ریسک و هزینه در تأمین منابع جهانی

The benefits of global sourcing as part of a firm’s purchasing strategy have been widely discussed in the academic literature, yet so there are few models that provide a comprehensive risk and cost assessment to guide managerial decision-making. In particular, few models capture the dynamic nature of many cost drivers, such as transportation and energy cost, labour cost inflation, or carbon offset costs, in their calculations. In this paper, we define three basic cost elements in global sourcing: static, dynamic and hidden cost, and use this framework to assess the costs and risks inherent in global sourcing scenarios from three different points of view: conceptually, analytically and empirically. We highlight the key learning points from each perspective and propose a total cost model of how to make informed global sourcing decisions, which we test by applying it to three exploratory case studies of global sourcing arrangements.

‘It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy […]. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.

As international transportation costs have fallen considerably over the past decades and borders have become more porous, there has been (and continues to be) a strong economic incentive to source materials and components globally. However, amidst rising oil and transportation costs and growing pressure to reduce the “carbon footprint” of products, the equation whether or not global sourcing is economical or not is considerably more complex. In this paper, we have reviewed the existing debate on the costs and risks of such global sourcing strategies, and have proposed a classification of defining these static, hidden and dynamic costs.