Factors influencing knowledge acquisition in international joint ventures (IJVs) where China is the host country - from Chinese companies' perspective

Authors

Li, Xun

Issue Date

2008

Degree

MSc in International Business

Publisher

Dublin Business School

Rights

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Abstract

Knowledge management became more and more important in today's business world particularly in relation to emerge of information society or knowledge society. Utilizing existing knowledge and acquiring new knowledge became the centre parts for knowledge management. Knowledge acquisition is one of the strategic purposes for organizations to formed IJVs. In this thesis, it focused on the Chinese companies' perspective in relation to knowledge acquisition in Sino-foreign Joint Ventures. There are three influential factors identified to knowledge acquisition in Sino-foreign Joint Ventures. Those factor are relationship between partners, institutional factors (education and politic) and culture. Based on the research, there is a positive relation between relationship factor and knowledge acquisition in IJVs. In addition, education levels also played positive role in knowledge acquisition. Political factors only have indirect effort to knowledge acquisition. Furthermore, both national and organizational cultural distances have negative effort to knowledge acquisition in IJVs. Methodology and methods: empirical survey through questionnaires and single & holistic case study conducted. Researcher conducted triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data for this thesis. The Sino-Germany JVs was picked up as sampling for survey, and Nanchang Pepsi was the single case for case study. Value: this thesis could benefit for those Chinese companies, which formed IJVs with foreign companies. It is useful for Chinese policy maker in relation to knowledge society era. Furthermore, the consulting firm particular for those multinational enterprises may exploit new business opportunities from this thesis.