Many international joint ventures (IJVs) fare poorly. An important factor is that members of an IJV top management team (TMT), which generally comprises people from different cultures, often find it difficult to work together. In this paper we argue that social identity theory and organizational identification processes can help us understand why this is so. We propose that factionalism ia a TMT is a significant hazard posed by member indentification with different parents. In addition, identification with both the IJV and oarent firm can lead to significant role conflict for IJV top managers. Factionalism and role conflict in turn can result in poor intra TMT communications and inefficient decision making.