International joint ventures in the US military construction programs in Japan: An exploratory case study investigation

Due to the threat posed by North Korea and China, the amount of US military construction in Japan has been steadily increasing over the past two decades. However, the international joint ventures that have been performing the military construction in this region do not appear to be doing well. The failure rate of international joint ventures remains to be high. There has been much research about the formation and failure of international joint ventures. However, there has been no consensus on why joint ventures do not perform well. The reasons why joint ventures fail may vary with the industry and countries involved. This paper will investigate why joint ventures fail in the military construction industry in Japan. A qualitative method will be used to research this phenomenon. Since there is not much research on this subject, the phenomenological approach to determine why US-Japan IJVs perform poorly when they execute MILCON projects in Japan. The research subjects include subject matter experts, which include practitioners of MILCON projects in Japan. The practitioners are from the government, architect-engineer, or construction contractors, prefer with 10 or more years experience in Japan. It has been determined that cultural issues, communications, and contract documents are the primary reasons IJVs that execute MILCON projects in Japan do not perform well. Other reasons such as trust and commitment have been noted as secondary reasons for these phenomena.