Joint venture instability: a life cycle approach

Joint ventures represent one of the most fascinating developments in international business. In the last few decades, the rate of joint venture formation has accelerated dramatically. Nowadays joint ventures are much more widespread and occur in industries like telecommunications, biotechnology etc. At the same time, however, it must be noted that joint ventures are very unstable. In this paper we survey the phenomenon of joint venture instability. We draw on the relative recent theoretical literature on joint venture instability to provide a unified explanation of joint venture life-cycles, formation, as well as breakdown. Further, we do this for both research oriented, as well as production joint ventures.