The Impact of Cultural Differences on the Performance of Sino-foreign Joint Ventures = 문화 자이가 중외 합자기업의 성과에 미치는 영향

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In the context of economic globalization, overseas investment by multinational corporations has developed rapidly, and international joint ventures have gradually become one of the main economic forms of utilizing foreign investment in host countries. Due to the improvement of infrastructure conditions and investment environment, China has attracted more and more foreign investment, which has made Sino-foreign joint ventures an important form of utilizing foreign investment in China. Nevertheless, the failure rate of international joint ventures is still high, and China is no exception. According to statistics, about 15% of the Sino-foreign joint ventures have their expected life terminated prematurely, and 70% of Sino-foreign joint ventures have failed cooperation.
Under this background, this paper makes related research on Sino-foreign joint ventures in China, and from the perspective of cultural differences, focuses on the impact of cultural differences on the performance of Sino-foreign joint ventures. Meanwhile, this paper uses the approach of empirical analysis to analyze the influence of cultural differences between Chinese and foreign employees on enterprise performance.
Specifically, this paper takes Chinese and foreign managers working in joint ventures operated by China and European countries in Guangdong Province of China as respondents, and discusses the influence of cultural differences between Chinese and foreign employees on performance during the operation of Sino-foreign joint ventures. Moreover, this paper divides cultural differences into two parts: national cultural differences and organizational cultural differences.
Firstly, this paper introduces the research background and related theories, and makes an empirical analysis on this basis. In this paper, the national cultural differences and organizational cultural differences are taken as independent variables, the performance of Sino-foreign joint ventures as dependent variables, trust as the moderating variable between cultural differences and performance, and a theoretical model is constructed and relevant hypotheses are put forward. Then a questionnaire survey was conducted, and SPSS software was used to test the reliability and validity of the scale. Finally, the research hypothesis of this paper is verified by regression analysis. Last but not least, this paper provides some suggestions for the management of international joint ventures given the influence of cultural differences.
The innovation of this paper is that, on the one hand, it expands the concept of cultural differences, which is embodied in not only using the previous concept of national cultural differences, but also adding the concept of organizational cultural differences based on this research. In other words, this paper not only discusses cultural differences from a macro perspective(national cultural differences), but also adds a micro perspective (organizational cultural differences) to make supplementary explanations. On the other hand, this paper adds trust as a moderating variable to analyze the moderating effect of trust on the cultural differences and performance of Sino-foreign joint ventures, which makes the research more comprehensive.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................1
• 1.1 Research background and research purpose ......................................................................1
• 1.1.1 Research background ....................................................................................................1
• 1.1.2 Research purpose ...........................................................................................................5
• 1.2 Research method and composition .............................................................................6
• 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ............................................................................................9
• 2.1 Sino-foreign joint venture ............................................................................................9
• 2.1.1 Formation of joint ventures ............................................................................................9
• 2.1.2 Definition and types of Sino-foreign joint ventures .....................................................10
• 2.1.3 Development stages of Sino-foreign joint ventures .....................................................12
• 2.2 Cultural Differences .........................................................................................................13
• 2.2.1 Related concepts of national cultural differences .....................................................13
• 2.2.1.1 Definition and characteristics of culture ....................................................................13
• 2.2.1.2 Concept of cultural differences and previous research ..............................................14
• 2.2.2 National Cultural Differences and Dimensions .............................................................19
• 2.2.2.1 Power distance ..........................................................................................................20
• 2.2.2.2 Individualism ..........................................................................................................21
• 2.2.2.3 Short-term orientation ...........................................................................................22
• 2.3 Organizational culture differences ....................................................................................23
• 2.4 Trust ................................................................................................................................26
• 2.5 Performance of Sino-foreign joint ventures .....................................................................30
• 3. RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESES ............................................................................33
• 3.1 Research model ..........................................................................................................33
• 3.2 Research hypotheses ...................................................................................................34
• 3.2.1 The relationship between national cultural differences and performance.........................35
• 3.2.1.1 Power distance ..........................................................................................................35
• 3.2.1.2 Individualism ..........................................................................................................36
• 3.2.1.3 Short-term orientation ...........................................................................................38
• 3.2.2 The moderating effect of trust ....................................................................................39
• 3.2.3 Relationship between trust and Sino-foreign joint venture performance...........................47
• 3.2.4 Relationship between organizational culture differences and performance.......................48
• 4. METHODOLOGY..................................................................................................................51
• 4.1 Operational definition and measurement of variables..........................................................51
• 4.2 Measurement of variables...................................................................................................51
• 4.2.1 Power distance................................................................................................................52
• 4.2.2 Individualism...................................................................................................................53
• 4.2.3 Short-term orientation.....................................................................................................54
• 4.2.4 Trust................................................................................................................................55
• 4.2.5 Organizational cultural differences...................................................................................56
• 4.2.6 Joint venture performance................................................................................................57
• 5. DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS..............................................................................................59
• 5.1 Sample characteristics.........................................................................................................59
• 5.2 Validity analysis and reliability analysis..................................................................................62
• 5.2.1 Reliability analysis.............................................................................................................62
• 5.2.2 Validity analysis................................................................................................................63
• 5.3 Hypotheses testing..............................................................................................................67
• 5.3.1 Confirmatory factor analysis.............................................................................................67
• 5.3.2 Correlation analysis..........................................................................................................68
• 5.3.3 Regression analysis...........................................................................................................69
• 5.3.4 Moderating effect analysis................................................................................................72
• 5.3.5 Conclusion of Hypotheses Testing Results.........................................................................74
• 6. CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................76
• 6.1 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................76
• 6.2 Implication..........................................................................................................................77
• 6.3 Limitation and further study................................................................................................80
• Reference.................................................................................................................................82
• Appendix – The Survey Questionnaire ....................................................................................101
• Appendix – Chinese Survey Questionnaire................................................................................105
• 요약.........................................................................................................................................109