IBM Corp. is sending some of its best and brightest to work in developing countries on projects that, for the most part, have absolutely nothing to do with technology. But they have a lot to do with building leaders and team players. And that, for the most part, is IBM’s intent.

The company has chosen top employees from all ranks and all global locations and is sending them in teams on monthlong journeys that are more like missions than business trips to work on projects that are about marketing, say, kente cloth instead of ThinkPads.

By the end of 2009, IBM will have sent 52 teams of its so-called Corporate Services Corps to countries including Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Brazil, Tanzania, Ghana, and Turkey. Their aim, of course, is to meet the goals of their project in countries where resource challenges force them to be nimble and creative. Each team also is asked to informally assess what would be the right conditions for IBM to make a larger investment in these developing countries.

Nine Massachusetts IBM employees have been selected for the Corps, and four have already been abroad. IBM originally planned on selecting a total of 500 employees to participate, but response was so positive the company expanded the Corps to 1,500 through the end of next year.

“The admission into this program has tougher odds than Harvard,” said Cathleen Finn, IBM’s corporate citizenship and corporate affairs program manager in New England. “We wanted it to be selective but we didn’t want to discourage people from participating.”

The teams vary in size from eight to 15 people, and they work on the ground with local nongovernmental organizations that operate a range of community projects in the various countries. They spend about 60 hours before their trips studying the countries and regions to which they will be working and meeting by phone with other team members from around the world, an international collaboration that Corps members said builds a new type of corporate camaraderie.