The role of knowledge transfer and cultural distance on international joint venture performance in Thailand

This study examines the relationship between antecedent variables (local partner’s intent to learn, local partner’s capacity to learn, local partner’s experience, foreign partner’s capacity to transfer, foreign partner’s willingness to transfer, and knowledge transfer mechanism) and knowledge transfer on international joint venture (IJV) firms’ performance in Thailand. It also aims to investigate how cultural distance moderates the impact of the relationship between knowledge transfer and IJV firms’ performance. The investigation is based on resource-based view of firm theory, knowledge based view theory and organizational learning theory. The research framework was developed and eight hypotheses were posited and tested. This research employs quantitative method by using questionnaire survey. Survey questionnaires were mailed and hand-delivered to the respondents. Questionnaires were distributed to 476 IJV firms. 160 of the IJV firms responded to the survey, which gave a 33.61 percent response rate. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science. The results revealed that each of the antecedent variables and knowledge transfer have relationship with IJV firms’ performance. However, the moderating effect of cultural distance has no significant relationship between knowledge transfer and IJV firms’ performance. The implications of the study offer into two main benefits: firstly, the contribution to the body of knowledge in the research context which encompass the key factors in knowledge transfer that should be considered and generalized; and secondly, the inputs to the practical level particularly in the IJV firms which indicate that top managers should understand knowledge transfer to achieve better performance in IJV firms. The present study also highlights the recommendation for future research as well as the limitations of the study.