Despite the considerable increase in research on international joint ventures (IJVs) related to both the performance and success of strategic alliances over the last couple of decades, studies suggest that this business form tends to have high rates of failure – especially in terms of the IJVs achieving their mutual strategic goals. The literature suggests that this failure is due in part to cultural clashes between partners. However, many studies on the effects of cultural differences rely on broad value surveys. Very little research has focused on IJV’s everyday strategy-related activities. This includes participants’ lived experiences and in particular, an examination of their perceptions of their own and their partners’ strategy practices.

Despite Vietnam’s recent rapid emergence as an economic force, few of those studies have been published on Vietnamese-based IJVs. Instead, China has been the focus of most work, diverting attention from other important emerging contexts such as Vietnam. There is a dearth of studies on the cultural consequences of bringing together partners from different national cultures within a strategic alliance. In particular, there are very few studies on the cultural impact of IJVs’ strategy practices in Vietnam and none which directly examine Vietnamese- Dutch IJVs in this context. What wider culture literature exists suggests that substantive national cultural differences between Vietnam and the Netherlands managers may be evident in contexts where they work in close proximity. This hypothesis is confirmed here, with the juxtaposition of these cultures in the chosen IJV, a rich research context due to resulting conflicts in values, behaviour and strategy practices. This thesis provides empirical evidence to support these findings through an in-depth, qualitative case study of a Dutch-Vietnamese shipbuilding IJV in a Vietnamese context. The study investigates how cultural differences affect IJV partners’ perceptions of each other’s strategic performance. The research questions guiding this study are detailed below:

1. To what extent do cultural differences exist between Vietnamese and Dutch partners in a Dutch-Vietnamese IJV in Vietnam; and what is the nature of any such cultural differences?
2. To what extent do any cultural differences become manifest in terms of strategic practices in a Dutch-Vietnamese IJV in Vietnam and what is the nature of any such manifestations?
3. How, if at all, do such cultural differences influence each partner’s perceptions of the other partner’s strategic performance in relation to their own?

The thesis uses interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) (Smith, Larkin, & Flowers, 2009), within a broader strategy-as-practice (SP) approach. Data was collected from company documents, semi-structured interviews, in-situ observations, and from shadowing actors at all levels undertaking strategy-related work. This data was collected during an immersive three- month period of fieldwork spent in the chosen IJV.

The study explores linkages between culture and strategy practices within the complex context of an IJV involving partners from very different national cultures. Answering the first research question, there were substantive cultural differences between the IJV partners related to national origins. This study identified four main categories of differences between managers associated with the two IJV partners: ‘High versus low hierarchy’, ‘individual versus group benefit’, ‘high versus low initiative’, and ‘high versus low responsibility’. In relation to the second research question, these cultural differences caused discrepancies in how strategies were implemented. In particular, participants believed that good self-performance ought to match their own culture’s view of this concept. For example, the Dutch applied an open strategy to make use of employees’ knowledge and skills. While the IJV encouraged all employees to engage in strategy making, Vietnamese managers and employees believed only the top management team should generate strategies and make decisions concerning these, and that lower-level employees should only be involved in the implementation of these strategies.

A further contribution to theory was the discovery that some of the case participants’ cultural values were different in practice to Hofstede’s (1991) original data on Vietnamese collectivism. Instead, Vietnamese employees prioritised individual benefits. Ralston et al.’s (1999) study showed that Vietnamese people still hold a more traditional collectivist view of society even though North Vietnamese managers may exhibit more Western-oriented characteristics than their South Vietnamese counterparts. However, this study indicated that Northern Vietnamese managers were more individualistic compared to Dutch. The findings also indicated Vietnamese managers and employees had a strong preference for uncertainty avoidance, which was contrary to Hofstede’s (2021) data showing a low score on uncertainty avoidance for Vietnamese managers. Given that shipbuilding is a unique, heavily unionised, specialist industrial sector with unique equipment and occupational risk prevention standards (Para‐ González, Mascaraque‐Ramírez, & Cubillas‐Para, 2020), it is not surprising that many Vietnamese managers are reluctant to take risks because they tend to deal directly with expensive building materials and may fear causing financial loss. This finding is more consistent with Merritt (2000) who has argued that national culture not only underlies, but also interacts with other influences, to shape performance, such as industry-based, organisational and professional culture.

The findings also revealed that partners’ perception of others’ strategy-related performance is strongly influenced by each partner’s ownership stakes, paralleling other research on the importance of equity ownership. Both partners in this case believe that the Dutch performance was superior to that of the Vietnamese because the Dutch partner holds greater ownership.

However, a more unique contribution, addressing the third research question, was the finding that Dutch managers judged their Vietnamese counterparts’ performance in relation to their own performance, expecting their Vietnamese colleagues to adopt their own culture. When the Vietnamese participants fail to adapt to the Dutch culture, the Dutch practitioners tend to supervise the Vietnamese in following the Dutch way of working.