International joint ventures between companies in the United States and companies in China often encounter challenges to joint learning in the organizational learning context. These difficulties usually manifest in two important areas: marginality and autonomy. The degree of autonomy afforded to Chinese firms by their American host companies – often multinationals with headquarters in the United States – exerts significant influence on the efficacy, perceived legitimacy and buy-in afforded to organizational learning processes undertaken by these types of international joint ventures. Another potential impediment to organizational learning remains its perceived value by Chinese firms. This paper will focus more or less exclusively on the impact that marginality and different comprehension levels of managerial autonomy have on organizational learning in international joint ventures. Other important elements highlighted include social contexts and mores, barriers to organizational knowledge creation and differences in intercultural communication styles (Dierkes et al, 2003:p 288). As a result of these barriers, international joint ventures, though often very successful from a financial perspective, sometimes lack a strong commitment to organizational learning and knowledge creation, the assumption perhaps being that knowledge creation by definition can only thrive in a homogenous cultural understanding. The following paper intends to analyze international joint ventures between American companies and Chinese firms, and aims to document practical and useful means to develop and implement organizational learning strategies that will be effective and viable for managers from the United States who have been appointed to design and set up an organizational learning module in the current Chinese business and cultural climate. Organizational learning in the context of international joint ventures between Chinese and American firms may struggle simply because each culture has conflicting views on the value of knowledge management and knowledge sharing, and managers from the United States may find that knowledge management in the Chinese business environment does not enjoy the same support from academia and the business world that it does in his or her home country. Su et al (2010) published a study in the International Journal of Knowledge Management that speaks to this discrepancy and becomes applicable for managers to understand the inherent differences between the two cultures, before they attempt to implement organizational learning processes. The Su study employs a significant sample group of Chinese firms of multiple sizes, disciplines and fields, and includes businesses that rest in the hands of the state, those under private ownership, domestic firms and firms owned by foreign entities. Su et al’s (2010) findings reveal that “knowledge sharing in Chinese firms is far short of being completely open, and that a wide range of factors, ranging from Chinese cultural values to attributes of the firm and individual employees, affect the extent of knowledge sharing” (p. 25). The goal of organizational learning, as it pertains to knowledge management, stems from the conviction that assembling the complete extent of e