Global Outsourcing and Offshoring

Farok J. Contractor is Professor of International Business in the Management and Global Business Department at Rutgers Business School. He has one of the highest citation counts amongst scholars in the field of international management and has previously taught at the Wharton School, Copenhagen Business School, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Nanyang Technological University, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, XLRI (India), Lubin School of Business, Theseus, and EDHEC. Vikas Kumar is Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Business at the University of Sydney. From 2004 to 2009 he was Assistant Professor of International Business and Strategy in the Department of Management at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. He was also a visiting scholar at the Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects (CRGP) at Stanford University from 2008 to 2009. Sumit K. Kundu is the Knight-Ridder Research Professor of International Business in the College of Business Administration at Florida International University, Miami. He has taught several international business courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels at Florida International University, Saint Louis University, State University of New York, Northeastern University, and Rutgers University. Torben Pedersen is Professor of International Business in the Center for Strategic Management and Globalization at Copenhagen Business School, where he is also Head of the Department of International Economics and Management. He is a member of the executive board of European International Business Academy (EIBA) and is editor of the website of the Journal of International Business Studies.

Review of the hardback: 'This is an intriguing book. We have all heard about the rise of offshoring and outsourcing. Here, Contractor, Kumar, Kundu and Pedersen provide detailed and systematic evidence of how pervasive and invasive these trends have become. They also shed light on the consequences of offshoring and outsourcing - for the strategies of multinational corporations, for the policymakers who seek to attract overseas investment, and for our academic theories that seek to understand the nature of foreign investment and the sources of competitive advantage. This book is thoroughly researched and well written. It presents a bold and thought-provoking set of ideas about the future shape and size of the multinational corporation.' Julian Birkinshaw, London Business School

• List of figures; List of tables; List of contributors; Preface; Part I. Conceptual Frameworks and Theories: 1. Global outsourcing and offshoring: in search of the optimal configuration for a company Farok J. Contractor, Vikas Kumar, Torben Pedersen and Sumit Kundu; 2. Globalization of R&D: offshoring innovative activity to emerging economies Ashok Bardhan and Dwight Jaffee; 3. A theory of the outsourcing firm Dave Luvison and Mike Bendixen; Part II. The Offshoring and Outsourcing of R&D and Innovative Activities: 4. Blurring firm R&D boundaries: integrating transaction costs and knowledge-based perspectives Andrea Martinez-Noya and Esteban Garcia-Canal; 5. Outsourcing, fragmentation and integration: the pharmaceutical industry Janis K. Kapler and Kimberly A. Puhala; 6. Towards a better understanding of multinational enterprises' R&D location choices Ana Colovic; 7. Does R&D offshoring displace or strengthen knowledge production at home? Evidence from OECD countries Lucia Piscitello and Grazia D. Santangelo; 8. Innovation across firm boundaries: a knowledge based view Salma Alguezaui and Raffaele Filieri; 9. Suitable organization forms for knowledge management at various R&D functions in decentralized and cooperative R&D networks Hsing Hung Chen; Part III. Management Issues in Offshoring and Virtual Teamwork: 10. Changing work practices: acceptance of virtual work among knowledge professionals engaged in offshoring activities Elisa Mattarelli and Maria Rita Tagliaventi; 11. Managing globally disaggregated teams: the role of organizational politics Shahzad M. Ansari, Jatinder S. Sidhu, Henk W. Volberda and Ilan Oshri; Part IV. Empirical Analyses and Case Studies of Outsourcing and Offshoring: 12. Offshoring of high-value functions: a case study of US-India trade in medical transcription services Nir Kshetri and Nikhilesh Dholakia; 13. Offshoring of IT and business, professional and technical services: the recent experience of the United States Thomas J. Norman and Mahmood A. Zaidi; 14. Outsourcing human resource activities Thomas J. Norman; 15. Managing core outsourcing to address fast market growth: a study of an Indian mobile telecom service provider Raghunath Subramanyam; 16. Imitative offshoring strategies: lessons learnt from Italian small domestic appliance industry Gabriella Lojacono and Olga Annushkina; Index.