The Stability of Offshore Outsourcing Relationships

Research Published in Management International Review from 2006 to 2020: A Bibliometric Analysis and Future Directions

The Management International Review (MIR) celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020. In commemoration of this event, we use a bibliometric analysis to present a retrospective on the journal by analyzing its content for the years between 2006 and 2020. We find that the collaboration culture in MIR has risen over time with the increase in the median size of author teams. Moreover, the collaboration network has become more global over time. The methodology used in the journal is predominantly empirical and quantitative with archival data sources most commonly used. The bibliographic coupling of the MIR corpus reveals that the major themes in the journal revolve around "culture," "emerging economies," "innovation, knowledge transfer, and absorptive capacity," "internationalization process," "culture and entry modes," and "internationalization and performance." A comparison with other leading international business journals provides distinct pathways in which MIR may continue to grow. Finally, it is important to note that while the share of conceptual studies has decreased significantly in the last 15 years, the MIR editors want to see more novel and theoretically grounded conceptual articles in the journal.

The impact of knowledge flows on asset specificity from the perspective of open innovation

Purpose

This study aims to examine how different modes of knowledge flows affect the changes of asset specificity and how ownership control moderates the relationship between knowledge flows and asset specificity in the open innovation paradigm.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper selects information technology outsourcing as the research base. It uses the feasible weighted least squares modeling method for its analysis and has collected the data from 2,369 research and development contracts of multinational vendor firms in China.

Findings

The coupled and outbound knowledge flows have a direct and positive effect on asset specificity. Moreover, the results show that weak corporate control has significant moderating effects on the relationship between both coupled and outbound knowledge flows and asset specificity; the strong control positively moderates the relationship between outbound knowledge flows and asset specificity.

Practical implications

In open innovation, firms build a higher degree of asset specificity to maximize the efficiency of knowledge flows, which then helps them to enhance innovation capacity and market performance.

Originality/value

Preceding studies have tended to examine the influences of asset specificity as an independent variable in a closed innovation paradigm. Asset specificity is hence often left as the antecedent “black box.” This paper, however, opens the “black box” of asset specificity, which is set as a dependent variable, by investigating the influences of knowledge flows on the asset specificity in the context of open innovation. It also reinterprets the role of asset specificity by adopting the lens of open innovation theory.

What do we know about manufacturing reshoring?

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to analyze and classify research that has been conducted on manufacturing reshoring, i.e. the decision to bring back to the home country production activities earlier offshored, independently of the governance mode (insourcing vs outsourcing). Consequently, the paper also aims at providing avenues for future research and to highlight the distinct value of studying manufacturing reshoring either per se or in combination with other constructs of the international business tradition.

Design/methodology/approach

A set of 57 carefully selected articles on manufacturing reshoring published in international journals or books indexed on Scopus in the past 10 years was systematically analyzed based on the “5Ws and 1H” (who-what-where-when-why and how) set of questions.

Findings

The authors’ work shows a certain convergence among authors regarding what reshoring is and what its key features and motivations are. In contrast, other related aspects, such as the decision-making and implementation processes, are comparatively less understood.

Research limitations/implications

As manufacturing reshoring is a “recent” topic, for some of its aspects, only exploratory research is available to date, limiting the authors’ possibility to either characterize it in a more exhaustive way or highlight well-established patterns.

Practical implications

The paper demonstrates that studying reshoring will indeed contribute to expanding our understanding of internationalization processes and strategies in general and of production internationalization specifically. While past studies have argued that the learning derived from international experience would permit firms to overcome their unfamiliarity with new business environments, reshoring might show that this outcome is not necessarily certain. Rather, firms might not be able to overcome obstacles because of internationalization or they might realize that attempting to do so is not desirable, e.g. because of excessive risk or changes in the firm’s strategic priorities.

Social implications

From a societal point of view, the present research underlines that reshoring can be part of that re-industrialization policy that many Western countries include in their economic agenda – yet, its impact on employment should not be overestimated, as often relocation is only in regard to some product lines. At the same time, there might be an intimate relationship between reshoring and the various forms of technological innovations applied to manufacturing – which has become popularly labeled as “Industry 4.0”.

Originality/value

Literature reviews proposed until now usually paid almost exclusive attention to motivations driving this phenomenon. This paper offers a broader and more comprehensive examination of the extant knowledge of manufacturing reshoring and identifies the main unresolved issues and knowledge gaps, which future research should investigate.

Understanding the decision to offshore human resource activities: a coevolutionary perspective

Purpose

Offshoring has been studied widely in the literature on strategic management and international business. However, apart from its consideration as an administrative activity, scant attention has been paid to the offshoring of the human resource (HR) function. Research in this regard has instead focussed on outsourcing (Reichel and Lazarova, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of companies’ decisions to offshore HR activities. It adapts the outsourcing model of Baron and Kreps (1999) by including the HR offshoring phenomenon and a dynamic perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

While the analysis is mostly conceptual, the authors ground the author’s arguments in offshoring data from the Offshoring Research Network, to explore whether the drivers for offshoring HR differ from the drivers for offshoring other administrative activities. The idiosyncrasy of the HR function is supported by the authors’ exploratory analysis and also by the descriptive case of a multinational and its experience with offshoring.

Findings

A coevolutionary model is proposed for understanding the behaviour of companies offshoring their HR activities. This study contends that companies should address their decision to offshore HR activities from a dynamic perspective, being aware of three processes that are in constant change: the evolution of the HR function, the evolution of service providers, and the evolution of offshoring decisions.

Originality/value

This study seeks to make a threefold contribution to the international business, strategy, and HR management disciplines.

Outsourcing of knowledge processes: a literature review

Purpose

– This paper aims to review research on outsourcing of knowledge processes to establish the current body of knowledge and, on this basis, to identify gaps in our understanding. This action will justify further research activities and clarify where no future research is currently needed.

Design/methodology/approach

– The study consists of a systematic review of 24 refereed empirical articles on outsourcing of knowledge processes.

Findings

– Five themes were identified: outsourcing of knowledge processes, outsourcing and collaborative agreements between knowledge-based firms, factors affecting successful knowledge outsourcing, knowledge management and knowledge outsourcing and other outsourcing issues. There seems to be a lack of understanding concerning knowledge process outsourcing.

Research limitations/implications

– This study may not have enabled a complete coverage of all empirical articles in the field of knowledge process outsourcing. Yet, it seems reasonable to assume that the review process covered a large share of studies available.

Originality/value

– To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no systematic literature review on this topic has previously been published in academic journals.