Human resource issues and activities in international joint ventures

International joint ventures are an increasingly important way for organizations to expand internationally. There is no apparent reason for this trend not to continue as pressures from global competition, the need to learn quickly and the need to use valued scarce resources wisely are likely to be with us for some time. But, as organizations learn, it is one thing to enter into an IJV and quite another thing to make it succeed. And, with so many reasons for entering into an IJV, organizations want them to be as successful as possible. Examination of many IJV failures, in conjunction with the reasons for their establishment, indicates that the quality of human resource management can be critical. This paper attempts: a) to illustrate all the organizational/human resource management issues that need to be managed in the IJV process; b) to provide a framework for examining the role played in these issues by various human resource management activities; and c) to highlight the roles of the senior HR leader and the HR department in the IJV process. A four-stage model of IJVs based on the importance of learning and longer-term relationships, along with several theoretical perspectives, is used to generate several testable propositions regarding HR issues and activities in IJVs.

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