Joint Venture, an Alternative for Knowledge Learning

Joint venture as a form of business cooperation is a valid alternative for acquiring external knowledge and particularly so when it is unavailable on the market. Joint venture constitutes an interesting instrument for learning in firms that belong to high technology sectors; it not only enables access to learning but can also help its assimilation and even its subsequent application to new uses. To analyze this learning, we focus on the elements that make it up, the nature of transferred knowledge, communication between partners, the motivation of the partner to learn, and lastly, the context in which this occurs, such as the type of organizational structure of the partner firm. We obtained a sample composed of 74 firms that have been involved in at least one joint venture and that recognize the fact that they have obtained knowledge from their partner. We applied structural equations via the EQS 6.1 program to contrast our hypotheses. Among the more notable results is the fact that motivation on the part of the learning partner plays a relevant role in this process and that this motivation depends, to a large extent, on the complexity of the knowledge to be transferred. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.