Cultural Distance and the Performance of International Joint Venture

Project Report from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, University of Bedfordshire, course: International Business & Management, language: English, abstract: In the Global Market, Internarional Joint Ventures (IJV) are becoming prevalent phenomeno and many multination companies have managed to experience considerable growth by making alliances (such as Joint Ventures). There are several factors which needed to be controlled carefully, otherwise it would be resulted in weaken the performance of the specified IJV. It has been estimated that about 37-70 percent of IJV are reported to experience the performance problems incurred due to the cultural differences and thus leaded the specified ventures towards the costly Culpan (2002) explained International Joint Venture (IJV) as the process which includes two or more companiess belong to different countries to collaborate together.The decision to decide wheather or not to make a joint ventures included four different stages (Initial, Formation, Operation & Outcome). There are two kinds of cultures which directly makes an impact on the Joint Venture. The first one is the organisational culture and the second type of culture is the national culture. Pothukuchi, et al. (2002) stated that the problem arises in IJV is because of significant Impact of the national culture upon the behavioral and management system which then directed towards conflicts. Same case is observed in the organisational culture as well where any differnece or dispute can cause conflict and also can destablise the Joint Venture's performance or progress. The case study of Sony Ericsson also fallows the same approach of the Joint Venture as it was collaboration between two multinational companies (Sony & Ericsson) who were coming together with intention of single corporate which could not be possible for both companies to accomplish on the individual basis. It has been found out that the organisational cultural difference has negative impact on the performance of the International Joint Ventures (IJV). On the other hand, national cultural difference can pose either positive or negative impact but the intensity of that difference is not much aggressive. The emphasis of companies engaged in International Joint Venture on the factors which would be resulted in overcoming national cultural difference problems and also on developing the management which would be acceptable for both partners to adopt and implement could contribute extensively to the success of International Joint Ventures.