Abstract:
International joint venture (IJV) is an understanding between two or more parties to work
together for running a business or achieving stated objectives. Most companies enter into an IJV
to expand, to realize cost efficiencies or as a strategy to enter new markets or geographies.
However IJVs are known to be not very successful in the past. Being a combination of hard
methodological approaches and soft behavioral variables, a large percentage of IJVs failure rate
can be credited to incompetent human resource management (HRM), either directly or indirectly.
HRM issues in IJVs include issues like division of management, transfer of HR, blending of
cultures and management styles, communication, conflict control, knowledge transfer and other
concerns of venture employees. The aim of this research is to identify issues critical to HRM in
IJVs and to highlight the impact of these identified risks on subjective performance parameters.
The thesis believes cooperation, between the parent firms, to be the mean of improving HRM
and overall performance of IJVs. A conceptual and explanatory method of study is used to link
the existing literature on HRM in IJVs with cooperation models. The thesis proposes the win-win
concept through cooperation between the parent firms for developing and managing an effective
and mutually agreed HRM for the overall success of joint venture relationship. A few
hypotheses related to the role of cooperation in IJVs are tested using questionnaire survey. The
research also proposes improvements in models to emphasize the importance of cooperation in
IJVs. A generic framework, based on the results of the study, is also designed to help managers
understand the importance of relationship between the variables.
