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The purpose of this study is to explore the role of trust in the relationships and long‐term commitment between partners in strategic alliances. A framework is developed for better understanding the role of trust in the performance of strategic alliances in a cross‐cultural context.

The empirical findings of this study are gathered from structured and unstructured interviews with some key actors involved in the process of forming strategic alliances in their own organizations; a case study of the oil industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which illustrates this is analysed. Qualitative analysis is conducted to assess the role of trust in this cross‐cultural context.

It was noted that building trust between partners helped to avoid bureaucratic obstructions and enhanced the decision making process in the UAE. It was found that trust helped partners to exchange resources faster, devote more funds to the venture and exchange knowledge and information smoothly. The results clearly show that trust plays an important role in building well‐functioning relationships in the oil and gas industry.

This study is limited to the UAE and can be generalized to other similar cultural contexts only to a certain extent. Future research should consider the same parameters in order to fully generalize the results to other industries.

The paper presents a case study of the nature and characteristics of partners in the oil and gas industry, which may be applied to other similar industries. It is hoped that presenting practical tools for understanding the function of trust in strategic alliance performance may be useful.

This framework makes two major contributions; first, it explores a subject which has been under‐researched in the literature, that is, the issue of trust between partners of strategic alliances in a developing context; and, second, it leads to a set of recommendations and benchmarks the practitioners in the UAE and similar contexts to help them increase the trust between partners in strategic alliances.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the mediating role of the extensiveness of strategic planning on the relationship between slack resources and organizational performance.

The study uses empirical data gathered from 102 usable replies from private and also public hospitals in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The findings indicate the existence of a positive relationship between slack resources and organizational performance and show that the extensiveness of strategic planning plays a mediating role in this relationship.

The authors highlight the exploratory nature of the study considering its unusual setting, namely, the UAE’s health care sector.

Several implications of the findings for managerial and policy practices in the UAE health care sector are discussed.

This study contributes to the existing literature on management, health care, and developing countries by examining the role of the extensiveness of strategic planning in mediating the relationship between slack resources and organizational performance in the health care industry of a developing country.