برون سپاری یا تجدید ساختار : انتخاب پویا

This paper examines the role of outsourcing when a firm attempts to establish its true level of production costs in an uncertain context. Outsourcing may provide additional information to the firm about the efficiency of its organizational structure. The information flow that outsourcing gives to the firm creates a real option by delaying the final decision relating to its definitive organizational mode, so that temporarily outsourcing and then resuming operations may be the optimal management decision for the firm.

In the last few decades, many industries have followed a trend to successively outsource additional segments of the value chain. According to Brown and Linden (2005), U.S. firms in the semiconductor industry followed a historic process of outsourcing to foreign (mainly Asian) firms: first assembly (since the late 1960s), then fabrication (since mid-1980s) and finally design (started in the 1990s). Similarly, in recent years there has been a trend to outsource information technology (IT) activities when companies face their make-or-buy decision; a unique and unprecedented trend that has included the business process and business services outsourcing functions.1 Nevertheless, in the process of offshoring (and outsourcing) activities, some manufacturers have rediscovered the virtues of making things at home. A prominent example is Kenwood, a Japanese electronics firm: it shifted production of mini-disc players from Malaysia back to its facilities in Japan, an “insourcing” process that increased its profits.2 Similarly, in IT activities forming part of firms’ value chain, “there have recently been a few reports of ‘insourcing,’ of Western firms taking back services previously outsourced to India. One of the most publicized cases is the computer firm Dell, which involved call-centre help desks and affected only part of their Indian operations.”3 Many other sources report on firms that complain about the results of outsourcing being well below expectations.4 To illustrate, a recent survey by Bain & Co., a consulting firm, found that a hefty 82% of large firms in Europe, Asia, and North America are outsourcing, and 51% are outsourcing offshore. However, almost half say that outsourcing does not meet their expectations.5 Similarly, a recent study of the organization of IT functions and their costs for a sample of 130 large German companies in banking, retailing, manufacturing, and insurance concluded that “hiving off” the firm's IT operation did not have necessarily increase efficiency or save money (Bloch, 2005).

This work succinctly examines the decision faced by productively inefficient firms trying to correct their inefficiency over time. Outsourcing followed by a resumption of activities has been rationalized as an optimal reorganizing strategy for these firms in the presence of asymmetric information, learning effects, and transaction costs. There is a real option of delaying an in-house restructuring process when additional information can be obtained about the associated costs and benefits of delay. Depending on the level of restructuring cost, on the loss of efficiency due to informational asymmetries, and on the value of time, a firm would find it optimal to outsource its production to other firms that produce at the intrinsic costs of the industry, rather than immediately undertaking any restructuring process that involves keeping production in-house. Further, this outsourcing may be permanent or temporary. An interesting extension of this framework will be explored in future research: the analysis of the effects on optimal outsourcing contracts when the uninformed firms have no power to make a commitment, or when renegotiation between parties over time is possible (in the spirit of the literature discussed in Fudenberg and Tirole, 1991, Section 7.6.4). This would be an analysis of the renegotiation-proof (outsourcing) contracts that may emerge in dynamic settings.