Abstract
The study seeks to explore the effect of organisational culture on stakeholder relationships that affect the implementation of a partnership agreement for the completion of two Eskom megaprojects in South Africa. To answer the research questions, the study applies the employment relations and stakeholder theories for understanding how the organisation under study can create an organisational culture that is based on collaboration, trust, transparent, responsibility, heterogeneity, and integrative bargaining. This follows an inductive approach where the participants’ experiences of organisational culture and stakeholder relationships are analysed to generate key themes. Most importantly, it is established that the labour relations legislative framework is adheres to in order create a partnership culture. Due to the complexity of the megaprojects at the organisation under study, it is clear that the alignment of the industry agreements with the company’s stakeholder management approach leads to a desired culture of cross-organisational collaboration, which contributes towards labour peace. Although the partnership agreement outlines fundamental provisions that seek to maintain a collaborative culture, all stakeholders still do not maximise on their interdependencies, and instead seem to focus on their independent interests, which creates conflict and opposition to the implementation of key project deliverables.
Therefore, key strategic initiatives are derived to guide the three main stakeholders, namely, employers, trade unions and suppliers on how to create a partnership culture that is palatable towards effective stakeholder relationships. Specifically, the ideal organisational culture is based on collaboration, trust, transparent, responsibility, heterogeneity, and integrative bargaining to ensure stakeholder relationships that strive for interdependency in the implementation of the partnership agreements.