Journal of Business Research 57 (2004) 1370 – 1377

A study of organizational image resulting from international joint ventures

in transitional economies
Steven X. Sia,*, Michael A. Hittb
a
Department of Management, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg, PA 17815, USA
b
Department of Management, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
Received 20 December 2001; accepted 10 March 2003

Abstract

Organizational image is a very popular issue in China. This study explores the images of Sino-American international joint ventures
(IJVs) and Sino-Japanese IJVs in the Chinese context and identifies four categories (product, service, environment, and social images) for
predicting the images resulting from Sino-American and Sino-Japanese IJVs studied. The results indicate that these image categories
significantly relate to the images of the IJVs. Product image has the largest effect while country-of-partner of the IJVs, at least in a
comparison of companies originating in the United States and Japan, does not have a significant impact on the IJVs’ image.
D 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Image; International joint venture; Transitional economies

1. Introduction
Corporations exhibit a multitude of characteristics per-
ceived and interpreted by individuals both internal and
external to the organizations’ themselves. Because there
are so many organizations and so many related character-
istics, individuals often simplify these perceptual and cog-
nitive processes to form images of institutions (Boulding,
1956). Such images, whether based on tangible or intangible
characteristics, affect how people behave in regard to
organizations (Lindquist, 1974). As such, they can have
dramatic effects on the operation and success of corpora-
tions (Gray and Smeltzer, 1988).
In recent years, image has been the subject of rather
intensive organizational study, perhaps because the concept
involves multilevel notions dealing with individual and
organizational issues and because image can lend insight
into the character and behavior of organizations and their
members (Gioia et al., 2000). Researchers have studied
image in many of its different forms, such as construed
external image (e.g. Dutton et al., 1994), desired future
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-570-389-4549; fax: +1-570-389-
2071.
E-mail address: ssi@bloomu.edu (S.X. Si).
image (e.g. Gioia and Thomas, 1996), and projected image
(e.g. Alvesson, 1990). Researchers have also studied image
at a variety of levels including: product, brand, company,
and country (e.g. Gatewood et al., 1993; Fombrun, 1996).
At the company level, image often refers to the commonly
understood features of an organization relative to its prod-
ucts or services, its treatment of customers and investors,
and its mode of operations (Fombrun, 1996). Information
used to determine a corporation’s image may come from
sources such as advertising, direct interaction with the
organization, product or service use, rumors, news reports,
or unofficial statements by organizational members.
A theme in this line of research is that a positive image
enhances organizational success in a variety of ways. For
example, as a firm’s image improves, its sales may also
improve due to higher customer loyalty, a greater propensity
for the public to believe the organization’s advertising,
increased likelihood of public recognition of the corpora-
tion’s logo(s), and greater public acceptance of that firm’s
brands (Herbig et al., 1994).
While the composition and effects of image may be
studied at different levels in the organization (e.g. business
and company), it can also be studied based on the group
perceiving it (e.g. investors, community, employees, and
customers) (Fombrun, 1996; Gray and Smeltzer, 1988).
There is also evidence that the morale and ability of a

0148-2963/$ – see front matter D 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0148-2963(03)00072-9
 S.X. Si, M.A. Hitt / Journal of Business Research 57 (2004) 1370–1377
corporation to attract and retain high-quality employees is
affected by image (Gatewood et al., 1993). Potential
employees are less likely to want to work for an organiza-
tion that is seen as unethical or experiencing financial
hardship (Dutton and Dukerich, 1991; Dutton et al., 1994).
Concern for building a positive consumer image may be
particularly important when an organization enters a new
environment where it does not have a long history. In
recent years, international joint ventures (IJVs) have
become a very popular participation strategy for multina-
tional companies to use when entering new markets.
However, nowhere is this increase more evident than in
the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (United Nations,
1994, 2000). Official government statistics point to Taiwan
and Hong Kong as the primary sources of IJV investment
in the PRC (The Bulletin of the State Bureau of Business
Administration of the People’s Republic of China, 1997),
possibly due to their geographic proximity and shared
cultural histories. Among the distinctly foreign investment
partners in the PRC (countries whose languages differ
significantly from those of the PRC), Japan and the United
States have the most IJVs (The Bulletin of the State Bureau
of Business Administration of the People’s Republic of
China, 1997).
Several factors have driven this trend toward investment
in IJVs in China. Harrigan (1985), for instance, identified
internal, competitive, and strategic motivations for the
initiation of IJVs. Similarly, Kogut (1988) suggested that
transaction costs reduction (cost economizing), strategic
behavior (competitive positioning), and organizational
learning (knowledge transfer) were key reasons for initiating
IJVs. Other scholars have tied IJV formation to risk reduc-
tion (e.g. Contractor and Lorange, 1988; Mead, 1994).
While each of these factors may influence the formation
of IJVs in general, Shenkar (1990) suggested that the
initiation of IJVs in the PRC has been driven by the
overarching aspiration of participating firms to take part in
what may be the largest business opportunity of the new
century. Similarly, Pavitt (1991) reports that large firms are
taking a long-term strategic view of the PRC market. Along
with the size of the market, a major factor influencing the
decision to enter the PRC is that many companies already
have a substantial presence in most of the rest of the world
(Daniels et al., 1985). Thus, the PRC is perceived to be their
best remaining untapped market.
Observing these changes, Child (1990) indicates that the
growth of the PRC market presents an interesting and
challenging opportunity to study international alliances in
new institutional contexts. Chinese government policy
favors equity joint ventures with local partners as the main
channel for inward foreign direct investment through a
combination of restrictive regulations and economic incen-
tives (Si and Bruton, 1999). In addition, though IJVs in
China were set up originally for export purposes only, this
purpose has been largely altered by a series of shifts in
Chinese government policy toward IJVs in the past few
1371
years. Since entering the WTO, the Chinese government has
been obligated to demonstrate an increasing commitment to
provide more domestic market for IJVs. The popular term
for this recent phenomenon is ‘‘market exchange foreign
investment’’ (e.g. Xu, 1999). Our recent interviews have
shown that many IJVs in China are actively seeking to
increase the percentage of their domestic sales in this huge
market. In addition, we believe that these changes are
related at least in part to the current tribulations of the
international market.
Thus, although IJVs can be successful through such
partnerships by a desire to rapidly gain profit or local
market access and new business opportunities, there are
still a number of issues regarding implementing this strategy
that remain unclear. One of them, which has not been
adequately addressed and which may significantly affect
the performance of IJVs, is their image. It is not clear if and
how customers weight intrinsic factors such as product or
service quality versus extrinsic factors such as partners’
country of origin when forming images of such new
ventures. Knowledge of how customers rank such criteria
may be crucial to the success of such ventures (Gray and
Smeltzer, 1988). We analyze these issues in the Chinese
context.
2. Literature review and hypotheses
2.1. The image of IJVs
The role of image in economic activities was first
discussed by Boulding (1956). He theorized that human
behavior is not entirely directed by explicit knowledge and
information, but is also the product of perceived images.
Recently, image has been the subject of many different
conceptualizations and definitional debates. Various
researchers argue that organizational image is a broad
concept including the following key points: (1) Organiza-
tional image is the way organizational members believe
others see the organization. Some scholars (e.g. Dutton and
Dukerich, 1991) named this aspect the ‘‘construed external
image.’’ (2) Organization image can also be described as a
construction of public impressions created to appeal to an
audience that might or might not represent objective reality
(e.g. Bernstein, 1984). All these views, however, take image
to be essentially an internal conception that is held or
communicated by insiders (Gioia et al., 2000). (3) Organ-
ization image is the public’s perception of a given organ-
ization that is usually associated with an action or event.
This is an external, focusing on perceptions held by out-
siders (e.g. Berg, 1985).
As a specified organization, an IJV image is usually
related with a particular international environment. The
business environment in emerging economies is clearly
different than that in mature economies (Tan, 1999). As
the largest emerging economy, the Chinese government has
1372 S.X. Si, M.A. Hitt / Journal of Business Research 57 (2004) 1370–1377
totally approved approximately 360,000 IJVs and other
foreign-invested companies from more than 180 countries
by the end of 2000. Nearly 400 of the Fortune 500
companies have established companies or other business
organizations in the Chinese market (United Nations, 2000).
We argue that IJV image could play a more critical role in
the PRC than in mature economies due to the Chinese
business environment’s complexity and uncertainty for the
Western firms. There are numerous institutional voids in this
environment. Imperfect information may lead image to play
a more critical role in the PRC than in mature economies.
Thus, firms from mature economies entering IJV in China
should emphasize firm image. When we visited the IJVs in
our pilot study, we observed that some successful IJVs, for
instance, one of the Top 10 Sino-American IJVs in 2001,
treated the IJV image as one of five organizational priorities.
That might be a good message for all the IJVs conducting
businesses in the PRC.
An IJV is usually with a relatively small and narrow
scope with international characteristics that can be expected
to form its parent’s image. Thus, an IJV in the early steps of
forming its own independent image will at first share parts
of its parents’ organization images. This overlapping of
images contributes a further layer of complexity to the
process of establishing an IJV’s image. Based on the above
discussion, we define an IJV image as planed and applied
visionary perceptions and collective judgments by outsiders
of the IJV’s positioning and achievement in an international
business environment. It plays a more critical role in the
situation with imperfect information and a very high uncer-
tainty, and it could have a strong positive or negative impact
on IJV success.
On the issue of how people form perception of an
organization, Nisbett and Ross (1980) indicate that people
form perceptions and draw conclusions based on incomplete
and sometimes biased evidence. It seems that people typ-
ically attend to the most vivid cues in their environments,
which may or may not be representative of the situation at
hand. Further, individuals often draw conclusions that are
biased by a number of factors such as the newness of the
information or how well it matches their previous percep-
tions. Because IJV images are complex in nature, they may
be affected by such perceptual and inferential biases. In turn,
the effectiveness of an IJV strategic effort may be contin-
gent upon the images held by the targets of the strategy.
Gray and Smeltzer (1988) proposed that a negative image
perceived by any of a company’s publics indicates either an
inappropriate strategy or a failure to effectively commun-
icate that strategy.
While the above discussion reveals some generally
understood aspects of the importance of image in operating
an IJV, it seems that up to now little research has been
done to specifically investigate these issues in the largest
IJV market in the world, China. The initial lack of both
theoretical and empirical research on the image of IJVs in
China forced us to start nearly from scratch. We grounded
our initial research by conducting a series of personal
interviews in the PRC over the past one year. The best use
of limited time was to conduct initial interviews with
professional corporate image (CI) designers, we reasoned
that these professionals had a wealth of knowledge,
expertise, and work experience consulting and designing
images for a variety of IJVs in China. The purpose of our
first set of personal interviews was to explore factors that
might be critical in influencing IJV image in the Chinese
context.
2.2. Categories and hypotheses
To identify determinant IJV image items in China, we
reviewed the relevant literature and interviewed a total of 52
professionals currently working for CI design firms in
China. Interviewees had expertise concerning the problems
and opportunities in establishing a positive IJV image.
These personal interviews were respectively in May 2000
and October 2001 in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou.
The interview process involved a general discussion con-
cerning image items where each interviewee was encour-
aged to propose major image items and asked to explain the
importance of these items. Based on interview information
and discussion results, we classified the items into four
categories.
Lindquist’s (1974 – 1975) theoretical findings indicated
organizational image can be characterized by a combination
of two kinds of attributes: tangible and intangible. Tangible
attributes refer to firm elements that can be more or less
objectively compared with those of a competitor such as
product and service. Intangible factors refer to psychological
attributes, such as a sense of belonging, feelings of warmth
and friendliness, or perceptions of concern for customers
and other stakeholders. Such intangible factors may parallel
the social and environmental factors found in the current
study.
While theorists may attempt to draw a line of
demarcation between tangible and intangible attributes,
the categories may be only relatively separate. Consider,
for example, the dimensions of a specific product’s
image. A product engineer may classify technological
data about a product as tangible, while to an average
consumer all such data may merely contribute to a
mystique (i.e. an intangible attribute of the product’s
image). It may be that firms’ images are based as much
on mystique as on explicit facts reported about them
(Ofir and Lehman, 1986). Given that both tangible and
intangible factors may influence the image of IJVs, we
hypothesize:
Hypothesis 1: There will be a positive relationship between
product, service, environment, and social image and the
image of the U.S. and Japanese IJVs in the PRC.
Among the four image predictors (product, service,
environment, and social), the initial interview results of
 S.X. Si, M.A. Hitt / Journal of Business Research 57 (2004) 1370–1377
this study have shown that product image may have the
strongest relationship with the image of a given company in
developing countries. This may be due to the fact that
consumers’ economic resources are so very limited in
developing countries that they must place a strong
emphasis on products satisfying basic needs. Thus, pur-
chasers in developing countries may naturally concern
themselves with certain utilitarian aspects of product image.
Given that products are the primary output, other image
categories may only contribute to the IJV’s overall image
rather than determine it. The other categories might be less
important if the basic product image is low. Therefore, we
hypothesize:
Hypothesis 2: The product image category will relate more
strongly with the IJVs’ image than service, environment,
and social image categories.
In this study, we also explored the issue of comparative
image for Japan and the United States as the two largest IJV
investors in China. Judging by history, it might have been
expected that the Chinese consumer would consider the
image of U.S. IJVs generally better than that of Japanese
IJVs. In our pilot study, we interviewed 36 Chinese cus-
tomers in Shanghai entirely by telephone, and the results
indicated that 18 people (50%) chose the United States, 15
people (42%) chose Japan, and 3 people (8%) indicated that
there was no difference between the two. In the literature,
some researchers (e.g. Roy, 1986) reported that Japanese
IJVs appear to dominate the PRC business environment.
Possibly the Japanese partners, in contrast with their U.S.
counterparts, are easily accepted by the Chinese because of
the two countries’ many cultural similarities. For example,
both the Chinese and Japanese are characterized by high
collectivism and long-term orientation as a part of cultural
core. Hofstede and Bond (1988) linked this to a common
emphasis on Confucian dynamism and reported that it had a
significant effect on Chinese cross-national commercial
growth.
A counter-argument can also be made that Japanese
businesses in the PRC must labor under the onus of a
century’s history of intermittent war with China. Mem-
ories of Japanese war crimes during World War II and
the Sino-Japanese war of 1894– 1895 (when Japan took
Taiwan from China) are not dormant. Stories from these
wars have been retold in schools and the media resulting
in considerable public awareness. In contrast, the history
of Western colonialism and opium dealing does not seem
to have as high a profile in the culture. Maybe for this
reason, Roy (1986) indicated that the United States,
although more culturally distant than Japan, has at times
seemed more spiritually attuned to contemporary Chinese
life. Thus, there is a possibility that Japanese businesses
may face a negative predisposition at many levels of
society in the PRC. While Japanese and U.S. IJVs may
have different images in the PRC, the competing cultural
and historical forces make it difficult to predict the
1373
directional effects. As such we make the nondirectional
hypothesis that:
Hypothesis 3: Due to the influence of national image
differences, the image of U.S. IJVs is generally better than
that of Japanese IJVs in the PRC.
3. Methods
3.1. Procedure
In the current study, we selected part-time evening stu-
dents from several universities as our data source for this
study. In China, part-time evening students generally were
adults, many of these students were married and had at least
few years of work experience. The students we selected for
this study live in big cities with a number of Sino-American
and Sino-Japanese IJVs, many of these students actually
work for IJVs or IJV-related businesses. In addition, due to
the expansion of IJV products in the Chinese market, these
students are frequent buyers and shoppers of IJV products. In
addition, our interview results also revealed that the majority
of adult students claimed and indeed demonstrated that they
could easily distinguish whether the country-of-partner was
the United States or Japan. In part, their facility came from the
easily visible differences in language between Japanese and
English. Based on these adult students’ customer character-
istics and their knowledge and familiarity of IJVs, we thus
selected them as part of the Chinese customers for conducting
this study. Specifically, a survey printed in Chinese characters
was administrated to students of five well-known universities
in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. In accordance with
standard practice, the survey was written in English and then
translated and back translated to insure accuracy of the
translation. A member of the research team contacted pro-
fessors at five universities in China who agreed to help us
distribute the questionnaires in class to their students. We
requested access to classes to observe the students. Students
completed the questionnaire during the normal class meeting,
and each respondent was given approximately US$5 as a
token of appreciation for completing the survey.
The survey included various sections, some of which
were used for this study. The relevant questions used to
predict the image of American and Japanese IJVs were
composed of four dimensions, as presented in Table 1.
Participants were asked to read the questions pertaining to
IJV image and to rate the extent to which the item influ-
enced their perception of IJV images. Responses were
recorded on a seven-point scale from 1 (strong negative
answer) to 7 (strong positive answer).
3.2. Participants
Participants were 881 adult students at five well-known
universities’ continual education colleges located in Shang-
1374 S.X. Si, M.A. Hitt / Journal of Business Research 57 (2004) 1370–1377

Table 1 Table 2
The IJV image’s categories and items Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations and VIFs
(1) Product image Independent variables Mean S.D. VIF 1 2 3 4
PI1: Product quality
1. Product image 4.48 1.39 4.61 (.89)
PI2: Product durability 2. Service image 4.02 0.71 5.43 .08 (.77)
PI3: Product diversification 3. Environment image 3.90 1.05 3.47 .12 * .28 * (.81)
PI4: Product packaging 4. Social image 4.34 1.25 2.21 .27* * .42* * .31* * (.83)
PI5: Product trade mark
5. Japan/United States 0.50 0.42 .05 .04 .01 .03
PI6: Product uses and functions
PI7: Product renew period Variables’ reliabilities (Cronbach’s alpha) are in parentheses on the
PI8: Product price diagonal.
* P < .05.
(2) Service image ** P < .01.
SI1: Service timetable
SI2: Service attitude
SI3: Service information A Cronbach’s alpha was also calculated in order to assess
SI4: Service variety the reliability of every scale. The resulting reliability coef-
SI5: Service quality ficients ranged from .77 to .89 and are reported on the
diagonal of Table 2. A variance inflation factor (VIF) was
(3) Environment image
also used to test whether the four image categories were
EI1: Building appearance
EI2: State of tech. and equipment independent. The VIF measures how much the variances of
EI3: Sanitation and protection the estimated regression coefficients are inflated as com-
EI4: Community relations pared to when the independent variables are not linearly
EI5: Cultural fits related. Neter et al. (1985) suggested that VIFs in excess of
10 may indicate problems of multicolinearity. Current find-
(4) Social image
PI1: CEO’s reputation ings, reported in Table 2, indicate that the largest VIF was
PI2: Commitment 5.53. Thus, the factors are not multicolinear.
PI3: Friendship
PI4: Social responsibilities
PI5: Morals and ethics
4. Results
PI6: Behavioral appearance

The means, standard deviations, correlations, and coef-

ficient alphas for the study variables are presented in Table
hai, Beijing, and Guangzhou: 385 from universities in 2. The images of Japanese and U.S. IJVs were regressed on
Shanghai, 251 from universities in Beijing, and 145 from the four main effect variables and a dummy-coded country
universities in Guangzhou. Participants were public rela- variable (Japan = 0, USA = 1) in the first step of the equa-
tions (PR) and CI majors (45%), business majors (48%), tion. In the second step, interaction terms (for each country
and science majors (7%). Participants were primarily mar- by each of the four main effects) were entered. The
ried (71%), and male (55%), with an average age of 28.1 regression results are presented in Table 3.
years and an above average income relative to their age
group. Participants were pursuing their second Bachelor’s
degree (61%), Bachelor’s degree (28%), or Master’s degree Table 3
(11%). The majority of participants had two evening Results of multiple regression analysis
classes per week and had at least 1 or 2 years of work Independent variables B t B t
experience in IJVs or IJV-related companies. To validate First step Second step
this survey and to verify that these participants were Product .06 9.80* * .07 7.78* *
generally qualified as consumers, our questionnaires posed Service .08 5.75* * .09 5.01* *
two preliminary questions to assess familiarity with the Environment .02 2.83 * .03 1.82 *
research topic: Are you acquainted with some Japanese and Social .04 3.10 * .05 2.65 *
Japan/United States .13 1.25 .15 0.48
U.S. IJVs? Are you a frequent buyer and shopper of Japan/United States  Product .04 0.42
American and Japanese IJV products? From the total of Japan/United States  Service .04 1.42
1521 adult students who filled out the questionnaires, the Japan/United States  .02 0.52
881 selected all answered yes to these two questions. To Environment
assess any differences in results among the three cities, Japan/United States  Social .03 0.58
Constant .52
dummy-coded control variables were employed in the R2 .56 .59
regression equations. The results indicated that there were Adjusted R2 .47 .48
no significant differences ( P < .05) across the three cities. F 64.85* * 48.43* *
As such, the dummy codes for cities were not used in * P < .05.
further regression equations. * * P < .01.
 S.X. Si, M.A. Hitt / Journal of Business Research 57 (2004) 1370–1377
Hypothesis 1 stated that each of the four image categories
(product, service, environment, and social) would help
predict the image of the Japanese and U.S. IJVs. Findings
for the first step, reported in Table 3, support this hypothesis
and indicate that all four image categories had a positive
( P < .01) association with image.
Hypothesis 2 stated that in the PRC, product image
would relate more strongly with image than the other
predictors. To test this hypothesis, significance tests for
differences between r’s (suggested by Cohen and Cohen,
1983, pp. 56 – 57) were calculated. In each comparison
[product and service (t = 4.02), product and environment
(t = 4.18), and product and social (t = 4.36)], the relationship
between product category and IJV image was significantly
greater ( P < .05) than each of the other variables. Thus,
there was support for Hypothesis 2.
Hypothesis 3 proposed that the image of Japanese and
U.S. IJVs would be different. This hypothesis was tested by
entering the interaction of country by the four image
categories into the second step of the regression equation
and employing a two-tailed significance test. The results,
also shown in Table 3, indicate that the difference between
the image of Japanese and that of U.S. IJVs was not
significant for any of the interaction effects. Further, there
was no significant main effect for the country variable.
Thus, Hypothesis 3 was not supported.
5. Discussion
The findings of this study indicate that the product,
service, environment, and social image positively related
to the image of both Japanese and U.S. IJVs in the PRC as
predicted in Hypothesis 1. Results also support Hypothesis
2 that the product image of IJVs has a stronger relationship
with the IJV image than other categories in the PRC. It is
possible that our PRC respondents, as in many other
developing countries, had relatively limited resources to
spend on IJV products. As such, they may have been very
concerned with economic value, leading them to focus most
on vivid product factors when forming images.
While product image had the strongest relationship with
the IJV image, service, environmental and social images
were also important predictors. As such, IJV managers
should not ignore these important issues when developing
marketing campaigns. A limitation to this finding is that it is
not clear whether the relative weighting of the four factors
examined in this study will be stable over time. Also, in the
current study, the level of customers’ experiences with the
IJVs was not directly measured. To directly assess changes
in the importance of the image factors over time, a longit-
udinal study on their relative weights, from pre- to post-
purchase, is needed. Such a study might include other key
IJV stakeholders (e.g. direct employees, suppliers, govern-
ment officials, and parent company managers). Each of
these groups may be found to assign different initial and
1375
long-run weights for the four factors, which in turn may
differentially affect their behaviors toward the IJVs.
To further explore the impact of the four image categor-
ies in the current study, we conducted a post hoc analysis of
their interactive effects on image. This was done to see if
there were mixed effects such that being high or low on one
variable muted or enhanced the effects of the other varia-
bles. This was done by regressing the IJV image on the four
main effects in a first step and then entering the two-way
interaction effects, among the four main effect categories, as
a second set, as suggested by Cohen and Cohen (1983).
Neither the set nor any of the component interaction terms
had a significant ( P < .05) relationship with the IJV image.
Thus, it seems that these factors did not, at least in this
sample, combine to influence the IJV image.
In this study, there was no support for Hypothesis 3 that
theorized a difference between the images of Japanese and
U.S. IJVs. Evidently, respondents were influenced by prod-
uct, service, environment. and social factors, and not by the
countries involved. Hypothesis 3 was proposed in accord-
ance with cultural and political factors that contribute to
shaping individual and collective behaviors (Parsons, 1973).
However, the cultural milieu shaping the perceptions and
behavior of the PRC respondents is a unique blend of
socialism and Confucianism (Banerjea, 1990). With the
recent diminishing role of socialism and the restructuring
of Confucianism in the PRC, the purchasers’ attitudes
toward different countries may no longer be strongly domi-
nated by traditional historic, political, or cultural factors.
A related factor potentially mitigating the country-of-
origin effect is that we chose to examine the most common
distinctly foreign IJVs in the PRC. As such, our sample
consisted of Japanese and U.S. IJVs. Since both of these
countries are large and economically powerful, they may
both be held in relatively high regard by consumers.
Therefore, there may have been some ceiling effect on the
consumers’ opinions. Future researchers may want to con-
sider IJVs from a broader sample of countries to more fully
explore the related effects.
In such an examination, researchers may also need to
clarify the role of country-of-origin for single-entity firms
versus IJVs. While there is considerable evidence that
country-of-origin can affect product image, that effect may
be muted when multiple countries are involved in the design
and manufacture of the product (Berger, 1994). This may be
due to the difficulty for consumers to confidently interpret
the quality of products when multiple countries are
involved. Applied to the current case, the country effect
on IJV image may have been muted because each IJV, by
definition, involved representation from two countries and,
in turn, consumers were not sure how to interpret that
relationship. However, country-of-partner effects might also
be examined within and between various industries. It may
be that country-of-partner is more important in some indus-
tries, such as consumer electronics, than others (Berger,
1994).
1376 S.X. Si, M.A. Hitt / Journal of Business Research 57 (2004) 1370–1377
The sample used in the current study may have also led
to the lack of country-image differences. The respondents
were previous department store customers from large PRC
cities. As such, they may have had considerable knowledge
of the products offered by the IJVs studied. As consumers
become more aware of product attributes, the effect of
country-of-origin may dissipate (Ofir and Lehman, 1986).
Similarly, we chose to have subjects consider large, well-
established IJVs. Again, such organizations and their prod-
ucts may have been well known, leading to a decayed
country effect. Stronger effects might be found for first-
time or naive buyers (Erickson et al., 1984).
An implication for organizations from countries such as
Japan or the United States, which expect to have a strong
country image when forming IJVs, is that competitive
advantage may not exist. Potentially, countries may need
to promote the high quality that can be expected from
companies, workers, or products. Similarly, IJVs may need
to promote the synergies inherent in their collaboration with
domestic firms, for example, illustrating how the technology
from a foreign firm is being applied conjointly with the
knowledge of the local market held by the domestic partner
to create high-quality products.
In general, IJV image is a very important issue in the
Chinese IJV management research. Therefore, it is helpful
for any foreign company to greatly understand the import-
ance of firm image in this complex market for achieving
IJV success in this market. There are several limitations of
the current study. The sample in this study was composed
of part-time adult students. Consistent with the effort to
build a greater understanding of IJV image, researchers
should examine other related groups. For example, general
managers and other professional groups could provide a
more accurate and broad range of products and IJVs in the
PRC. In addition, a potential counter-explanation is that
IJV managers in the PRC have understood the potential
salience of product characteristics, focused their advert-
ising on such factors, and thereby heightened the influence
of this factor. For example, Ouchi and Johnson (1978) and
Craig et al. (1987) have reported that Japanese and U.S.
IJVs in the PRC may have placed an emphasis on products
per se and that this emphasis can exert both direct and
indirect influences on Chinese perceptions and behaviors.
A longitudinal study is helpful to fully determine whether
a relatively high importance of product factor that is
caused by organizational communication campaigns or
whether it inherently exists and leads advertisers to focus-
ing on it. A longitudinal investigation could also help
clarify the relationship between IJV image and IJV per-
formance.
In the current study, we have also attempted to develop a
reliable and valid research instrument to assess and predict
IJV image. In doing so, we hope to lay the groundwork for
researchers to continue the examination of the antecedents
and consequences of IJV image that could make a signific-
ant contribution to the IJV management literature.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank John Child, William Neese,
Bruce Rockwood, Pierre Jean Menjoz, Jean McGuire, and
anonymous reviewers who contributed their time and ideas
to this study.
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Dr. Steven X. Si is an associate professor of management at the Department
of Management of Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. His teaching
and research interests include strategic management, strategic human
resource management, and international business. He has published articles
in the Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Applied Psychology,
Journal of Business Research, and many other refereed journals.
Michael A. Hitt is a professor at Arizona State University. He served as
editor of the Academy of Management Journal and was a past president of
the Academy of Management in 1990s. He has published articles in the
Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review,
Academy of Management Executive, and many other top-tier management
journals and books.