Purpose: Make-or-buy decisions represent a critical dilemma faced by many firms. The appropriate decision between designing and manufacturing parts or services in-house, buying them from external providers or combining both is a fundamental firm process. This paper seeks to address this question...

About 40% of employment in manufacturing is in services functions. This paper develops a measure of narrow outsourcing, matching services functions performed by workers inside manufacturing firms to the same services functions provided by outside suppliers. Narrow outsourcing is entered into...

Onsite-Werkverträge in der Warenverräumung gehen im Einzelhandel zuweilen mit gravierenden Problemen für den Auftraggeber einher. Trotzdem nimmt das Management diese Werkverträge nicht automatisch zurück. Es bedarf eines Akteurs wie des (Gesamt-)Betriebsrats, der die Rücknahme vorantreibt....

Many small firms lack the finance and marketing skills needed for firm growth. The standard approach in many business support programs is to attempt to train the entrepreneur to develop these skills, through classroom-based training or personalized consulting. However, rather than requiring the...

The role of innovation in improving productivity might vary according to a country's relative position in technology advancement. Frontier countries might benefit more from policies that promote firms' internal innovation (create), while follower countries would gain more from policies favoring...

Relational contracts are key to supply chain collaboration. The literature has focused on the role of trust stemming from prior business with current suppliers. However, the role of expected future business volume on the make-or-buy decision has been relatively neglected. This paper contributes...

This paper uses the notion of contracting strategy to advance research on 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...

Existing research has focused on why and when firms may choose to access the external technology market. Surprisingly, however, less is known about the reliability of the patents attached to these external technologies in the face of litigation. “Weak” external patents expose a firm to the...

Existing research has focused on why and when firms may choose to access the external technology market. Surprisingly, however, less is known about the reliability of the patents attached to these external technologies in the face of litigation. "Weak" external patents expose a firm to the...

Relational contracts - informal agreements sustained by the value of future relationships – are integral parts of global production processes. This paper develops a repeated-game model of global sourcing in which final goods producers decide whether to engage with their suppliers in relational...

Existing research has focused on why and when firms may choose to access the external technology market. Surprisingly, however, less is known about the reliability of the patents attached to these external technologies in the face of litigation. “Weak” external patents expose a firm to the...

Whether firms should perform manufacturing activities on their own or buy them from an external provider is a strategic question that many managers from all firm areas have historically asked themselves. The present paper seeks to address this question by developing a theoretical framework which...