| Under the pressure of hyper competition, if the firm wants to survive in this society, then it has to move quickly to build its competitive advantage, and constantly weaken competitors'advantages, which requires it constantly seeking the source of competitive advantage. Applying knowledge-based resources is at the heart of competitive advantage for multinational enterprises (MNEs). As one of the most common and rapid international expansion pattern, international joint ventures (IJVs) gradually become an important vehicle to invest overseas for MNEs. An important reason for the existence of IJV is that knowledge can be transferred, exploited and utilized between the parent and joint venture more effectively than via external market. Utilizing knowledge transfer and acquisition by IJV to improve its effectiveness and performance will become the key to win in the increasingly fierce competition. Additionally, the quickening process of the economic globalization, and the rapid development of modern information technology and network technology provide favorable conditions for knowledge transfer between the parents and joint venture. Therefore, recently researches about how knowledge transfer among different entities in joint venture and the antecedents and consequences of knowledge transfer become hot issues for relevant scholars and practitioners. Nowadays from the current research findings we can see that researches mainly discuss on knowledge flow between the foreign parent and joint venture subsidiary, while neglecting the effect of the local parent to the venture, especially in the emerging economies, such as China, local knowledge that comes from the local parent will also be critical to the development of joint venture.Based on the shortages existing in present researches, this study follows the thought of influencing factors of knowledge transfer——knowledge transfer/acquisition——the effectiveness of joint venture, and makes the factors about the character of knowledge transfer bodies which contain transferring and acquiring organization, relationship between knowledge transfer bodies, and the transfer of different types of knowledge into an unified framework from the perspectives of the Chinese partner to venture and the foreign partner to venture, and uses monopolistic advantage theory, internalization theory, knowledge-based view and organizational learning theory comprehensively, and combines the analysis of occurrence mechanisms, process mechanisms, realization mechanisms and coordination mechanisms for Sino-foreign joint venture, and takes the effectiveness of joint venture oriented, and adopts Sino-foreign joint ventures that located in Chinese mainland as samples, and makes large scale questionnaire survey. Then this study uses statistical software SPSS13.0 to analyze data obtained in terms of descriptive statistics analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis, analysis of variance, multiple regression analysis and so on, and mechanisms for the character of knowledge transfer bodies, relationship between knowledge transfer bodies on knowledge transfer/acquisition are verified, and mechanisms for knowledge transfer on the effectiveness of joint venture are also verified.Through the analysis and test of this study, we come to the following conclusions:(1) Local market knowledge transfer, technological knowledge transfer and managerial knowledge transfer all significantly have a positive effect on the effectiveness of Sino-foreign joint venture. The relationship between technological knowledge transfer and the effectiveness of Sino-foreign joint venture is the strongest among them, and then is local market knowledge transfer, finally is the managerial knowledge transfer; (2)The willingness to transfer of the Chinese parent has a greater positive impact on local market knowledge transfer than the willingness to transfer of the foreign parent. However, we cannot find a significant and positive relationship between the willingness to transfer of the foreign parent and technological knowledge transfer, so does managerial knowledge transfer; (3) Whether the transfer capacity of the Chinese partner to venture or the foreign partner to venture, they have insignificant effect on local market knowledge transfer, while the transfer capacity of the foreign partner to venture not only has a greater positive effect on the technological knowledge transfer, but also on the managerial knowledge transfer than the transfer capacity of the Chinese parent; (4) The stronger the learning willingness of joint venture, the more the extent of technological knowledge acquisition by joint venture. However, the learning willingness of joint venture has insignificant effect on local market knowledge and managerial knowledge acquisition; (5) The stronger the learning capacity of joint venture, the more the extent of local market knowledge and managerial knowledge acquisition by joint venture. However, the learning capacity of joint venture has insignificant effect on the extent of technological knowledge acquisition; (6) Relationship quality between the foreign parent and joint venture has a greater positive impact on technological knowledge transfer than relationship quality between the Chinese parent and joint venture. However, relationship quality between the Chinese parent and joint venture has an insignificant positive effect on local market knowledge transfer, and relationship quality between the foreign parent and joint venture has an insignificant positive effect on managerial knowledge transfer; (7) Different types of equity structure and different nationalities of the foreign parent have different impacts on knowledge transfer in joint venture. No matter the transfer of which kinds of knowledge, the parent who holds majority equity will transfer knowledge actively; The result shows that different nationalities of the foreign parent make differences with the transfer of technological knowledge and managerial knowledge significantly, the extent of technological knowledge and managerial knowledge transfer come from the parent of Japanese and European and American countries are higher than other Asian countries, including Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong, Masco and other regions, while it is insignificant to the transfer of local market knowledge.All the conclusions mentioned above make us have a furthermore complete and deep understand about the mechanisms for the relations among the antecedents of knowledge transfer, and its effectiveness consequences in Sino-foreign joint venture. Based on existing studies, this study gets some innovative contributions as follows:(1) This study puts forward an overall framework about influencing factors and the effectiveness consequences in Sino-foreign joint venture from the perspective of dual parents' transferring knowledge to joint venture subsidiary more systematically. This study discusses knowledge transfer in the context of Sino-foreign joint venture from dual parents' point of view, and takes joint venture itself as the research object, which fills the gap that most studies only consider the antecedents and consequences of transferring of knowledge by joint venture from their foreign parent, but neglecting the role of the local parent. Also, this study uses relevant knowledge transfer theories of classic MNE theories(which contain monopolistic advantage theory and internalization theory) and knowledge-based view and organizational learning theory comprehensively, and advances a holistic and theoretical model of influencing factors and effectiveness consequences of knowledge transfer in Sino-foreign joint venture; (2) This study constructs factors affecting knowledge transfer from dual parents to joint venture more systematically, and reveals the mechanisms for the effect of antecedents of knowledge transfer on the transfer of knowledge in Sino-foreign joint venture. From the willingness to transfer and transfer capacity of the Chinese parent and the foreign parent, and relationship quality between joint venture and its parents, and the learning willingness and learning capacity of joint venture point of view, this study analyses the role of these factors on knowledge transfer, and reveals the mechanisms for the role of the character of knowledge sender and knowledge receiver and the relationship quality between them on the transfer of local market knowledge, technological knowledge and managerial knowledge; (3) This study generalizes knowledge types transferred from dual parents more comprehensively and discusses the result——the effectiveness of joint venture more deeply, and makes a supplement and expansion for the role of knowledge transfer on the effectiveness of joint venture. Based on the integration of existing researches and interviews, this study tentatively divides the knowledge into technological knowledge, managerial knowledge and local market knowledge, and combines different types of knowledge with one dimension of knowledge transfer——extent, and takes it as the intermediate variable, in this way, the type of knowledge transferred from the Chinese parent and the foreign parent to joint venture can be summarized more comprehensively. Previous studies focus on either technological knowledge, or managerial knowledge, or market knowledge, and studies that comprehensively consider the transfer of these three kinds of knowledge are still less seen. Meanwhile, this study uses the effectiveness of Sino-foreign joint venture as the outcome variable, which can be measured by competing values approach from five aspects:overall effectiveness, ability improvement, innovation, business performance, and long term competitive advantage. Among these dimensions, they refer to overall and specific effectiveness, and short term and long term effectiveness, and subjective and objective effectiveness. The measurement is obtained by combining the character of joint venture with the Sino-foreign investment and the Chinese context, thus scientific and perfect construct measurement can be guaranteed, which is rarely happened in previous studies. Furthermore, this paper reveals the relations between the extent of different types of knowledge transfer and the effectiveness of joint venture. From the empirical study we can conclude that knowledge transfer significantly affects the effectiveness of joint venture, among these results, technological knowledge and managerial knowledge are mainly transferred by the foreign parent. The positive relationship between technological knowledge transfer and the effectiveness of joint venture is the strongest, and standardized regression coefficient is 0.234, meanwhile, the positive relationship between managerial knowledge transfer and the effectiveness of joint venture is slightly stronger, and standardized regression coefficient is 0.176. While local market knowledge is mainly transferred by the Chinese parent, and the positive relationship between the transfer of this kind of knowledge and the effectiveness of joint venture is stronger and standardized regression coefficient is 0.217. This result shows that firms can improve its effectiveness through cross-border transfer of knowledge, also, knowledge transfer can be a very important vehicle to enhance organizational effectiveness, which supports and expands most empirical conclusions. In addition, the conclusion shows that different kinds of knowledge from dual parents play different important roles in the effectiveness of joint venture, and highlights the contribution differences of dual parents in the process of joint venture development, and adds and expands the mechanisms for knowledge transfer on the effectiveness of Sino-foreign joint venture, finally the conclusion provides guideline for the establishment of knowledge management strategy of Sino-foreign joint venture; (4) This study broadens related researches on the mechanism of interorganizational knowledge transfer. This study analyses and discusses the occurrence mechanisms, process mechanisms, realization mechanisms and coordination mechanisms for Sino-foreign joint venture thoroughly based on related theories, and expounds the antecedents and consequences of knowledge transfer in Sino-foreign joint venture from the theoretical point of view, and reveals the essence of knowledge transfer in Sino-foreign joint venture, and makes a certain complement for inter-organizational knowledge transfer mechanisms, which is rarely seen in the previous studies.In the knowledge economy, relevant topics about knowledge transfer in Sino-foreign joint venture have become interesting and hot issues, and this study only makes a preliminarily empirical research about the antecedents of knowledge transfer, knowledge transfer and the effectiveness of Sino-foreign joint venture. In future study, we will continuously enrich this topic combining with the research development of the relevant theories at home and abroad and the character and actual situations of Sino-foreign joint venture.
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