Equity control and the survival of international joint ventures : a contingency approach

This study attends to equivocal results regarding the relationship between equity control and international joint venture (IJV) performance by proposing a transaction-cost-based contingency framework. We examined the moderating effects of asset specificity and uncertainty on the relationship between foreign parent equity control and IJV survival in an empirical setting of Japanese IJVs in 12 Asian countries in the 1985-1996 period. Our findings suggest that in the presence of high asset specificity, high levels of foreign equity control can lead to higher IJV survival rates. Furthermore, we find that social knowledge can serve as a substitute for equity control in IJVs and contribute to higher IJV survival rates.