ABSTRACT
The dramatic growth in the founding of joint ventures and other cooperative agreements among international firms over the past fifteen years has spawned a large and diverse literature seeking to understand the phenomenon. This literature has provided important insight into the issues facing managers of international “hybrids,” but it has also favored rich description over theoretical rigor, and focused on the idiosyncrasies of international operations rather than on the core organizational issues that are common to managers of both domestic and multinational firms. The implications of this trend are clearly understood by Donald Lessard, past president of the Academy of International Business:
If IB [International Business] cuts itself off from other disciplines and fields of study in management, it will become sterile and virtually ensure that others will not pay attention to it… I believe that we have little choice but to try to maintain close linkages with the underlying disciplines and functions, and to have a coherent focus of our own (Lessard, 1995, p. 3).
