How do corporate legal departments and law firms make decisions about ‘making’ or ‘buying’ legal services? In what ways are their decisions governed by the usual criteria and factors identified in economic and managerial theories of the firm? And to what extent are lawyers’...

Recent strategy research explains why firms sometimes make-and-buy (not make-or-buy)products simultaneously, but lacks explanations of how they strike the make-buy balance. We respond by developing a framework featuring two determinants of the balance: resource cospecialization and supplier...

Among various theories of the firm, the dynamic capabilities approach has not fully drawn its implications for firm boundary and organizational design. Firm boundary and structural design are abstracted away when strategy scholars study capabilities and firm-level heterogeneity. This chapter...

This paper uses the notion of contracting strategy to advance research in plural sourcing. We develop and test a theoretical framework to explain how plural-sourcing firms strike the make-and-buy balance depending on their contracting strategy. The focal firm’s choice of a contracting strategy...