We incorporate trade in tasks à la Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2008) into a small open economy version of the theory of firm organization of Marin and Verdier (2012) to examine how offshoring affects the way firms organize. We show that the offshoring of production tasks leads firms to reorganize with a more decentralized management, improving the competitiveness of the offshoring firms. We sh...

The trend for businesses to move information technology (IT) resources offshore remains a relevant topic among IS professionals and researchers. An optimistic tendency has emerged referring to IT offshoring as an arbitrage opportunity. While the practice of offshoring offers some cost savings in the form of lower wages, there are intrinsic risks with IT offshoring. Using a real options approach...

In this paper we investigate the effect of offshore supply dependence (OSD) on offshoring-reshoring profit comparisons. We find that OSD hampers a reshoring manufacturer’s responsiveness to demand information updates and may significantly affect offshoring-reshoring comparisons, such that reshoring may yield lower profits than offshoring in many cases, including when offshoring has no baseline-...

How does software complexity shape software providers’ offshoring tasks, and how do such firms organize their offshoring activity? These questions are important, since the global software development market is growing rapidly, offering new opportunities for software managers and entrepreneurs to distribute their activities geographically. Based on a multi-site case study of 12 software firms, w...

The success of IT offshoring depends to some extent on the working relationships between onshore and offshore colleagues. However, as part of an organisational department‟s culture, employees can hold different attitudes towards offshoring and towards their own offshore collaboration. Previous research suggests that such „offshoring attitudes‟ can influence subgroup divides and thereby affect e...

Many US firms are improving their individual competitiveness by offshoring manufacturing operations, services and, increasingly, knowledge work. Although research to date has maintained that these practices are beneficial to the offshoring firm and national economies, by reducing costs and expanding markets, little is known about the longer term effect of offshoring on the rate of innovation of...

While there has been a tremendous increase in the number of firms engaging in IS offshoring efforts, many firms have been unsuccessful in realizing the intended benefits from offshoring. Most firms acknowledge the potential gains from offshoring, but lack the key capabilities for effective IS offshoring. Building on the dynamic capabilities perspective, and drawing upon extant research in strat...

While researchers have noted the increase in offshoring IT and business processes since the 2000 timeframe, there is limited work on the implications of offshoring for firms and consumers. This research begins to address these implications by studying the relationship between offshoring and customer satisfaction, expressed through the American Customer Satisfaction IndexTM tracked by the Nation...

Based on Relational Exchange Theory (RET), this paper explores the dual role in offshore sourcing as experienced by an Irish software development company. As part of a large US based company, the Irish site acts as a “bridge” in their offshoring practices. While the US site offshores work to Ireland, the Irish site offshores work further to India. Hence, the Irish site has experience of being b...