پرتفوی گروه کنترل در روابط برون سپاری برای توسعه محصول جدید جهانی

Due to increasing globalization and technological discontinuities, firms strive to develop new product capabilities and flexibilities by engaging in outsourcing activities and adopting modular systems. However, these strategies contain risks of opportunistic expropriation of tacit knowledge and costs related to monitoring sourcing partners who are geographically and culturally distant. This study examines the antecedents of control mechanisms through which firms manage the risks and costs associated with outsourcing relationships in global technology-intensive markets. Modularity in design is hypothesized as a moderator of model relationships because it can serve as a substitute for formal or informal controls in a “controls portfolio”.

Technological advances and increasing globalization characterize the current business milieu and have radically transformed the competitive landscape. Consequently, firms increasingly strive to develop new product development (NPD) capabilities and achieve strategic flexibility through outsourcing and adopting modular systems (Carson, 2007, Garud and Kumaraswamy, 1993 and Schilling, 2000). The phenomenon of downstream buyers cooperating with upstream suppliers to introduce new products and/or components is prevalent across a spectrum of industries including consumer-electronics, textiles, automobiles, metals and pharmaceuticals1 (Bettis et al., 1992, Kotabe and Murray, 1990 and Kotabe and Murray, 2004). Furthermore, the popular press has increasingly documented the prevailing use of outsourcing, and it appears that organizations are increasingly turning to globally sourcing their components and/or designs instead of spending millions of dollars to design and develop them internally. According to the Quarterly Index from outsourcing advisory firm TPI (15 February 2006 in The Economic Times), the value of major outsourcing contracts was $75+ billion worldwide in 2005. In 2006, the major players in global sourcing deals include IBM Corp., Accenture Ltd., Electronic Data Systems Corp., Computer Sciences Corp. and HP Co. — all have signed contracts exceeding $1 billion in value (12 July 2006 in The Wall Street Journal). Most importantly, such a rise in offshoring of new product development activities create the possibility of shifts in the global power structure and thus entail significant consequences for the world economy (Ernst, 2006).

Global firms in TI markets increasingly engage in outsourcing relationships due to rapid technological developments (which increase technological complexity) and amplified international competition (which leads to environmental hostility). In particular, many firms engage in outsourcing relationships in order to gain adaptability, market responsiveness and competitive advantages against their rivals. Another important trend in TI markets is modularization, which allows components to be flexibly recombined into multiple end-product configurations, links geographically dispersed component developers, and brings about important leverage in global ventures. Despite benefits, such global NPD relationships entail certain costs and threats for the buyer. These relationships may lead to asymmetries in dependence due to task specific qualities, switching costs, and the perceived dynamics of the market and technological environment. Thus monitoring and coordination mechanisms become necessary to prevent opportunistic supplier behavior and the expropriation of buyers' technology know-how and commercial secrets. However, the standardized component interfaces in modular product architectures provide a form of design-embedded coordination and control that greatly diminishes switching costs and dependencies, and reduces the need for other control mechanisms. Thus, NPD outsourcing within the context of modular architectures constitutes a unique and important case, which is the central focus in this study of the antecedents of control portfolios. The topic proposed in this research is novel and has not been widely studied. For theoretical grounding, this study draws primarily upon agency, resource dependency, and transaction cost theories which have been discussed in the new product, marketing, and management literatures. This research contributes to extant literature through providing at least partial answers to the following three questions: