Sense-making's role in creating alliance supportive organizational cultures

Abstract

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to analyze the way in which organizational culture affects alliance performance. The literature has begun to focus on intra-firm antecedents of alliance success, but so far has mainly focused on structural aspects like the presence of an alliance department. This paper proposes that interrelated processes of sense-making in alliances and sense-making about alliances shape organizational culture to make it more supportive of alliances. Design/methodology/approach – A survey was developed to operationalize an alliance supportive culture construct. Results from 179 alliance managers were analyzed to investigate the inter-relationship of alliance experience, alliance supportive culture and alliance performance. Findings – Alliance supportive culture was found to fully mediate the relationship between alliance experience and performance. This finding suggests that experience with alliances leads to better alliance performance when this experience is translated into the organizational culture. Research limitations/implications – Further research may explore how alliance culture interacts with structural elements of alliance management as identified in the alliance capability literature. The interaction between alliance culture and alliance capability is as yet unexplored. In addition, research may take place to explore which elements determine sense-making about alliances. Practical implications – Managers should not only focus on tools and processes to improve their alliance success. They should also augment the sense-making process about alliances and remove cultural impediments to working with alliances. Originality/value – Many studies have found a relationship between alliance experience and success. This paper shows this is not a direct relationship, but that it operates via cultural change based on sense-making about alliance experience. This mediation effect has not been established before.

Firm performance and alliance capability: the mediating role of culture

“…Because culture is embedded and transmitted through processes and tools (Daymon, 2000), the presence of an alliance capability also affects the development of an alliance supportive organization culture. An alliance supportive culture contains the visible symbols, values and underlying assumptions (Schein, 2010) that support a company's ability to effectively manage its alliances with other organizations (de Man and Luvison, 2014). For instance, members of a firm that have participated in different types of alliances may become more appreciative and tolerant of the fact that partners' reasons for entering the alliance will differ.…”

Decisions at the Boundary

“…Contrary to the prescripts of role theory as described above, to successfully manage alliances AMs must satisfy the expectations of multiple sent roles, even though the processes, cultures, and objectives of the senders are often not identical (Kumar & Patriotta, 2011). To effectively interact in such an environment, firms must develop an interpretative framework of sensemaking (Das & Kumar, 2010a; de Man & Luvison, 2014) that facilitates their ability to adapt. As AMs are the boundary spanners facilitating this sensemaking, they must give greater or at least some import to partner expectations to successfully navigate the alliance.…”

“…Individuals who operate in accordance with their firm-sent role expectations experience greater satisfaction due to the reduced cognitive effort required to act congruently with those expectations (Solomon, Surprenant, Czepiel, & Gutman, 1985). As firms have established procedures, objectives, and cultures that often conflict with those of the alliance partner (Das & Kumar, 2010b; de Man & Luvison, 2014), leaders and other firm members from the AMs’ firms will be inclined to advocate that AMs utilize those in the alliance. Because individuals seek to avoid the stress associated with role conflict, AMs would likely choose to act in a manner that meets the normative expectations of fellow firm members (Kahn et al, 1964).…”

A multilevel study of structural resilience in interfirm collaboration

“…Network governance theory suggests these constraints are the result of the system of exchange within collaborative networks and as such can effectively be reconciled owing to the bundle of exchange conditions and social mechanisms that promote high-performing collaborations. In such cases, the same exchange dynamics that promotes on-going and high-performing collaborations may simultaneously reduce the threat of opportunism and fragility a (de Man and Luvison, 2014;Srivastava and Frankwick, 2011). This study posits that the performance outcomes of the exchange conditions and social mechanisms hypothesized as being reflective of a high performance macro-culture may be partially owed to the resilience of the collaborative network as perceived by its organizational members.…”

“…Specifically, while alliance fragility is widely recognized by management scholars, there is little agreement with regard to its operational and performance implications (Christoffersen, 2013;Ozmel et al, 2012). However, a considerable driver of alliance instabilities and fragility are the threat of ally opportunism, moral hazard in partner selection, and/or goal divergence of partners; which suggest friction within collaborative structures and limits their ability effectively leverage the behaviors and resources toward collaborative goals (Chen et al, 2008;de Man and Luvison, 2014;Todeva and Knoke, 2005). Network governance theory suggests these constraints are the result of the system of exchange within collaborative networks and as such can effectively be reconciled owing to the bundle of exchange conditions and social mechanisms that promote high-performing collaborations.…”