Research Joint Ventures

Abstract.  Inter-firm collaboration is not new. What is new is that such collaboration has exploded during the past couple of decades, in parallel to the intensification of international competition. Moreover, the nature of collaboration has changed, shifting from peripheral interests to the very core functions of the corporation, and from equity to non-equity forms of collaboration. Importantly, cooperation focusing on the generation, exchange, and/or adaptation of new technologies has risen at very fast rates. Research joint ventures, the focus of this paper, belong in the latter category.
The proliferation of RJVs has created extensive interest among economists, business analysts, and policy decision-makers and led to the profusion of literature on the topic. This paper critically reviews the literature in industrial economics and strategic management that deals with RJV partner motives and RJV outcomes. The paper categorizes the different streams of this literature and indicates the state-of-the-art, synthesizes important understandings, and suggests key nodes of a future research agenda.     

The Status of Training and Development in U.S.-People's Republic of China Joint Ventures

Abstract

A random sample of 177 U.S.-People&s Republic of China joint ventures was selected from 705 such undertakings identified. The questionnaire was based on three forms of Training Magazine&s annual survey. It was translated into Chinese, and cross-translated to insure accuracy, after validation by U.S. managers with experience in China and Chinese business experts. After many follow up efforts, a response rate of 36% was achieved. The survey revealed types of training currently offered and planned during the next two years, and the methods used. Comparisons were made with similar studies conducted in the United States and the Republic of Korea.     

中外合资企业会计制度的历史贡献及其启示

中外合资企业会计制度是我国会计制度建设历史中具有里程碑性质的会计制度,创造了若干新突破,做出了重要的理论贡献和实务贡献,体现了政治、经济、法律等环境对会计制度变革的影响,带给我们诸多值得深思和研究的相关启示。     

SME Foreign Direct Investment: An Examination of the Joint Venture Experiences of German and U.K. Small and Medium Sized Firms in China

Joint Ventures (JVs) have become popular vehicles for foreign market servicing, but few studies have focused on the joint venturing activities of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). This article examines the activities of 9 U.K. and 12 German SME joint ventures in China. Based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth case interviews, it reveals that the JVs, though successful, are not without their problems and the experiences are similar to those of large multi-national enterprises. As the key to success is the choice of the joint venture partner, assistance is required to help SMEs identify and select appropriate partners.     

An Investigation of Strategic Marketing Factors Affecting Performance of International Joint Ventures in China

This paper investigates the influence of some key strategic marketing factors on the performance of international joint ventures (W) operating in China. The related contextual variables which may moderate the linkage between marketing factors and W performance are also examined. The result suggests that some elements of conventional wisdom are deficient.     

国际合资企业的共生模型及其稳定性分析

为发掘国际合资企业稳定性的内在机制,提高国际合资企业绩效,利用共生理论和微分稳定性理论,在构建国际合资企业共生系统的基础上,划分了国际合资企业的两种类型,并分别建立了共生模型,对其稳定性问题进行了分析,最后运用共生模型对现实生活中的国际合资企业稳定问题进行了解释。     

Legitimation of New Ventures: A Review and Research Programme

Research on how new ventures (NVs) achieve legitimacy is fragmented and rests on taken‐for‐granted assumptions that require problematization. Following a systematic literature review, I identify five distinct perspectives on NV legitimation: an institutional perspective, a cultural entrepreneurship perspective, an ecological perspective, an impression management perspective, and a social movement perspective. After comparing and contrasting these perspectives, I synthesize them into a generative and integrative typology. Based on this typology, I develop a new research programme. The programme widens the extant scholarship agenda by challenging its shared assumptions and contributes to further integration of the literature by building bridges between perspectives.     

Achieving Temporal Ambidexterity in New Ventures

Organizations face a common intertemporal choice problem, where actions suitable in the shortterm are different from those that work in the longterm. Building on the organizational ambidexterity theory, we argue that organizations can reconcile their short‐term and long‐term tensions, but this does necessitate managerial endeavours that orchestrate this reconciliation. We introduce the concept of temporal ambidexterity and define four intertemporal tensions involving an organization’s objectives, resources, markets, and uncertainty. We examine how firms can address these tensions successfully in the context of new ventures, and to do so we focus on three managerial capabilities of founder‐CEOs: expertise breadth, external connectivity, and empowering leadership. Results from 243 new ventures in China suggest that temporal ambidexterity improves with these managerial capabilities, and more so for younger ventures. Our findings shed light on solutions and mechanisms by which intertemporal balance is fulfilled, particularly for new ventures in a dynamic environment.     

Human Resources Management Practices in China

Abstract

Based on a survey of 308 firms in China, this paper compares the human resource management practices of Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) with the Sino-foreign joint ventures (SFJVs) formed between TVEs and foreign firms. Systematic differences in employment practices are found in recruiting, educational qualifications of top management, training, benefits, and the role of unions in enterprise management. These differences are consistent with the predictions of institutional theory. Results are discussed in terms of implications for future research and management of enterprises in China.     

如何做好中外合资企业的党建工作

随着经济社会的发展,很多外资企业都看准中国市场,大力兴办合资企业,这给党建工作带来了新的课题。加强中外合资企业的党建工作,必须狠抓党组织建设,创新党组织工作方法,创新党员教育管理理念,提高党建工作的显效性。     

Dynamics of decision power in the localization process: comparative case studies of China-Western IJVs

International HRM has focused on the MNC and its control and compliance mechanisms, particularly the tension between ‘internationalizing’ practices and normative host-country practices. This contingency approach does not capture the complexity of MNC interactions in the local environment, however, particularly with regard to international joint ventures (IJVs). Partners to the IJV may wish to impose their own practices, and use contractual and non-contractual resource power, internationalization expertise and operational consistency requirements to gain relative decisional advantage. Case studies of four Sino-Western IJVs illustrate the dynamics of IHRM development under conditions of weak socio-legal constraint and high cultural distance between partners.     

嵌入性网络、关系质量与国际合资企业不稳定演化

为防止国际合资企业在预期生命周期内的单方非意愿不稳定,提高国际合资企业的绩效,本文从国际合资企业的嵌入性网络出发,分析了组织间依赖关系质量对国际合资企业不稳定演化的决定机理,并构建演化模型全面剖析了组织间依赖关系质量与国际合资企业不稳定演化的动态关系,最后提出了防范国际合资企业不稳定的策略。     

GLOBALIZATION AND CORRUPTION CONTROL IN ASIAN COUNTRIES: The case for divergence

The globalization of corruption has given rise to the concern in many countries on how to combat corruption and many international conferences on this topic. However, in spite of the sharing of ‘best practices’ in fighting corruption at these conferences, there is still a great deal of divergence in combating corruption in Asian countries because of the different contextual constraints and the effectiveness of their governments' anti-corruption strategies. This article describes and evaluates the three patterns of corruption control in six Asian countries and concludes that the third pattern of anti-corruption laws with an independent anti-corruption agency adopted by Singapore and Hong Kong is the most effective.     

Strategic Flexibility in New High‐Technology Ventures

Strategic flexibility is a vital capability for new ventures to update their strategies in a timely manner. However, the role of external knowledge sources in new ventures’ endeavours to develop strategic flexibility are unclear. Drawing on the knowledge‐based and relational views, we explore the effect of two sources of external knowledge: new product development (NPD) alliances, representing tightly coupled sources, and loosely coupled sources such as industry associations. Our field study of 148 high‐tech ventures found that the extent to which firms utilize knowledge from NPD alliances has a curvilinear relationship with strategic flexibility, whereas the extent to which firms utilize loosely coupled sources has a positive linear relationship with strategic flexibility. We also found that in new ventures, decentralization of decision‐making and institutional support enhance knowledge integration, positively moderating these relationships.     

合资公司价值管理

公司价值管理是企业管理的重要方面,良好的价值管理可以帮助企业实现价值的增值,从而为股东带来收益。本文以合资企业为研究对象,通过分析合资公司价值管理中存在的问题,提出了相对应的解决办法。期望通过本文的研究,可以为合资企业的价值管理做出贡献。     

Learning to stay ahead in an uncertain environment

As the work environment changes and careers become increasingly fragmented in contemporary society, workers need to ensure that they remain attractive hires to current and future employers. The advent of boundaryless careers, for example, in this era of turbulence has shifted the responsibility for career management and development from the organization to the employees. This research explores the careers of a cross-section of the Hong Kong (China) labour force and their attitudes and behaviours towards life-long learning, which is proposed here to be central to individuals maintaining their marketability and employability. The qualitative data collected in this study depicts these Chinese workers as being strongly self-motivated and possessing very positive attitudes towards learning. However, while most seemed to have a genuine commitment to enhancing themselves, stimulated by a consciousness of the growing and changing demands placed on them by employers in a dynamic knowledge-based society, the findings indicate that many interviewees were driven more by a fear of the consequences of not engaging in continuous learning, than by an intrinsic desire to learn.     

中国移动（香港）并购融资安排及其启示

并购活动需要大量资金支持,融资难已成为制约大规模战略并购的瓶颈之一.本文基于并购融资安排理论,通过对中国移动(香港)有限公司一系列并购融资安排的详细描述、统计、分析,揭示了中国移动(香港)并购融资的一些规律,从而说明企业应根据自身实际情况选择不同的并购融资安排,这对我国上市公司并购活动的融资安排具有重要的借鉴意义.     

The Changing Nature of Border,Scale and the Production of Hong Kong's Water Supply System since 1959

This article investigates the making of Hong Kong's water supply system since 1959. It starts by assessing the perspectives provided by the regime approach and the political ecology literatures. The case of Hong Kong brings in ideas from border studies and draws attention to the changing nature of the border to explain socio‐ecological and scaling interactions. The case study maps the border relationship between China and Hong Kong (and Britain), and the political tussle between them over the control of water supply to the city in the late colonial period 1959–78, which resulted in the creation of a localized self‐sufficient water supply system in Hong Kong, and the consolidation of Hong Kong's scale as a colonial city‐state under British rule. It further explicates the change in the nature of the political border since 1979, and the processes by which Hong Kong abandoned attempts to strengthen its local supply, becoming dependent on supply from the regional Dongjiang water networks, as well as the transformation of its scale to become a subordinate of the larger political unit in subsequent years.     

香港与内地商业银行收费之比较

通过对香港银行业和内地商业银行的收费进行比较,找出内地商业银行收费（主要是中间业务收费）中存在的问题,并提出相应的解决办法。     

外商在华出资的动态博弈

根据2002年统计,合作企业和合资企业当年未按合同出资的分别占56．0％和41．4％,违约行为相当严重。本文对外商在中国的出资行为进行博弈分析,探讨违约原因,反映中方和外方在投资中的相互博弈,以加强对实际投资的科学管理。