Appreciative Inquiry in Building a Transcultural Strategic Alliance

Abstract

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.

Identifying teaching best practices for accounting courses using appreciative inquiry

“…Miller et al (2005) question the AI practice of focusing exclusively on an organisation's positive experiences. They believe that negative experiences can influence an organisation and failing to address them during the first phase of data collection could hide important insight that might adversely affect an organisation's effort to successfully achieve transformational change.…”

Appreciative Inquiry and Evaluation – Getting to What Works

“…During the 1990s, books, papers, and training courses describing the principles, methods, and applications of AI began to appear (e.g., Cooperrider & Whitney, 2000;Elliott, 1999;Hammond, 1996;Mohr, Smith, & Watkins, 2000). In addition, many large-scale processes such as Imagine Chicago, the Global Excellence in Management Initiative (GEM), and the United Religions Initiative brought AI to the forefront of organization development and transformation (Watkins & Mohr, 2001).…”

“…Th e AI approach is also used in evaluation, though there was a limited amount written about it until the late 1990s and early 2000s. Early applications of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to evaluation were described in Elliott (1999), Mohr et al (2000), Odell (2002), andJacobsgaard (2003). Slightly later, more focused attention on the rationale for using AI in evaluations and application examples are described by Preskill and Coghlan (2003), Webb, Preskill, and Coghlan (2005), Catsambas (2006), andSkov Dinesen (2009).…”

“…A powerful example of choosing the AI evaluation process rather than a deficit approach is described by Mohr et al (2000) in their work with a transnational pharmaceutical company that wanted an evaluation of their process management training program for 400 research managers. Th e consultants explained that one option would be a traditional review to determine whether the program had an impact and then focus on bridging any gaps or defi cits.…”

Appreciating Entrepreneurship: A New Approach for Field Research

“…Recently there has been a call to embrace a positive organizational lens in family business research (Sharma, De Massis, and Gagne 2014;Ceja-Barba 2014). While there is a growing body of research using appreciative inquiry in the organizational change and development fields, with the exception of a small number of studies (e. g., Poza and Messer 2001;Miller et al 2005), family business researchers have not engaged with this approach or adopted such a lens. This is also true for the existing body of entrepreneurship research.…”