2021-Qing Lu


Is Unexpected Termination of International Joint Ventures Legitimised?


Dr Qing Lu, University of Hull - Is Unexpected Termination of International Joint Ventures Legitimised?

Project summary: The international joint venture (IJV) has become a popular type of collaboration in international business. It is, however, prone to unintended termination due to partners’ commitment failure. Without effective solutions, such failure would hinder organizational performance and productivity and create obstacles to innovation and sustainable progress. This project aims to find some effective solutions to such termination by addressing one neglected fundamental question in the extant IJV termination research: is the unintended termination legitimised? It will complement the extant research by focusing on the role of IJV agreement and the bounded reliability of partners’ decision-makers. These solutions also apply to other types of inter-organisational collaboration. This project, thus, has both theoretical and practical relevance.

The project adopts multiple case study design based on the unexpected termination of British banks’ IJVs. It benefits from the principal investigator’s pilot study about the failure of a British bank’s IJV. The data are collected from British banks’ Archives, the National Archives and published literature. It adopts the principle of abductive analysis and comparative analysis in analysing the data. During the 18-month project period, this project will disseminate its findings via websites, social media, BAM conference and cross-SIG events, business events and publications. This study will have a direct impact on business & management scholars, business management professionals and business leaders. In the longer term, it is expected to contribute to reducing the number of prematurely terminated inter-organisational collaborations, improving economic and industrial performance and encouraging governments to produce more suitable policies to encourage collaboration.