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Building relationships and developing understanding, trust, and collaboration in transcultural strategic alliances involve enormous challenges that have been well documented. Organization development (OD) technologies, including appreciative inquiry (AI), are uniquely suited to deal effectively with these challenges. Thus, two alliancebuilding OD interventions were implemented to develop relational capital in a U.S.-India biotechnology alliance. Substantive cultural differences existed between the alliance partners at formation, and the ways in which those differences influenced the design and implementation of the two interventions are discussed. Overall, AI as modified was found to support building relational capital. Six years later, the alliance continues to thrive; however, many of the same issues that hampered the effectiveness of collaboration 91 and building of trust in the alliance still exist. Recommendations are offered for modifying the design of AI and other OD interventions to provide ongoing support for building successful transcultural alliances.The relative contribution of two different organizational development (OD) interventions to the building of relationships, trust, and goodwill in a transcultural strategic alliance (the alliance) is explored in this case study. The two OD interventions were conducted in 1998 to help build the alliance. Six years later, the alliance continues to thrive, which is remarkable given the high failure rate of transcultural joint ventures (Ramu, 1997, p. 9). Even given its success, many of the issues that faced the alliance during its formation continue to persist today, thus heightening the importance of dealing with difficult issues during formation. Alliance building is not an event but needs to be an ongoing effort in building successful alliances.The background of the alliance is explored next, followed by a discussion of the two alliance-building sessions. The outcomes of those sessions are then presented, including suggestions for design modifications to the standard appreciative inquiry (AI) cycle when applied to alliance-building interventions. Finally, conclusions are drawn regarding ways to heighten the efficacy of transcultural alliance-building OD interventions.

Importance of Training and Development, Few would disagree that one of the most critical challenges facing the Third World is the training and development of its people. This challenge is being faced daily by thousands of training professionals in all parts of the developing world; in addition consultants from the West and from the developing countries are struggling with the questions of what kind of training and how much is appropriate in each situation.

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