Corporate joint alliances, their children and cultural figurative intelligence

Abstract

Cultural intelligence is part of a process that is traditionally directed towards adaptive learning. However, it has another important component frequently forgotten, that of creative learning. Here, we adopt the context of international joint alliance development where partners in a joint alliance are seen as parents, and their joint venture offspring is a child company. We then adopt agency theory to explain that cultural intelligence is not an adequate term, rather adopting the replacement term that is cultural figurative intelligence. The concept of figurative intelligence arose with Piaget and represents a network of processes that facilitate the creation of new knowledge that, when coupled Vygotsky's ideas, can explain how child corporations emerge and develop, and to the function of adaptation and innovation. A brief case study is provided that supports the theory.