Venture Brazil: Studying Austro-Brazilian Joint Ventures by Means of GABEK and WinRelan

This chapter is based on a study of joint ventures in Brazil, one of the world’s largest and most attractive emerging markets. International joint ventures are complex partnerships that depend on personal and cultural understanding between the partners, strategic harmony in respect of the goals to be achieved, a good resource fit and trust between the partners in the interest of success. Previous research has focused on various aspects of international joint ventures, including planning, management and control, but little attention has been paid to the Latin American market, with its unique characteristics. The study reported in this chapter aimed to identify the key success factors in Austro-Brazilian joint ventures by uncovering the critical internal and external factors that had influenced this kind of cooperation, plus the managers’ perceptions and evaluations of and attitudes towards their joint ventures. The empirical research included both partners’ perspectives, that is, those of the Austrian and the Brazilian managers. It involved the full range of Austrian equity joint ventures in Brazil, covering 12 companies. GABEK was chosen as an appro-priate method for theory building when the existing theories were deemed to be rather inconsistent.