Factors affecting internal communication in a strategic alliance project

Recently, major projects have been conducted using a strategic alliance set‐up, where participating organisations work together, collaboratively, within the same organisation structure consisting of personnel from each organisation. The ethos of the strategic alliance encourages an integrated, unified working environment. A study of the communication networks in a major strategic alliance project was undertaken in November 2000. This involved conducting a communication audit that included five unstructured interviews. Participants included a broad range of project team members, matched to some of Belbin’s team role profiles. The paper discusses the principal factors affecting internal communication, as revealed from the analysis of the interview data.