 Students, we are discussing cross-border alliances. In that, we have talked about mergers and acquisitions. Another type of equity cross-border alliances is international equity joint ventures. Now you would remember that merger and acquisition takes place when two companies, they come together and merge to make a new company. And acquisition is when a company acquires a smaller company and it becomes a part of the acquiring company completely. So the company loses with the firm which is being acquired, it loses its identity and it becomes a part of the acquiring firm. So that is merger and acquisition. Now international joint venture is a third form of cross-border alliance. It is different from merger and acquisition in the way that the international joint venture holds its own identity and the parent companies, they hold their own identities themselves. It's not that in mergers, you know, that both the companies, they lose their identity, a third new company is formed. Whereas in international joint venture, a new company is formed, but the parent companies, they still operate on their own, but the new company, which is the international joint venture, it operates on its own as a separate legal entity. So that is how it is different from international joint venture is different from merger or acquisition. The definition of then an international joint venture is that it's a separate legal organizational entity representing the partial holdings of two or more parent firms, partial holdings, not complete holdings. Some of the holdings of two or more parent firms, it represents the partial holdings in which the headquarters of at least one of the parent company is located outside the country of operation of the joint venture. Then it is going to be called a cross-border alliance. If the headquarter of at least one company is outside the country in which it is operating. This entity is subject to the joint control of its parent firms, each of which is economically and legally independent of the other. So parent companies, both of the parent companies, they are independent economically as well as legally. And the third company, which is formed as a international joint venture by bringing together the two parent companies, it holds a separate legal entity, a separate legal and economic entity. And the parent companies, they work on their own. They are independent. They have nothing to do with the profits or losses of the international joint venture. It is something which is formed by creating partial holdings from two or more parent firms. So if you look at it in the form of a picturization, you can see that parent firm A coming from country A, then we have parent firm B, which is coming from country B. And they are forming a new company, which is the international joint venture. There, as you can see, that the dotted line shows the possible additional relational interfaces in which there is possibility that there is a third parent firm, C. So it could be two or more parent firms coming together, coming from different countries. And the international joint venture, it could be either in country A or it could be in country B. Or it is possible that it is somewhere in another third country, which is country C. So it's not required that it is either in A country or B country. It can be anywhere in another country, which is country C. So there are two interfaces for the HR and challenges for the HR are on the two interfaces. One is the interface between the international joint venture and the parent firm. So you can see that people from the parent firm A and parent firm B, both of the organizations, they will be coming to work in the international joint venture. And so the interface of human resource will be with the parent firm A as well as parent firm B. On the other hand, there is another interface for the human resource, which is the intra-IJVHR challenge. So they have to manage the human resources within the international joint venture, within the new firm which is created, as well as the human resources have to be managed with the parent firm A as well as the parent firm B. So the HR issues of your parent firms and the HR challenges and the HR policies you have to manage, that is your interface. And the second interface is your intra-IJVHR that you have to manage within the company the human resources. So human resource challenges for an international joint venture, they are similar to those as there are for the merger and acquisition challenges. For example, cultural integration, training, knowledge transfer, drivers of change, representing the cultures of the different companies, all these things, they are part of the international joint venture as well. But there are additional challenges, which is that HR must manage relations at the interfaces between the international joint venture and the parent companies. This is something which I've already discussed that one is that you need to manage the HR dynamics between the parent firm A and B and the international joint venture. And then another interface is within your own company you have to manage the human resource dynamics. So these are, this is the additional challenge which is faced by an international joint venture from the perspective of human resources. So different rules can create critical dualities. So it is possible that recruitment and selection is taking place in one way in parent firm A. It is taking place in another way in firm B. And now they are to manage another way in the newly created firm of the international joint venture. And now you have to decide which type of strategy for recruitment and selection you have to follow. You need to pick some features from A firm and some features from B firm. Or you need to go completely as A firm or completely as B firm. So there are these different rules they can create critical dualities for the human resource function. So one is that you need to manage these interfaces. And then the HR must develop appropriate human resource management practices and strategies for the IJV itself. So they must recruit, develop, motivate, retain human resources at the joint venture level as well. It can create a lot of problems. We are going to discuss that in a case study, how these dualities and how these two firms coming from different cultures and values, how that can create problem. And it can be a hindrance in smooth development of human resource policies for the new international joint venture. So this is a basic summary of what kind of HR challenges can be faced in an international joint venture.