Discussion: View Thread

An emerging need in our organization is the to need to develop partnering skills
within our organization (between staff groups or between different businesses),
with channel partners and 3rd parties, and with end-user customers.
Globalization (we have over 100,000 employees in over 100 countries) is making
it necessary for partnering across geographies with different cultures in
virtual teams (highly matrixed organization) that would find it valuable to
collaborate to find innovative, leverageable solutions to internal clients and
external partners and customers.

I was wondering if others have identified this as a critical need in their
organization? I have worked with a number of groups to build competence in this
very complex but important arena as a facilitator, and believe that the total
system needs to be considered. I am curious, however, if anyone has looked at
the underlying competencies related to "partnering/alliance" skills in his
context, and has identified or developed learning solutions or processes to help
individuals, teams, or organizations move forward in this area.

Jon Wagner
jon_wagner@hp.com
Hewlett Packard

HP, a few years back, was initiating a joint venture with a company in
India and there were some quite interesting issues associated with that.
For example, the person chosen to head the project was from HP in the US and
when salary and other things were being discussed the Indian company
threw a fit. The amount of compensation requested was astronomical
compared to Indian standards and that was a great beginning for the joint
venture...I am sure there are other issues associated with strategic
alliances that would be very interesting.
Santanu Borah

Jon,
I think you raise one of the most important issues of today's management
challenges. You may want to look into the literature on cultural aspects of
JV and M&A. Both fields face the issue of balancing integration and
differentiation, and linking the rational of what to integrate and what to
keep seperate with strategic considerations.

Some years ago, I have done some work on this, however more on the
conceptual side of the problem (but developed along a real case I did in a
multinational corporation). It is summarized in an article called "Post
Acquisition Management: A Process of Strategic and Organizational
Learning", and you find it in SINGH, H., SINATRA, A., & VONKROGH, G.
(Ed.): : Managing Corporate Acquisitions. MacMillan Publishers, London New
York 1993. If you have difficultues to obtain the book, I am more than
happy to send you a copy.

It would be great if you mail me a summary of what you receive. Thanks.

Roland

========================
Roland Deiser
Visiting Professor
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California

Private Office:
1040 Somera Road
Los Angeles, CA 90077
Tel (310) 471-5831
Fax (310) 471-9241
Email rdeiser@sba.usc.edu

Jon,

Couldn' t agree with you more on the need for this. I recently left a HIGHLY
matrixed organization. The matrices had continually evolved over several
years. Unfortunately, the CEO was a very hands off individual. Each matrix
chose to work very independently of the next and therefore, each matrix
functioned as an island. What they all forgot was how badly they needed the
folks on the other matrices to accomplish the overall mission of the
organization. As you might imagine, total chaos was the result and all
within the organization were suffering the consequences.

Nancy Y. Probst