Towards a developing country firm perspective on outsourcing
Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal
ISSN: 1753-8297
Article publication date: 19 September 2008
Abstract
Purpose
While the implications of outsourcing have been extensively studied from the point of view of the developed country multinational corporation (MNC) and its home economy, far less attention has been paid to the developing country firm (DCF) participating in the outsourcing collaboration. This article aims at presenting, evaluating, and synthesizing a number of theoretical contributions that may help build an agenda for future research on outsourcing from a DCF perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a review of the extant theoretical literature on outsourcing, the article seeks to explicate a DCF perspective on outsourcing.
Findings
The article argues that although several theoretical domains indirectly shed light on outsourcing from a DCF perspective, they are typically approaching the issue from a macro (country) and meso (industry) level perspective and rarely explicitly apply a micro (firm) level perspective. Moreover, they tend to view DCF strategy in outsourcing collaborations as functions of MNCs' strategies, not as strategies in their own right. In order to fill this apparent lacuna in the outsourcing literature, the article reviews a number of theories that may help building a research agenda on outsourcing from a developing country perspective.
Originality/value
The article contributes to the outsourcing literature by explicating a DCF theoretical perspective on outsourcing.
Keywords
Citation
Hansen, M.W., Schaumburg‐Müller, H. and Pottenger, E. (2008), "Towards a developing country firm perspective on outsourcing", Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 210-229. https://doi.org/10.1108/17538290810915281
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited