تجارت پایاپای در تصمیم های ساخت و خرید

While the previous literature uses transaction cost economics and the resource-based view to theoretically derive the benefits of outsourcing, it has so far overlooked how these theoretical underpinnings must be used to assess trade-offs involved in make-buy decisions as well. This study investigates trade-offs in make-buy decisions for the buying firm. It takes an operations strategy perspective and links manufacturing firms’ competitive priorities to outsourcing motives and resulting capabilities. Survey data from a representative sample of 136 manufacturing plants in Sweden is subjected to regressions analysis. In contrast to earlier empirical research, this study shows that resulting capabilities of strategic outsourcing initiatives are distinct, and, furthermore, do not emerge cumulatively. This has important implications for the ongoing debate over trade-offs in the operations strategy literature. Findings are clearly in support of the trade-off model and extend current research into the theoretical domain of make-buy decisions.

While current theory is able to explain the underlying rationales behind different motives to outsource manufacturing, it fails to consider that these motives often conflict. As an example, studies single out lower costs and greater flexibility as among the main motives to outsource manufacturing (e.g., Ulrich and Ellison, 2005). Ulrich and Ellison (2005) argue that the rationale behind the lower costs is that suppliers with several customers can achieve greater economies of scale than individual customers could on their own. Furthermore, they propose that the rationale behind suppliers’ greater flexibility is their ability to pool demand from several customers, since the variability in demand at the supplier stage will be less than that of their individual customers. Yet although each of these rationales is true, it is wrong to assume that lower costs and greater flexibility are achieved simultaneously when outsourcing manufacturing. Rather, the present study argues that these motives are in conflict, implying that improvements in their corresponding performance indicators have to be traded off when outsourcing manufacturing.

While the debate over trade-offs in operations strategy has so far been confined within factory walls, the present study extends this research into the supply chain by addressing trade-offs in make-buy decisions. Outsourcing scholars often routinely assume that trade-offs between cost and flexibility can be overcome (see, e.g., Brusoni et al., 2001, p. 599: “firms aim to exploit flexibility and to cut costs by outsourcing production”. As this is true, on the one hand, in view of scale economies and the aggregation of demand at the supplier stage, the present study has clarified why trade-offs remain in make-buy decisions for the buying firm.