Culture and trust in contractual relationships: a French-Lebanese cooperation

Hèla Yousfi (1)

1 DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management

This chapter explores how national cultural differences between partners involved in a contractual relationshipmay interfere with the development of trust. This is illustrated through a case study of a management contract signed by a French private company (Promostate) and public Lebanese company (SONAT). Using an ethnographic approach and drawing on a qualitative analysis of field interviews, the author argues that the challenges faced by the French and Lebanese parties in developing a trusting relationship are due to classic issues of personal conflicts, differing organizational cultures and power asymmetries. Because their national cultural backgrounds were different, the parties had different conceptions of what 'good cooperation' should be that shaped their expectations of trustworthy behaviour and hindered the process of resolving the difficulties they encountered. Introduction

Mots clés: contract; trust; international cooperation; cross-cultural management; Lebanon; France

Domaines: Gestion et management

Hèla Yousfi. Culture and trust in contractual relationships: a French-Lebanese cooperation. Saunders M, Skinner D, Dietz G, Gillespie N and Lewicki RJ. Organisational trust: a cultural perspective' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., Cambridge University Press., pp.227-254, 2010. ⟨halshs-00641119⟩