IDENTIFYING KEY SUCCESS FACTORS INTERNATIONAL JOINT VENTURES IN CHINA: A FOREIGN PARENT PERSPECTIVE FROM FINNISH FIRMS

International Joint Venture (IJV) has been one of the main foreign market entry approaches in the last decade and this is particularly true for entry to the huge Chinese market. Although IJVs have been a very commonly used entry form many studies have indicated that the IJVs have not reached the goals set for them or they have clearly failed. Recently there has been also a growing interest to examine the performance and determinants of successful IJVs in China from major developed countries. The studies have so far mainly focused on IJVs where the foreign partners are either from Asian countries or from big western economies like from the USA whereas research focused on IJVs established by firms from small developed European economies like from various nordic countries has been extremely limited. This paper tries to shed some light on this gap by analyzing the performance and key success factors of Finnish-Chinese IJVs from a Finnish parent perspective. In the paper a conceptual model to examine key IJV performance determinants is first built up and then we apply this model in the analysis of a few Finnish-Chinese IJVs. The results of the study show that IJV performance depends on the measure of the performance. Focusing on management evaluation of performance the FDI experience and timing of entry are found to be the key success factors at IJV formation stage while partner commitment is the key success factor at IJV operation stage. At the end of the paper, conclusions are made and limitations are discussed together with an outline of future research directions.