Emergence of a third culture: shared leadership in international strategic alliances

Abstract

Purpose

Understanding how managers in position of leadership experience culture is essential to avoid instability and poor performance in international strategic alliances. This study tests the proposition that national culture, top management team culture, and manager's personality influence leadership and shapes intercultural fit through the predominant management style in US‐Mexican strategic alliances.

Design/methodology/approach

Strategic leadership and personality theories constitute the framework for this study. Managers from the US‐Mexican strategic alliances which partners hold an equity position were surveyed and provided data to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Findings show that American and Mexican managers construct their own social reality with rules and norms bounded primarily by the existing organizational culture in the alliance. Both managers' management styles are similar and converge into a participative “consultative” style emerging as a “third culture” characterized by task innovation and emotional concern as American managers' input and task support and social relationships as Mexican managers' contribution. This study suggests that if adequately balanced, individualism‐collectivism is a source of intercultural fit while building shared leadership.

Practical implications

Managers of international alliances may reconfigure individual and cultural orientations and styles of alliance partners in the design of management teams to build high levels of social effectiveness. The innovator style of American managers supports the dynamics of change for the alliance to advance while the adaptor style of Mexican managers builds stability, order, and maintains group cohesion and cooperation.

Originality/value

Intercultural fit in international strategic alliances is achieved through designing organizational cultures that incorporate partners' cognitive diversity into the relationship.

Citation

Rodríguez, C.M. (2005), "Emergence of a third culture: shared leadership in international strategic alliances", International Marketing Review, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 67-95. https://doi.org/10.1108/02651330510581181