International Joint Venture in Thailand

This research investigates the effects of cultural characteristics, awareness of international joint venture (IJV) importance, commitment, and team commonality on team and IJV performances. This study employs a database of IJV firms from the Thailand Board of Investment and an original survey conducted of IJV top managers via a mailed questionnaire. Data was analyzed using ordinary least square regression. The results indicate that the cultural characteristics of IJV managers have no significant effect on the awareness of IJV importance while individualism and power distance show significant effects on commitment. Also, uncertainty avoidance and power distance exhibit a significant positive impact on team performance. Subsequently, IJV importance awareness mediates between commitment and cultural characteristics to some degree, while individualism and power distance significantly alter commitment. In addition, uncertainty avoidance and power distance exhibit a significant positive impact on team performance, while team commonality reveals no moderating effect.

Effects of Emerging-Economy Firms’ Knowledge Acquisition from an Advanced International Joint Venture Partner on Their Financial Performance Based on the Open Innovation Perspective

Although emerging-economy firms (E-E firms) must have a keen interest in improving their performance by utilizing knowledge transferred from their advanced international joint venture (IJV) partner, there has been little research on the performance implications of E-E firms’ knowledge transferred from their advanced IJV partner. So, drawing on open innovation and organizational learning perspectives, we examine whether, how, and when E-E firms’ knowledge acquisition from their IJV partner has a positive impact on their financial performance. Based on data collected from 127 Thai manufacturing firms with a local IJV partnered with an advanced overseas firm, our results reveal that E-E firms’ knowledge acquisition from their IJV partner has an overall positive influence on their financial performance in terms of growth and profitability. Our results further show that innovation performance mediates the relationship between E-E firms’ knowledge acquisition and their financial performance based on a moderated mediation analysis including innovation performance as a mediator and absorptive capacity as a moderator. It is also found that the positive mediation effect of innovation performance is more pronounced in the presence of higher absorptive capacity than otherwise. That is, our results show that even among E-E firms which have acquired much knowledge from their IJV partner, those with higher absorptive capacity achieve better innovation performance than those with lower absorptive capacity, and improved innovation performance subsequently contributes to producing superior financial performance. The key conclusions, implications, and limitations of our study are presented based on these findings.