Notwithstanding their popularity, veto rights are inadequately understood features of international agreements, particularly interfirm exchanges such as international joint ventures (IJVs). As an interesting feature of an IJV’s governance design, they shape decision-making of the most powerful administrative mechanism of an IJV – the IJV board. IJVs’ boards play a crucial part in supporting adaptation to contingencies, but their adaptive capacity can also give rise to a different set of concerns, however: their opportunistic use by a partner in control of the board. Such behavior, we argue, can be reined in by veto rights. Building on transaction cost economics, we posit that goal conflicts owing to partner competition and environmental uncertainty contribute to the allocation of veto rights to partners. Concerns surrounding the maladaptive use of board control weaken when institutional safeguards are strong, reducing the need for veto rights. Findings from a survey of IJVs furnish evidence in support of the core proposition that veto rights can help parent firms address maladaptation. We conclude that veto rights can be an important element of partners’ arsenal when designing and governing IJVs based on comparative efficiency considerations.

尽管否决权很受欢迎，但人们对国际协议的特征了解不够，尤其是国际合资企业 (IJV) 等公司间交换。作为国际合资企业治理设计的一个有趣特征，它们影响了国际合资企业最强大的管理机制——国际合资企业董事会的决策。国际合资企业的董事会在支持应对突发事件方面发挥着至关重要的作用，但它们的适应能力也可能引起一系列不同的担忧：控制董事会的合作伙伴机会主义地利用它们。我们认为，这种行为可以通过否决权来遏制。基于交易成本经济学，我们认为，由于合作伙伴竞争和环境不确定性而导致的目标冲突，导致了否决权分配给合作伙伴。当制度保障强有力时，对董事会控制权使用不当的担忧就会减弱，从而减少对否决权的需求。对国际合资企业的调查结果提供了支持否决权可以帮助母公司解决适应不良这一核心主张的证据。我们的结论是，在基于比较效率考虑来设计和管理国际合资企业时，否决权可以成为合作伙伴武器库中的一个重要元素。