religion opportunism and international market entry via non equity alliances or joint ventures one challenge that globalization has brought to business is that firms as they expand their market globally through cross border alliances need to deal with partner firms from countries of different religious background the impact of a country s dominant religion on its firms international market entry mode choices has not been examined in traditional approaches focusing on hypothesizing the influence of christian beliefs and atheism i e the absence of belief in any deities this research aims to fill the gap by exploring religion s role in providing moral restraint on managers propensity for opportunism which in turn affects these managers choices of their firms international market entry via non equity alliances or joint ventures a study of 22 156 cross border alliances formed in 48 industries world wide over 9 years provides new insight toward understanding religion s influence on firms international market entry mode decisions through the ethical dimension of strategic leadership

explaining the international intensity and global diversity of early stage technology based firms abstract early stage technology based firms are confronted with the complexity of foreign markets and global competition from their earliest stages of development not only must technology entrepreneurs keep pace with ever changing technology based product offerings but they must also simultaneously stay abreast of competitors and industry trends in multiple countries we surveyed 75 small technology based firms in ontario to evaluate their international activities and try to explain both the intensity of their foreign sales the percent of total sales coming from foreign sources as well as the global diversity of the markets in which they operate the number of major regional areas from which they derive revenue our findings suggest that resources necessary to pursue international sales have an important impact on both foreign market intensity and diversity in contrast however attitudes towards foreign markets helped to explain international intensity but not global diversity additionally firm age was positively associated with global diversity but not international intensity these findings support the notion of small technology firms being instant internationals but suggest that proceeding to the next step achieving global diversity requires significantly greater time and resources in line with prior empirical research these firms tended to increase their international intensity and diversity as they became larger in contrast with what the literature suggests however firms utilizing strategic alliances were no more active internationally than those not using strategic alliances finally government assistance helped to explain the international intensity of these firms but not the global diversity these results help managers researchers and shapers of public policy better understand the international activities of early stage technology firms given the relationship between attitudes and international intensity there appears to be some opportunity associated with trying to influence the attitudes of ceos regarding initial expansion into international markets for firms to become globally diverse however there is a greater dependency on the availability of resources as well as accumulated business experience managers should recognize the pattern this suggests and perhaps be leery of becoming too globally diverse too quickly overall the relationship between size and foreign activities suggests that growth opportunities are linked to international markets although some broad relationships are suggested regarding the need for collaboration and government support further research is necessary to understand the use of strategic alliances as well as government assistance in both international market intensity and global diversity

social exclusion causes people to spend and consume strategically in the service of affiliation when people s deeply ingrained need for social connection is thwarted by social exclusion profound psychological consequences ensue despite the fact that social connections and consumption are central facets of daily life little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how belongingness threats affect consumer behavior in four experiments we tested the hypothesis that social exclusion causes people to spend and consume strategically in the service of affiliation relative to controls excluded participants were more likely to buy a product symbolic of group membership but not practical or self gift items tailor their spending preferences to the preferences of an interaction partner spend money on an unappealing food item favored by a peer and report being willing to try an illegal drug but only when doing so boosted their chances of commencing social connections overall results suggest that socially excluded people sacrifice personal and financial well being for the sake of social well being

cost value and foreign market entry mode the transaction and the firm this paper compares and contrasts the mode of foreign market entry decision from the transaction cost internalization and organizational capability perspectives each of these perspectives operates at a different level of analysis respectively the transaction and the firm and consequently differs in the primary arena of attention namely transaction characteristics and the capabilities of firms in making the comparison a key distinction is made between the cost and the value aspects in the management of know how based on which issues pertaining to the transfer of knowledge within and across firm boundaries and the exploitation and enhancement of competitive advantage are closely examined the main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the implications of a shift in frame from cost to value in the analysis of decisions related to firm boundaries entry into foreign markets is used primarily as a vehicle for the accomplishment of this purpose the paper shows how the value based framework of the organizational capability perspective radically and fundamentally shifts the approach towards the governance of firm boundaries and argues that even though tc internalization theory raises some valid concerns the organizational capability framework may be more in tune with today s business context some of the assumptions of the tc internalization perspective both direct opportunism exploitation of existing advantage and indirect preservation of the value of know how across locational contexts asymmetry between bounded rationality for transaction and production purposes are critically examined and questioned implications of a shift from a cost to a value based framework are discussed and the need for a shift in research focus is emphasized

concubinage or marriage informal and formal cooperations for innovation based on a sample of german inno innovating firms that contains information on formal and informal innovation cooperation between customers and suppliers we state that firms perceive informal cooperation as being more important than formal cooperation modes we then investigate the determinants of firms decisions to engage into the respective cooperation modes in line with previous empirical work we do not find much empirical evidence for the relevance of incoming spillovers in addition our results suggest that this finding holds as well for informal cooperations a firms ability to protect its proprietary innovations however seems to be a key determinant of formal as well as informal cooperations furthermore absorptive capacity and the organizational structure of in house r d play an important role another relevant driver of vertical cooperations are the innovation dynamics at the he industry level firms who operate an r d department and firms who are involved in costly r d projects tend to cooperate formally rather than informally

modeling foreign equity control in sino foreign joint ventures with neural networks abstract equity control is one of the key areas of research in international business this study employs artificial neural networks anns to model foreign equity control comparisons are made with traditional statistical modeling approaches it was found that anns produce a more parsimonious set of independent variables that yield higher classification rates than logistic regression thus it can be concluded that anns with their complex nonlinear structure are able to model the relationship between transaction cost factors and majority minority ownership and percent equity ownership more accurately than the linear statistical approaches

some empirical dimensions of countertrade this paper discusses some of the recent theories of why countries impose countertrade obligations and compares some of the implications of these theories with data obtained from a comprehensive database of countertrade transactions

use of minority and 50 50 joint ventures by united states multinationals during the 1970s the interaction of host country policies corporate strategies this article examines geographical sectoral and corporate trends in the use of minority and 50 50 joint ventures by u s multinational manufacturing and mining firms in less developed countries ldcs during the 1970s it is based primarily on data found in the harvard multinational enterprise data base as updated through the mid 1970s and supplemented with corporate performance data for the 1975 1980 period from a new international competitive analysis ica database developed with support from the general electric foundation

business networks and cooperation in international business relationships cooperative relationships between firms can be better understood if they are examined in the context of a network of connected business relationships based on research on business relationships and business networks this paper formulates a lisrel model that analyses cooperation in international business relationships between suppliers and customer firms theory suggests that cooperation can raise the value of business relationships and that business network connections have an impact on cooperation the model is investigated in a sample of 136 international business relationships the analysis shows that relationship profitability is directly affected by relationship commitment and indirectly through commitment by business network connections

instabilities of strategic alliances an internal tensions perspective the instabilities of strategic alliances have been examined in the literature through a number of theoretical approaches alliance instabilities refer to major changes or dissolutions of alliances that are unplanned from the perspective of one or more partners although the literature identifies certain characteristics of strategic alliances that may lead to their unplanned dissolution the extent of our understanding of this subject appears to be fragmented and incomplete in this article we propose a comprehensive framework for adequately understanding alliance instabilities based on the notion of internal tensions we suggest that strategic alliances are sites in which conflicting forces develop and which can be viewed as being constituted by three key pairs of competing forces namely cooperation versus competition rigidity versus flexibility and short term versus long term orientation this tensions framework helps us in explaining the intrinsic vulnerability of alliances in terms of a wide range of internal contradictions and enables us to examine in an integrated manner the incidence dynamics and eventual dissipation of the inherent instabilities we discuss the interrelationships among the different internal tensions and their impacts on different types of strategic alliances we also examine the termination of alliances through mergers acquisitions and dissolution finally we suggest ways to empirically test the various ideas and propositions developed here and indicate directions for further research

explaining ijv survival in a transitional economy through social exchange and knowledge based perspectives in this study we combine social exchange and knowledge based perspectives to develop a general path model of ijv survival we further refine our expectations by considering the transitional economic context of our study and the somewhat unique managerial values resulting from the legacy of marxist ideology results from structural equation modeling suggest that an imbalance in the management control structure between the parents leads to parental conflict and an increased likelihood of ijv failure an imbalance in the ownership control structure however had no influence on conflict or survival in general support from the foreign parent is positively related to ijv learning and ijv survival however higher levels of technical support provided by the foreign parent to the ijv reduced the level of parental conflict whereas management support had no effect on conflict our results suggest some dilemmas for firms pursuing ijvs in transitional economies although the foreign parent often contributes critical resources to the ijv providing it with bargaining power and a high level of influence an imbalance in management control between the partners may ultimately be detrimental to ijv survival copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

reappraising the eclectic paradigm in an age of alliance capitalism this article discusses the implications of the advent of alliance capitalism for our theorizing about the determinants of mne activity in particular it argues that due to the increasing porosity of the boundaries of firms countries and markets the eclectic or oli paradigm of international production needs to consider more explicitly the competitive advantages arising from the way firms organize their inter firm transactions the growing interdependencies of many intermediate product markets and the widening of the portfolio of the assets of districts regions and countries to embrace the external economies of interdependent activities

global platforms and ecosystems implications for international business theories the emergence of digital platforms and ecosystems dpe as a venue for value creation and capture for multinational enterprises holds considerable implications for the theory and practice of international business in this paper we articulate these implications by considering the dual perspectives of cross border platforms and ecosystems as a venue for multifaceted innovation and as multisided marketplace and focusing on three overarching themes at the intersection of dpes and international business that is dpes as affording new ways of internationalization as facilitating new ways of building knowledge and relationships and as enabling new ways of creating and delivering value to global customers we explain specific dpe related concepts and constructs that underlie these themes and discuss how they could be incorporated into existing ib theories in ways that would enhance their richness and continued relevance as well as their ability to better predict a multitude of emerging ib phenomena

choosing organizational modes of strategic technology partnering international and sectoral differences this paper focuses on international strategic technology partnerships and the choice that companies have in terms of the organizational mode either through complex inter organizational modes involving equity sharing or contractual non equity alliances the empirical results show that the choice of particular mode of cooperation varies with the technological characteristics of sectors of industry joint ventures are disproportionately represented in relatively mature industries contractual alliances dominate strategic technology partnering in so called high tech industries

inter firm cooperation with imperfectly appropriable research abstract inter firm collaboration in pre competitive research is not always beneficial rather its effectiveness in raising social benefits relative to a non cooperative setup depends on both the nature of the agreement and the technological and market conditions of the industry in question joint ventures that simply allow members to coordinate their actions in pre competitive research can restore firm incentives for both pre competitive research and development in the presence of high knowledge spillovers and poor opportunities for innovation joint ventures which additionally improve the dissemination of information among member firms raise social benefits whenever the opportunities for innovation are not exceptionally good even in the presence of relatively insignificant spillovers

a behavioral perspective on negotiating international alliance this study examines the influence tactics of senior u s executives in negotiating international business alliances the strategy literature on alliances and the behavioral literature on negotiations were incorporated into a behavioral model of alliance negotiations constructs identified from transaction cost power dependence and game theories were integrated and linked to hypotheses describing negotiators influence tactics in alliance negotiations in examining eighty three alliance negotiations negotiator trust perception of a partner firm s alternatives conflict frame time horizon and cultural distance were found to affect negotiators tactics

partners and rivals a model of international collaboration in advanced technology concepts from bargaining theory and neorealist theory are integrated in a partners and rivals par model that explains the terms of collaboration between rational actors for example firms that are potential competitors the model contends that the stronger player s incentive to collaborate is determined not only by its interest in absolute welfare benefits from collaboration but also by its concern about and loss of utility from unfavorable shifts in relative position vis a vis the weaker player two propositions are derived from the model according to the disparity principle the stronger player s net payoff from collaboration the sum of its welfare benefits and positional costs is a function of the disparity in capabilities between the two players the net payoff curve is low when the disparity in capabilities is large reaches an optimum when the disparity is moderate and then falls again as the disparity approaches zero the slope of the curve is also affected by a coefficient which reflects the stronger player s sensitivity to positional losses according to the compensation principle for collaboration to arise the weaker player must make an adjustment in the terms of the bargain or a side payment to compensate the stronger player for its positional losses from collaboration the validity of the par model is tested by comparing franco german collaboration on military aircraft in two cases one in which the disparity in capabilities between the players was moderate and the other in which the disparity was small

the management of countertrade factors influencing success countertrade success was found to be higher for large firms that were experienced in exporting and in countertrade operations could accommodate countertrade takebacks and valued vertical integration exported high value high visibility complex products had a low reputation for quality and had excess capacity success was also higher if the importer valued quality had low technical proficiency was inexperienced in exporting faced barriers in export markets had a high cost of forward contracts foreign exchange constraints and faced a disequilibrium exchange rate

research joint ventures vs cross licensing agreements an agency approach abstract in this paper two broad categories of organizing a cooperative r d project are compared a research joint venture rjv and a cross licensing agreement cla in a non deterministic r d setting including asymmetric information we show that an rjv is more efficient in providing incentives it allows to capture existing synergies and facilitates the dissemination of the partners know how which is socially desirable however contrary to a cla an rjv faces the risk of opportunistic behavior by the partners regarding the provision of their know how to the venture which could lead a cla to perform more efficiently and in some cases this organization turns out to be superior

a dynamic model of the choice of mode for exploiting complementary capabilities this paper examines the choice of mode for a multinational enterprise and a local firm to exploit their complementary capabilities we develop a combined real options and game theoretic model of modal choice by incorporating a range of factors drawn from the dynamic capabilities theory and transaction cost or organizational economics the factors scrutinized in the model include the parties absorptive capacities frictions in knowledge and asset markets and associated incentive problems cost of switching from one mode to another and cost associated with power jockeying the model uses simulation to examine how these factors interact to influence the choice of mode the results identify a number of conditions for one factor to dominate another and help to reconcile different theories that have made contradicting predictions with regard to the effects of such factors as uncertainty and capability divergence on the optimal choice of mode

ownership patterns of u s joint ventures abroad and the liberalization of foreign government regulations in the 1980s evidence from the benchmark surveys data from the benchmark surveys of the commerce department show the beginning of a global liberalization in government restrictions on foreign equity in the 1980s this was manifested in a small but unmistakable across the board reduction in the share of 50 50 and minority affiliates out of all u s affiliates in a country across countries there remains a huge variation in this proportion and the second part of the paper seeks to statistically explain this variation in a cross sectional regression analysis

learning and protection of proprietary assets in strategic alliances building relational capital one of the main reasons that firms participate in alliances is to learn know how and capabilities from their alliance partners at the same time firms want to protect themselves from the opportunistic behavior of their partner to retain their own core proprietary assets most research has generally viewed the achievement of these objectives as mutually exclusive in contrast we provide empirical evidence using large sample survey data to show that when firms build relational capital in conjunction with an integrative approach to managing conflict they are able to achieve both objectives simultaneously relational capital based on mutual trust and interaction at the individual level between alliance partners creates a basis for learning and know how transfer across the exchange interface at the same time it curbs opportunistic behavior of alliance partners thus preventing the leakage of critical know how between them copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

network location and learning the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation this paper presents a dynamic firm level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances especially because alliances entail considerable hazards this study also assesses the importance of firms capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions i test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989 the results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms decisions to enter into new alliances this study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

choosing an appropriate alliance governance mode the role of institutional cultural and geographical distance in international research development r d collaborations we identify a variety of r d alliance modes in a knowledge intensive industry e g pharmaceuticals and classify them into four ordered categories which go beyond the traditional binary equity vs non equity alliance classification this enriches our understanding of alliance governance structures and broadens the application of alliance modes in what is today a more complicated international r d collaboration setting we then explore national industry and firm factors that determine the selection of an appropriate r d alliance governance mode using a sample of 237 international alliance deals the likelihood of using a more integrated alliance governance mode decreases as the difference or distance between nations of the partner firms increases in terms of human capital and cultural distance on the other hand a greater geographic and institutional difference is positively associated with the selection of more integrated alliance governance modes furthermore firms in the research stage are more likely to use a more integrated governance mode as opposed to firms in the development stage these findings advance research on alliance governance structure they reveal the factors affecting the r d alliance governance mode choice

an empirical study of hybrid forms of governance structure the case of the telecommunication equipment industry this article examines hybrid forms of governance structures as defined in transaction cost theory it demonstrates that these hybrid forms can be split into a small number of discrete categories instead of being distributed evenly on a continuum between market and hierarchy the analysis is based on a sample of strategic partnerships set up by telecommunication equipment manufacturers either among themselves or with firms of related industries the taxonomy of strategic partnerships presented in this paper underlines the importance of the organization of tasks and the symmetry of the contributions of the partner firms as discriminating factors of hybrid forms

the relationship of industry evolution to patterns of technological linkages joint ventures and direct investment between u s and japan although economic activity between the u s and japan has skyrocketed in the last decade there are few large sample cross industry studies analyzing multiple forms of investment by the japanese in the u s this study analyzes the key characteristics of each stage of industry evolution and the costs and benefits of each form of resource investment to predict the patterns of technological linkages joint ventures and direct investment of japanese companies in the u s the results find support for a model predicting a predominance of technological linkages in emerging industries joint ventures in growing industries and direct investment in maturing industries technological linkages are most attractive in emerging industries as firms struggle to acquire technology information and expertise and share cost and risk yet retain flexibility joint ventures proliferate in growing industries because they offer a means of acquiring and expanding customer bases yet reducing vulnerability in maturing industries where firms key competencies are more developed direct investment allows the company to generate demand in new markets without the disadvantage of joint governance

parent firm performance across international joint venture life cycle stages the benefits that firms obtain from investing in international joint ventures ijvs can be reinforced or reduced by the management of later stages of collaboration this paper presents an analysis of the shareholder wealth effects of ijv formation and five types of ijv termination the empirical findings challenge common assumptions in the ijv literature contrast prior evidence on the performance implications of market entry and exit through acquisitions and divestitures and demonstrate the value of integrating ijv life cycle stages in future research

in search of complementary assets the determinants of alliance formation of high tech start ups abstract why do new technology based firms ntbfs cooperate starting from teece s teece d j 1986 profiting from technological innovation implications for integration collaboration licensing and public policy research policy 15 285 305 conceptual framework and taking advantage of subsequent literature on alliance formation in the resource and competence based tradition and in the social structure perspective we derive an empirical model that aims at highlighting the inducements and obstacles that these firms face in alliance formation according to firm specific characteristics and the nature of the alliance in particular a distinction is made between exploitative commercial alliances and explorative technological alliances the econometric estimates based on a large sample of italian young high tech firms that are observed from 1994 to 2003 provide strong evidence supporting two key intuitions of teece s work first the combination of specialized complementary assets appears to be a key driver of the formation of exploitative commercial alliances by ntbfs more specifically patent holding affects positively the likelihood to establish commercial alliances but this propensity is found to rapidly decrease with firm size suggesting that as long as ntbfs become larger and possess specialized commercial assets their urge for commercial alliances diminishes second following the parallelism set forth by teece between search for alliance partners and access to external financing the analysis indicates that potentially beneficial alliances may not take place because of the high transaction costs faced by smaller ntbfs in this respect our results clearly support the view that sponsor institutions as public research organizations venture and corporate venture capitalists may sensibly reduce these costs and that their role crucially depends on both the identity of the sponsor and the type of alliance

inter firm collaboration and technology development partnerships within us manufacturing industries the paper examines the conditions under which firms enter into technology development partnerships with customers suppliers and other firms three conceptual approaches to inter firm collaboration are examined namely transactions costs theory resource strategy theories of the firm and network theory drawing upon data collected in a mailed questionnaire survey of us manufacturing establishments in the chemical electronics and instruments industries i assess empirically various determinants of inter firm collaboration in technology development the empirical work suggests that large firms and firms located in major urban centres are more likely to enter into technology development partnerships firms located in a specialized industrial agglomeration do not demonstrate a greater propensity toward entering into technology development partnerships with customers suppliers or other firms cet article cherche a examiner les conditions sous lesquelles les entreprises concluent des partenariats technolo

firms motivations for cooperative r d an empirical analysis of spanish firms abstract the aim of this paper is to analyze the motives that have caused industrial firms to cooperate in r d there are many theoretical works devoted to the theme but few empirical studies have been carried out with large samples to analyze the factors which determine why firms cooperate in r d we first review the reasons offered by the literature to explain technological cooperation with this allowing us to determine the conceptual framework and to propose some hypotheses we test these hypotheses with a sample of 1652 spanish firms that have carried out r d activities the results obtained suggest that firms motivations for cooperative r d are the complexity of technology and the fact that innovation is costly and uncertain we find that in order to undertake cooperative r d it is necessary to have certain internal capacities in this area with our results being supported by the theory of absorptive capacity however and by contrast with the results presented in other works questions related to market access and search for opportunities do not appear to exert an influence over cooperative r d besides the large sized firms resort more to cooperation and the reasons for cooperative r d differ as between large and small sized firms

environmental risks and joint venture sharing arrangements multinational enterprises mnes have responded to the open door policies of socialist countries in recent years by investing in their economies through joint ventures mnes must formulate their investment strategies to control and manage the environmental risks peculiar to a traditional centrally planned economy cpe in which contextual and transactional environments are blurred joint venture sharing arrangements may be structured to control exposures to uncertainties and to align the interests of transactional parties mostly state owned enterprises to those of the venture this study tests the hypothesis that a foreign investor s share in a joint venture in a cpe is inversely correlated with 1 the amount of uncertainties and risks and 2 the external dependency of the venture on the contextual and transactional relationships of the host country the hypothesis is supported by empirical evidence from data on american joint ventures in china

dual market structures and the likelihood of repeated ties evidence from pharmaceutical biotechnology this paper analyses the role of repeated ties in the high tech pharmaceutical biotechnology industry a sector that is characterized by a strong dual market structure our most important finding is that previous ties in pairs of large pharmaceutical companies and small biotechnology firms have a negative effect on their subsequent partnering an explanation for this result is found in the context of understanding the specifics of large small coalitions in a high tech dual market structure unlike what is known about repeated ties in many other industries this high tech dual market structure indicates that r d partnerships between a small number of very large companies and a large group of dependent small firms are not characterized by mutual dependence similarity or equality

strategic alliances as stackelberg cartels concept and equilibrium alliance structure abstract this paper analyzes incentives of oligopolistic firms to form strategic alliances and the effects of the endogenously derived alliance structure on product market competition a three stage game is considered in the first stage firms decide about forming strategic alliances in the second stage each alliance designs a strategic contract and in the third stage alliance members and outsiders compete in the product market it is shown how contractual terms about transfer prices and profit sharing in a production joint venture for an intermediate product may serve as an appropriate commitment device profits of alliance members and outsiders under different alliance structures are then determined based on this profit structure the alliance formation process is analyzed in a linear cournot oligopoly with at most five firms only one alliance forms and industry output is reduced with more than five firms an alliance structure with at least two alliances results if an equilibrium of the alliance formation game exists and in this case competition is enhanced

can modern input use be promoted without subsidies an analysis of fertilizer in ethiopia fertilizer use in ethiopia has nearly quintupled since official elimination of direct input subsidies in the early 1990s during this time policies changed from liberalization with both private and public sector participation to a government monopoly over imports along with exclusive marketing through farmers cooperatives this article presents estimates of detail costs and margins in the value chain econometrically derived profitability and yield responses as well as costs of the government s fertilizer promotion policies results suggest that a irrespective of the methods of calculation fertilizer use in major cereal is profitable b while there is no official subsidy program fertilizer promotion has involved large fiscal costs estimated at us 40 million per year since 2008 and c there has been a mismatch between government s policy targets and the effective fertilizer demand resulting in large carryover stock with estimated implicit costs of us 30 million per year during 2008 2011 areas of policy attention value chain improvements and ongoing efforts to improve for fertilizer use and profitability are discussed

structural stability and reconfiguration of international joint ventures previous research suggests that international joint ventures ijvs are inherently unstable and fragile this view has failed however to explain why many ijvs have an extended longevity and stability this paper draws on two contrasting perspectives from organization theory structural instability and structural inertia to trace both the destabilizing and stabilizing forces in ijvs and argues that a complete understanding of an ijv s dynamic evolution requires consideration of both forces