Assignment Help on Project Management - Building Business Partnerships and/or Strategic Alliances To Deliver Mega Projects

• Introduction

Most of the Mega-projects are related to infrastructure development and they are mainly commissioned by national Governments. However, the delivery of projects is no longer confined to public sector and mainly the mega projects are being delivered by private companies who are engaged in work under different contract conditions (Van Marrewijk, 2005). Mega projects have budget of multimillion dollars and might have time duration of several years, which makes them complex and require involvement of multiple partners to efficiently deliver the project. It has been noted by Almohsen & Ruwanpura (2016) that mega projects have higher level of complexity as well as uncertainty associated with it. In addition to this, mega projects are often said to overrun on costs, lag behind the pre-defined schedule and might change the scope of project over time. Based on these issues, there is a greater need to share the burden of project among different partners with the purpose of lowering the level of risk associated with project (Mok, Shen & Yang, 2015). The business partnership and strategic alliances are considered as suitable option in the context of mega-project management. These business partners could be competitors of each other, yet when enter into alliance for delivering mega-project, they are likely to share technology and other resources to assure effective and efficient delivery of project. It has been argued by Husin, Dikun & Berawi (2011) that each partner is likely to contribute towards the project execution based on their excellence in key strategic areas. However, by reflecting back on the past partnerships, it has been found that some alliances in preceding years have enabled the successful accomplishments of project goals, yet others were not able to last even for 12 months (Van Marrewijk, 2005). Therefore, there is greater need to explore that how individuals of partnering organizations might contribute in fostering the success of business alliances for mega projects. 

In order to gain benefit from strategic alliances to deliver mega projects, there is greater need to nurture the co-operative relationship that exists between individuals in partnering organizations. The co-operative relationship is mainly based on the conduct of personnel working in partnering organizations (Jia et al., 2011). The individuals within the partnering organizations are likely to share goals and objectives, along with having agreement on norms and nature of social associations (Mok, Shen & Yang, 2015). Therefore, the new business structure formed through alliance is the key to determine the success of mega-project delivery. However, the researchers have offered limited attention to the exploration of extent to which new emerging business culture is defined by organizations in strategic alliances for mega-project delivery (Jia et al., 2011). In the light of these views, the importance of collaborative cultures is needed to be explored for delivering value of project for shareholders. These aspects will make up the core focus of this research. 

• Research Questions

1. What should be the characteristics of collaborative culture of new business structure formed through strategic alliances? 
2. How collaborative culture can contribute to deliver value for shareholders? 
3. Would it be possible at all to define this new emerging business culture as more and more organizations forced to take this step – to identify a strategic partner?
4. How strategic alliances and business partnerships can contribute in efficient delivery of mega projects? 

• Significance of Research

It is a commonly found issue that project seldom delivers stated objectives and there arise many issues due to lack of socialization and collaboration among the project personnel (Mok, Shen & Yang, 2015). Based on this aspect, it can be mentioned that results of underlying research will be highly significant for professionals. The project management will become able to understand the importance of cultural collaboration in the context of strategic alliances and business partnerships. They will become able to identify that which kind of culture is beneficial for delivering the objectives of mega projects. On the other hand, this aspect is slightly unexplored in the context of project management and thus research will substantially add in the stream of growing literature.  

• Literature Review

Strategic alliances and business partnerships are no more an option is many industries, rather they have become essential for competing within markets. The same is true in case of project management, whereby effective and efficient delivery of project is based on efforts of different partners, who integrate their resources and efforts to assure fulfilment of project goals (Van Marrewijk, 2005). Strategic alliance has been defined as an agreement which is placed between two or more parties with an aim of pursing the agreed upon objectives of the project, while maintaining the independent identity of the organizations (Cartwright & Cooper, 2016). On the other hand, the business partnership is also an arrangement whereby businesses agree to advance their mutual goals (Jiang, Bao, Xie & Gao, 2016). However, it might be in the form of contract or could involve the holding and sharing of equity. Both the business partnerships and strategic alliances can allow the enhanced access to resources, enable the sharing of knowledge and risk and contribute towards the timely delivery of projects (Van Marrewijk et al., 2008). Therefore, mega-projects make substantial reliance on business partnerships and strategic alliances with the purpose of smoothening the delivery of project.