Organizational cross-cultural differences in the context of innovation-oriented partnerships

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine organizational cross-culture differences in public-private research-oriented relationships. More precisely, it focusses on the analysis university-industry collaborations partnering for research agreements with the aim of fostering the transfer of knowledge and innovation. It analyzes the key organizational cross-cultural differences that could hinder the successful performance of these agreements from a relationship marketing (RM) perspective. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a comprehensive literature review of organizational culture and RM, a quantitative study was carried out and a structural equation model was proposed and tested. Findings - Cross-cultural organizational differences in private-public sectors are proved to negatively influence relationship performance. Market orientation difference appears as the most significant barrier to relationship performance, followed by time orientation difference and to a lesser extent flexibility difference. Originality/value - By integrating organizational culture and RM literatures, the main contribution of this paper is the cross-cultural analysis of private-public relationships (in this case university-industry relationships) from the perspective of RM. Hence, this research will inform management seeking to develop successful public-private collaborations by enhancing their understanding of cross-cultural factors underlying relationship success and failure.