Culture and Strategic Alliance Management in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Culture should be considered as a strategic issue in the management of strategic alliances that involve companies from the West and developing countries and from the public and private sector realm. In-depth interviews along the case study method with local and global alliance managers in Papua New Guinea reveals that culture has a direct bearing on alliance performance and therefore should not be relegated to backstage as being merely part of the remote macroenvironment. The research shows that exposure to, and training in, cross-cultural management skills enhances the alliance management process, public-private sector alliances present special challenges when there are wide culture gaps and institutional structure differences, culture has more impact on alliance implementation and performance than on strategy formulation, and cultural-fit between partners is easily realised where there are shared values. The few alliances that took culture seriously were the ones that survived while those that did not, failed.