The social construction of cultural differences in a Siberian joint-venture megaproject

• Published in: Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation
• Main Authors: van den Ende, Leonore, van Marrewijk, Alfons
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 2015
• Subjects: Sakhalin; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2055563615598164; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2055563615598164; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/2055563615598164

Cross-cultural cooperation in joint ventures does not take place in a power-free context but is threatened by struggles between partners over cultural differences and conflicting interests. All project partners have their own perspectives, interpretations, intentions and practices, which challenge the undertakings of cross-cultural collaboration. Therefore, it is the aim of this paper to study how employees make sense of their cultural differences in a multinational joint venture. To do so, the cross-cultural collaboration between joint-venture partners Gazprom and Shell is studied over three months of fieldwork during the Sakhalin Energy II megaproject in Siberia. The contribution of this paper is the theorization of culture as socially constructed and the exhibition of how cultural differences are negotiated to create a system which is a cultural hybrid, securing Shell-based management practices and values while simultaneously localizing the project in the Russian framework. As such, hybridization can represent an antidote to power struggles and cultural discrepancies.