Toward a Resource-Based Theory of Bargaining Power in International Joint Ventures

Political, cultural, industrial, and firm-specific factors comine to make the bargaining relationship between international joint ventures partners a particularly complex one. This study focuses on one aspect of the problem: the relationship between the resources that a partner contributes and the bargaining power that it achieves in the venture. It traces ideas of bargaining power in the literature, to elicit what types of resource are likely to lead to dominance, the identifies several resources generally thought to be important contributions to a joint venture. The resources are ranked according to criteria of tacitness and appropriability, then displayed in matrix form to illustrate the expected outcome of bargaining in two-party international joint ventures.