Cultural or Structural? Two Perspectives on Conflicts in Sino-U.S. Joint Ventures

There has been growing academic interests on conflicts in Sino-Foreign joint ventures. Existing literature shows that special attention has been paid to conflicts in Sino-US joint ventures, particularly about the internal conflicts among the Chinese and American partners/management teams. The paper reviews previous research on conflicts in Sino-U.S. joint ventures within two main theoretical perspectives, cultural and structural. It aims to find out are 1) what issues of conflicts these two perspectives tend to address, 2) what is the central issue of their studies, respectively, 3) how they interpret conflicts in joint ventures, and 4) what kind of conflict resolution strategies they tend to propose. By exploring these, the paper seeks to contextualize empirical studies into broader theoretical contexts and develop healthy dialogue between the two dominate approaches, and thus set up a stage for further studies.