of COVID-19 the work on projects that require team working has changed. The face-to-face meetings, with the physical presence of participants, were moved to virtual space, enforcing the change in the way of project partners’ communication. The aim of the paper is to indicate the risks in the area of transnational project collaboration resulting from replacing face-to-face meetings with virtual mobility, from the skills’ development perspective. The authors of the paper explain the mechanisms of transnational projects and present how the change of communication towards purely virtual mode may affect the development of skills needed in effective project collaboration and transcultural communication. The discussion is based on the review of the available literature on the challenges of global project teams, the instrumental case study combined with the analysis of statistical data on organisations’ participation in European Strategic Partnerships within Erasmus+ Programme and authors’ experience gained through participant observation of transnational meetings conducted in the period of 2018-2020. Project partners’ participation in face-to-face meetings fosters their personal development and contributes to effective transnational collaboration. The great variety of cognitive, personal, social and communicational skills that face-to-face meetings elicit, and thus contribute to the quality of transnational project team collaboration in the multicultural environment depend on physical presence and interaction of partners. Replacing real presence of project partners with their virtual attendance reduces chances for these skills to be developed and thus may negatively influence the quality of the project collaboration. Taking into account the value that the real presence of project partners brings to international partnerships as well as the development of project team members, it is worth considering, as soon as the pandemic situation allows it, returning to planning and organizing face-to-face international partnership meetings.