Narrow Results

This paper develops two models to study the impact of trade in intermediate goods on wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor in a developed country and a developing country. The first model assumes symmetric production technologies in the intermediate good. It predicts that trade in the intermediate good will increase wage inequality in the developed country, but decrease wage inequality in the developing country. The second model assumes asymmetric technologies in the intermediate good. It predicts that trade in the intermediate good can lead to an increase in wage inequality in both the developed country and the developing country.

Globalization has its detractors as well as supporters. Concerns have been expressed about the greater ease of fragmenting the production process so that more parts can be outsourced to a variety of countries. Highly developed regions worry about the possibility of greater unemployment or lower unskilled wage rates. Less developed regions are concerned that they may not possess a comparative advantage in the service link activities that promote fragmentation. The paper discusses these issues, with special emphasis on India and China.

This paper is a non-technical survey of the literature on offshoring and outsourcing, with special focus on the relevance of this literature for Asia. We first see how and to what extent this new literature helps us understand firms' tradeoffs between outsourcing and integration, the variation in the mixes of organizational forms and the location of outsourced activities. We also explore what plausibly triggers offshoring and thereafter what determines its dynamics. Finally, we draw inferences from the existing theory and empirical work about the developmental impact of offshoring on Asia, with special attention to issues related to inequality and poverty.

This paper examines India's role in services outsourcing within Asia. It provides a brief overview of the global as well as Indian services outsourcing industry. The core section examines India's relationship with other Asian countries such as China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia in service outsourcing. It examines the extent to which these countries pose a competitive challenge to India and concludes that at this time, India is far ahead although it is likely to face growing competition as its costs rise. The paper highlights the need to move beyond this comparative paradigm and to examine the complementary and collaborative opportunities that exist between India and other Asian countries in services outsourcing. It concludes that there is considerable scope for such synergies and that India and other Asian countries can form different parts of a larger regional or global delivery model. Regional and bilateral agreements within Asia can also facilitate this process.

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This article investigates the market reaction to a sample of announcements of business service outsourcing arrangements made by UK quoted companies between 1991 and 1997. Event study methodology is applied to daily stock returns to measure the reaction, in the form of excess returns, immediately prior to and at the date of an outsourcing contract announcement. The conclusion is that initial announcements tend to enjoy positive and significant reaction and that the larger companies in the sample show a more positive reaction than smaller companies. Overall outsourcing announcements appear to be associated with excess returns but the absence of any recognized basis for disclosure prevents a complete analysis of such events.

In this paper from the Xiangshang Forum 2006, we propose the Wisdom project, an international network initiative on developing the next generation of management and entrepreneurial systems based on knowledge and wisdom rather than data and information. This is a major challenge especially for China which must aspire to become wise and ethical rather than just efficient or effective. Major topics of the project include knowledge management, wisdom systems, added value measures, entrepreneurial university, and management as a profession. These topics are the key ones for developing sustainable competitive advantage of any globally aspiring economy or enterprise.

The practice of solely relying on the human resources department in the selection process of external training providers has cast doubts and mistrust across other departments as to how trainers are sourced. There are no measurable criteria used by human resource personnel, since most decisions are based on intuitive experience and subjective market knowledge. The present problem focuses on outsourcing of private training programs that are partly government funded, which has been facing accountability challenges. Due to the unavailability of a scientific decision-making approach in this context, a 12-step algorithm is proposed and tested in a Japanese multinational company. The model allows the decision makers to revise their criteria expectations, in turn witnessing the change of the training providers' quota distribution. Finally, this multi-objective sensitivity analysis provides a forward-looking approach to training needs planning and aids decision makers in their sourcing strategy.

This paper extends a previous study that proposed an integrated model to test knowledge sharing (KS) motivation among information technology (IT) workers. While the previous study focussed on the differences in KS between internal and external IT workers, the perspective of the current paper is broader; it proposes additional hypotheses, and uses both inferential statistics and data mining techniques to detect further practical aspects of the integrated model findings. Because data mining techniques are useful in extracting patterns and gaining insights from data, they are implemented here alongside inferential statistics. The present study also looks into the employment-contract factor, to better capture the differences between internal and external IT workers. The study reveals that external workers score significantly lower than internal workers in almost every component of the integrated KS model. This gives rise to five practical implications of knowledge management (KM) and employment policies, including factors and practises that should be taken into consideration while employing external workers, to help motivate collaborative behaviour in IT departments.

Research on outsourcing normally focuses on outsourcing of production and often uses large firms as samples. Only a few studies address the outsourcing of services or knowledge-intensive activities such as new product development (NPD), and especially in the context of medium-sized firms. Our earlier research in medium-sized firms indicates that outsourcing of NPD is frequent in medium-sized firms, and that there is a lack of knowledge about the phenomenon.

This article offers a theoretical framework to study the outsourcing of NPD, and includes the results from a longitudinal case study carried out in six Swedish medium-sized firms to help understand the rationales behind outsourcing of NPD. Results from the present study indicate that 'good enough' is the keyword for medium-sized firms with limited resources. This means that it is considered more important with proximity and trust than world class competence, since close and frequent contacts are crucial, when outsourcing knowledge-intensive activities such as NPD. A conceptual model and a definition of the good enough concept are also presented.

Various important benefits can be achieved through the successful management of offshore outsourcing. Numerous studies exist on outsourcing in general, yet the vast majority of extant literature on offshore outsourcing has dealt with information technology (IT) outsourcing from the client's perspective. Several frameworks, focusing on guiding information systems managers in relation to IT outsourcing, have been developed. However, none of these frameworks attempted to provide a holistic guideline to manage the entire process of offshore outsourcing of software production. There is a significant lack of studies dealing with the management of offshore outsourcing of software production from both the vendor's and client's perspectives. Thus, there is a great need to study such a multifaceted and complex phenomenon more deeply for both scenarios to find out the best practices for managing the unified process. In this study, we utilize the conceptual framework of The ICT-supported Unified Process Model of Offshore Software Production Outsourcing as our research model. We then validate this model by reviewing the vast extant literature, and by conducting multiple case studies from both the vendor's and client's viewpoints, where professionals with extensive experience in managing offshore outsourcing of software production are interviewed. The implications of the findings are discussed for both practical and research purposes.

Organizations need to share and acquire new information to sustain competitive advantage in complex environment. They communicate through IT-based integrated systems to fasten communication and knowledge sharing for the creation of innovative products. Firms are, thus, extending their operations to integrate strategic knowledge from partners in the product development process. In this paper, we present a case study related to process innovation in an aerospace firm integrating its information systems with one of its partners to facilitate the design of the models of a complex product. We investigate on the strategy followed to integrate the information systems, the types of these latter, on their success factors and their impact on the product development. The case study provides important insights on the integration of information systems for product design outsourcing.

Many researchers and industrial professionals recognize new product development (NPD) as a potential alternative for improving and sustaining competitive position in the market and made attempt to identify factors and variables that contribute to the capability of a firm in new product development. However, it is necessary to quantify these factors and variables in order to establish their relationships with the capability of NPD of a firm. Quantification of the factors is essential in order to achieve adequate control over the NPD activities. In this research work, a methodology is developed to quantify the factors and to establish empirical relationships of capability of NPD of a firm with its various main and support functions of new product development. In each of the selected function, the variables which contribute to NPD capability are identified by respondents/experts participated in a questionnaire survey. Out of the variables identified, three best variables are selected based on the importance assigned by the respondents. Utility functions and fuzzy analytical method are used for establishing the relationships between variables and the capabilities of the functions. The methodology is applied to an industrial product of a construction equipment-manufacturing firm that actively involves all the main functions and support activities as required for new product development. This methodology based on regression analysis may be used to monitor the product development process over a planning period on a continuous basis in a manufacturing firm.

We develop a framework for understanding the direct and indirect influence of various strategic considerations and environmental factors on the project-level R&D outsourcing decision. We argue that environmental factors can act as shift parameters that increase or decrease the costs of outsourcing. We further posit that it is important to consider firm-level strategic considerations in addition to the project- and transaction-level characteristics that are typically the focus of an R&D outsourcing decision, which highlights the importance of integrating the information possessed by managers from different levels of the organization. Finally, we discuss several directions for future research in this increasingly important area of innovation and technology management.

Indian outsourcing industry undeterred by recent plummeting growth of global ICT market is experiencing robust growth. Indian ICT firms, by and large, follow success breed success formula by replicating the strategies adopted by the leaders in the market. Two top Indian ICT outsourcing firms have adopted diversification strategy to expand their presence in multiple industry verticals across geographies by offering a diversified range of services. This study, using an entropy analysis, measures the degree of diversification of the top two and most successful Indian outsourcing firm in five different dimensions. The second part of the study analyzes the overall impact of diversification on the performance of the firm. This study reveals that although overall diversification signifies a positive impact on the firm performance, each dimension leaves a different impact on the different firms’ performance.

This paper draws from the findings of a large-scale empirical research program on the global application service provider (ASP) industry funded by research grants from the European Commission (EC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). A conceptual framework consisting of a taxonomy of ASPs is used to demonstrate the different market segmentation strategies adopted by ASPs for competing in this fledgling and turbulent industry. Drawing from empirical research carried out in the US and Europe, the paper evaluates ASP strategies for deploying, hosting, managing and enabling software applications on behalf of their customers. The ASP business model is advocated as an attractive value proposition for SMEs, dot.com companies and other start-up firms seeking hyper-growth. Yet the evidence so far suggests a slow start to the ASP market as few reference sites demonstrating best practice exist. ASPs will therefore need to re-evaluate their strategies if they are to convince potential customers of the benefits of application outsourcing. Against this background, the paper evaluates the benefits and risks of the ASP model.

In the constant drive for higher quality, lower cost, and faster-to-market products, many firms have begun to learn "how not to make things" — how to give some tasks to other firms who could make more efficiently. Examples from industries highlight the trend. Case studies were conducted in six firms and many insightful comments from prominent managers are incorporated.

The case studies reveal a trend toward outsourcing some tasks in new product development. We use the transaction cost theory and the resource-based theory to explain the trend of outsourcing. This kind of outsourcing allows the firm to focus on core tasks and access resources and capabilities not available or not easily developed internally. NPD program performance can be greatly enhanced, and the R&D department can move away from routine administration toward a more strategic role. Many implications for managers are offered, and theoretical contributions are discussed.

Government support for partnering between BioPharma companies and universities is growing in the UK and some European countries but few studies have explored these partnerships.

Through interviews and a survey of key institutions we explored perceptions of key informants on industry and university partnerships. Study participants identified that partnering helped them to increase innovation in R&D and led them to adopt more open approaches to innovation.

Organisational structures to coordinate and support partnerships; flexibility in operational management to solve problems in establishing and running these partnerships; leadership, especially by investigators to champion and lead collaborations; developing organisational capabilities of universities; and creation of an enabling environment by governments were identified as the critical success factors for partnering. The challenges faced were identified as lack of funding for university research teams; pressure on pricing from industry partners; disagreements on IP ownership; asymmetry of industry and university capabilities in partnering; and lack of administrative support with excessive bureaucracy from universities.

During the 1990s mature industries, such as car manufacturing, restructured their production and innovation processes, changing from vertical integration to high outsourcing. Open innovation is antithetic to vertical integration. Analyzing whether this restructuring influenced the emergence of open innovation is an important step towards improving our understanding of open innovation (Chesbrough and Crowther, 2006).

During the 1990s, Fiat, one the largest European car producers, increased the extent to which it involved external firms in new product development (NPD). Unlike its competitors, Fiat outsourced the NPD of core products, resembling the opening of innovation that "radical innovators" implement in high technology industry (Laursen and Salter, 2006, 137). However, it failed to transition towards open innovation because its "opening" to external firms also entailed downsizing in-house NPD divisions, which caused a "hollowing out" of its knowledge (Becker and Zirpoli, 2003). The products developed through this system did not perform well. After a dramatic decline in market shares, Fiat changed its NPD system: it reduced outsourcing of NPD, whilst opening it to customers for the first time. This contributed to the development of highly successful models, which fuelled Fiat's recovery after 2004.

The paper explains the Fiat case by looking at the drivers of its organizational changes from a historical perspective. It argues that Fiat's cost-cutting routines, developed because of its intangible specialization in small vehicles, explain why it opened NPD to suppliers but failed to adopt open innovation. The case study is relevant for the study of open innovation because it provides evidence of the relationships between outsourcing and open of innovation in a mature industry that went through a profound process of restructuring during the 1990s.

This paper explores the relationship between innovation outcomes, absorptive capacity and human resource management practices in information technology outsourcing relationships. Previous research has highlighted the need for absorptive capacity to achieve innovation in organizations. Since this absorptive capacity is likely to be embodied within the relationship management teams of both the supplier and client in outsourcing dyads, the human resource practices of the participating firms should have a direct bearing on levels of absorptive capacity and innovation outcomes for the relationships. This research examined four large IT relationships as case studies and presents a model of inter-organizational innovation that shows the necessity of developing the appropriate absorptive capacity to achieve innovation in outsourcing environments. From this model, the research presents three HRM practices that can help develop absorptive capacity to support innovation activities: retention of client employees with firm-specific business process knowledge rather than technical knowledge; minimization of legacy hiring practices for suppliers; and maintaining and optimal work group size for relationship management teams on both the client and supplier sides of the relationship.