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1. Introduction
Today multinationals are incessantly witnessing paradigm market shifts, technological proliferation and reckless multiplicity of competitors (Buckley, 2002). Organizations are questing for sources of efficiency and competitiveness (Williamson, 2010). Knowledge assets and related competencies have been recognized as a decisive driver of firm performance, making knowledge management a vital research area (Oliva, 2014). To cope with fluid markets with diluted national boundaries and obtain external sources of knowledge, firms enter into strategic alliances such as international joint ventures (IJVs) (Vaidya, 2009). Further, knowledge-based innovation is proved as a source of sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) (Li et al., 2019). All these fragmented elements are a part of the dynamic capabilities theory (DCT) (Schilke et al., 2018).
DCT advocates the unique strategic amalgamation of a firm’s adaptable resources and skills to grapple with the global market dynamism (Molden, 2020). Although the DCT literature is burgeoning, the theory is still struggling with its under-developed constructs and lack of empirical evidence (Burisch and Wohlgemuth, 2016). The study tries to fulfill this research gap by proposing and empirically evaluating a comprehensive DCT-based knowledge framework. Further, despite offering numerous benefits, IJVs have suffered high failure rates globally, and researchers have started investigating the reasons and ways of IJV terminations (Nippa and Reuer, 2019). One of the endogenous threats to IJV survival is the lack of co-ordination between venture partners, emanating from cultural impediments, structural discrepancies, technological glitches, low absorptive capacity, strategic divergences, unmethodical organizational structure and poor innovativeness (Konara et al., 2020). These factors ultimately yield the capability incongruence in such global alliances leading to inefficiencies and early terminations (Nemeth and Nippa, 2013).
Going beyond the recent research trend of just identifying and analyzing the exogenous and endogenous reasons for IJV termination and dissolution options, this study aims at providing a path of IJV success (Nippa and Reuer, 2019). Addressing the aforementioned research gaps, a knowledge framework is proposed with knowledge transfer as the central theme (a significant issue in IJVs) along with its organizational antecedents, innovative consequences and venture’s absorptive capacity. These quintessential organizational elements, which need to be altered as per the market dynamics for marking a firm sustainably competitive, are logically intertwined in a DCT framework for empirical testing (Teece, 1992). The research problem...