Organisational culture, national culture and performance in International Joint Ventures based in Israel

Abstract

In the light of globalisation, international joint ventures (IJV) appear to offer an opportunity to capitalise on the particularities of localised skills, knowledge and capabilities within the international arena. Moreover, the internationalisation of markets offers an increased scope to innovate, develop and market new products which may benefit from the advantages offered by international collaborations. Nonetheless, some of these IJV fail and many do not achieve satisfactory performance. One reason proposed for unsatisfactory performance is cultural differences, most often the differences in partners' national cultures. However, it is also possible that differences between corporate internal cultures may affect satisfaction. Consequently, this paper examines 66 international joint ventures in Israel to establish the impact of national and organisational cultures. We found that neither organisational nor national culture had much impact on performance or the perception of performance. However, trust seems to play an important mediating role.

Innovation culture in small Tunisian ICT firms

“…They talk about scale; nation, region and firm as unit of analysis, asking how far should we reach? Furthermore, organizational culture is influenced by national culture (Gamage, 2006;Avny and Anderson, 2008). Hofstede et al (1990) demonstrated a relationship between national culture values and organizational practices, whilst Lau and Ngo (1996) argue that firms' organizational culture reflects the parent company's home culture.…”

Cultural fit, knowledge transfer and innovation performance: a study of Malaysian offshore international joint ventures

“…Differences in organizational culture of IJV partners are often perceived as a major cause of conflict in the venture (Avny and Anderson 2008;Heiman et al 2008;Damanpour, Devece, Chen, and Pothukuchi 2010). Since misunderstanding and conflicts tend to arise when there is poor organizational culture fit, transfer or sharing of knowledge is hampered in such a situation (Cummings and Teng 2003;Simonin 1999Simonin , 2004Syed-Ikhsan and Rowland 2004;Cui et al 2006;Wijk, Janseng, and Lyles 2008).…”

“…A common belief articulated in the literature is that the greater the cultural differences between firms, the more different their management practices will be (Heiman, Li, Chan, and Aceves 2008). Differences in national and organizational cultures between partners are perceived to cause conflicts in IJVs (Park and Ungson 1997;Avny and Anderson 2008;Heiman et al 2008) which may negatively affect their performance. At the same time, studies have also shown that the greater the perceived similarities in cultures between partners, the higher the IJV performance (Cheah-Liaw, Petzall, and Selvarajah 2003;Heiman et al 2008).…”

A Longitudinal Study of Assimilated Corporate Culture in Mexico

“…Mexican workers attitudinally represented the Mexican worker portrayed by Harrison and Hubbard (1998). Over time, they adopted the home company culture, complete with corporate language, shared meaning, and job attitudes that resembled those of production and/or professional workers (Avny et al, 2008). It did, however, take time.…”

“…To date, few empirical studies on organizational commitment have been conducted longitudinally in host country environments. Generally, studies seem to be either cross sectional, non-longitudinal measures of commitment (for an exception look to Avny and Anderson, 2008 for work on international joint ventures) or comparisons between cultures using common cultural typologies. Yingyan Wang (2004) compares commitment in cross sectional analysis in state and privately owned organizations in China.…”