IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/sbusec/v21y2003i3p229-42.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Joint Ventures as an Internationalisation Strategy for SMEs

Author

Listed:
  • Kirby, David A
  • Kaiser, Stefan

Abstract

For some time believed to be inferior to Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprises, Joint Ventures have become a popular vehicle for foreign market servicing. Although there are various proponents of the joint venture strategy as a means of enabling SMEs with limited productive resources and/or market knowledge to enter international markets, relatively few have focused on the actual joint venturing activities of SMEs. This article examines the activities of 9 U.K. and 12 German SMEs that have joint ventures in China. Based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth case interviews, it reveals that the initiatives appear to have been successful but that they are not without their problems and in many ways the experiences of the firms involved seem similar to those of the large multi-national enterprises. It argues that the key to success appears to be the choice of the joint venture partner and concludes that, given the limited resources of small firms, assistance is required to help them locate and select appropriate partners. Copyright 2003 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Kirby, David A & Kaiser, Stefan, 2003. "Joint Ventures as an Internationalisation Strategy for SMEs," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 229-242, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:21:y:2003:i:3:p:229-42
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0921-898X/contents
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dirk De Clercq & Deva Rangarajan, 2008. "The Role of Perceived Relational Support in Entrepreneur–Customer Dyads," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 32(4), pages 659-683, July.
    2. Morais, Flávio & Ferreira, João J., 2020. "SME internationalisation process: Key issues and contributions, existing gaps and the future research agenda," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 62-77.
    3. Iavor Marangozov, 2005. "From Practice to Theory of the International Joint Ventures," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 2, pages 44-77.
    4. M. Lopez-Perez & Lazaro Rodriguez-Ariza, 2013. "Ownership and trust in the governance structures of Spanish-Moroccan SMEs constituted as international joint ventures," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 21(3), pages 609-624, September.
    5. Yi Liu & Cecil Pearson, 2011. "The Determining Factors of Western Australia’s (WA) Foreign Investment in China," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 12(1), pages 1-20, February.
    6. Pisani, Niccolò & Caldart, Adrián & Hopma, Jaël, 2017. "SMEs' formation of minority international joint ventures and level of internationalization: The moderating role of a global versus regional focus," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 414-424.
    7. Claudia Pongelli & Matteo Giuliano Caroli & Marco Cucculelli, 2016. "Family business going abroad: the effect of family ownership on foreign market entry mode decisions," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 787-801, October.
    8. Cosmin-Florin LEHENE & Anca BORZA, 2018. "Problems In Strategic Alliances – Should We Terminate The Collaboration? Empirical Evidence From North-West Region Romania," Management and Marketing Journal, University of Craiova, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 0(1), pages 7-29, May.
    9. Ankur Roy & Chandra Sekhar & Vishal Vyas, 2016. "Barriers to internationalization: A study of small and medium enterprises in India," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 513-538, December.
    10. Iavor Marangozov, 2013. "Realization of the Anticompetitive Potential of Joint Ventures in Bulgaria (1991-2010)," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 4, pages 37-67.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:21:y:2003:i:3:p:229-42. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.