Outsourcing was originally confined to peripheral business functions and mainly motivated by a cost saving logic, but has now developed into a routine strategic management business model that affects not only peripheral functions but impacts the core business of organizations. Industry research...

To date, much of the literature on institutional economics has relied on abstract metaphors based in exchange. Thus, Williamson introduced the fundamental insights surrounding his “transaction costs” model and discussed the governance of contracts in exchange relationships. Yet organizations...

This paper contributes to the study of projects networks - as a particular type of interorganizational networks - by looking into the mechansims that are able to bind or even lock-in customers into interorganizational relations. The study is set in the field of television production

We address the question how much authority a principal should delegate to a manager with conflicting interests and uncertain ability in a context in which the manager has both compensation-based and reputational incentives. The optimal level of authority balances the value of the manager's...

Outsourcing of IT, tech support and other business services has become a global trend. Watching India’s success in the outsourcing space, many developing countries now try to grow their own business service economy, including countries in Africa. But what does it really take to become a global...

Global delivery models (GDMs) are transforming the global IT and business process outsourcing industry. GDMs are a new form of client-specific investment promoting services integration with clients by combining client proximity with time-zone spread for 24/7 service operations. We investigate...

The dominant agency-cost paradigm for the analysis of corporate law is based on the proposition that the welfare of society is best met by rules which minimise the costs of production through the corporate form. This is typically interpreted to mean that the agency costs of shareholders should...

As a latecomer economy, Africa faces persistent difficulties with catching up in global markets. This study examines the strategic potential of community-based hybrid models, which balance market profitability with social impact in local communities. Focusing on the global business services...

Africa is an increasingly important business context, yet we still know very little about it. We review the challenges and opportunities that firms in Africa face and propose that these can serve as the basis for extending current theories and models of the firm. We do so by challenging some of...

This study shifts attention from project-based firms (PBFs) to project network organizations (PNOs) as increasingly important interorganizational contexts of project collaboration. As a result of organizational specialization, PNOs have emerged as generic organizational forms combining the...