The Moderating Role of International Joint Venture Manufacturing Experience on the Transfer of Technological Knowledge from Foreign Partners to Uganda

Abstract

The Government of Uganda encourages local firms to form joint ventures (JVs) with foreign partners in the hope that international JVs (IJVs) could tap into external knowledge bases on the premise that organisations learn by collaborating with other firms. The study investigated the extent of transfer of technological knowledge from foreign partners to IJV in Uganda's manufacturing sector, established the factors under which the knowledge is transferred and examined whether the effect of these factors on the extent of knowledge transfer is contingent on IJV alliance duration. We believe that outstanding performance of long-established inter-firm links in comparison with shorter links is attributed to the familiarity and expertise to know when and how to draw from partners’ resources. This suggests that, as the alliance duration increases, partners’ develop relational-specific routines and are able to share hard-to-transfer resources The study, cross-sectional design in nature, used self-administered questionnaires in addition to key informant interviews to gather data from a total of 120 respondents who returned the questionnaires. Factor and reliability analysis and multiple and hierarchical regression were the various statistical analysis carried out using SPSS. The study revealed that the effect of communication behaviour, structural attachment and creativity and flexibility on transfer extent is contingent on IJV alliance duration. Future research could be directed to conducting a longitudinal study to investigate the effects of technical and organisational infrastructure factors on the extent of transfer and to examine other types of knowledge, preferably in service industries, as this study only investigated technological knowledge in the manufacturing sector.