Successful international cooperation: The influence of cultural similarity, strategic differences, and international experience

Cooperation between companies increasingly exceeds national borders. In the present study 78 international cooperation cases were examined. It was shown that similarity in national and corporate culture is associated with successful cooperation. On the other hand, with respect to corporate strategy, strategic dissimilarity rather than similarity is critical to success of cooperation. Cultural similarity appears to be relatively unimportant to the success of cooperation among companies that had previous experience in the same country. This moderating influence of earlier experience was also found, although less consistently, for cooperation in countries that had a culture related to the culture of the country of the previous experience. No moderating influence was found of experience abroad in general. Implications of the present study for companies starting abroad are discussed.