Outsourcing and firm performance: A comparative study of Swiss and Greek firms

This paper aims at analyzing (a) the factors determining the firms' propensity to outsource various processes (b) the impact of outsourcing on firms' innovation performance as well as labour productivity. The integral investigation of the determining factors as well as the impact of outsourcing on innovation and productivity based on the same data in a comparative setting is the new element this study adds to existing empirical literature. Relocation to external providers is related to (parts of) the production process of final products and intermediate products as well as Research and Development (R&D) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services.