IBR Call for Papers for Thematic Issue
on
Co-Evolutionary Research on Outsourcing-Offshoring White-Collar Work: Implications for Globalisation, International Strategies, and Organizational Designs
Guest Editors:
Arie Y. Lewin & Henk W. Volberda
<st1:placename w:st="on">Fuqua</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype> of Business, <st1:city w:st="on">Duke University</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">USA</st1:country-region>; <st1:placename w:st="on">RSM</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Erasmus</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype>, The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Netherlands</st1:country-region></st1:place>
Deadlines:
Deadline for submission of papers is February 29, 2008. However, the review process for papers will be initiated as each paper is submitted.
Format: Papers should be submitted following guidelines of IBR.
Where to submit Papers: Papers should be submitted electronically in PDF format to Professor Henk Volberda HVolberda@rsm.nl. Subject line must state IBR Submission.
The central purpose of this thematic issue is the challenge of developing theories and empirical co-evolutionary approaches that inform the question regarding why and how organizations offshore high added-value activities. Offshoring refers to the process by which companies undertake some activities at offshore locations instead of in their home countries. Western economies have practiced outsourcing-offshoring for at least 50 years. Until relatively recently, however, offshoring has affected mainly manufacturing work and blue-collar jobs. Since the early 90s, a new type of outsourcing-offshoring has emerged. The rapid evolution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has facilitated the ability of companies to locate digitised business processes almost anywhere in the world. Existing data suggest companies in high-cost economies are rapidly learning to organize and locate activities and processes globally. Clearly, efficiency-seeking represents an important initial motivation for many firms who seek new locations at which to conduct relatively low-value-added activities. But the quality of work and the level of services that they discover abroad have led many firms to realize that outsourcing-offshoring offers many new opportunities to source new organizational capabilities, rethink business models, and leverage innovation processes. The disintermediation of global value chains for service delivery poses critical issues regarding the spatial and organizational configurations of professional, administrative operations and innovation activities which must take into account not only cost savings, but also risk management and managerial competence.
Research Questions
With a few exceptions, researchers have tended not to address the interrelationships between firm-level offshore decisions and population-level selection forces (Lewin & Volberda, 1999). As a way of progressing beyond partial and idiosyncratic theorizing and traditional empirical studies we seek papers with a focus on outsourcing-offshoring that advance co-evolutionary models incorporating the central premise that adaptation and selection are not orthogonal forces but are fundamentally interrelated (Volberda & Lewin, 2003). This co-evolutionary approach implies that offshore dynamics are not an outcome of strategic decisions or environmental selection but rather the joint outcome of emergence, management intentionality and environmental effects.
The following statements and questions encompass, but do not exhaust the many issues of interest to this IBR thematic issue:
· How does offshoring affect the various actors in domestic and global economies (offshoring companies, service providers, employees, governments, institutions, high cost and low cost countries, etc.)?
· Offshoring often involves highly complex processes and is not trivial to plan and execute. How do companies learn how to manage cultural, technical and operational challenges associated with delegating business processes to globally dispersed entities?
· What potentials exist for globalisation of human capital to change firms' organizational capabilities to source, locate and manage people anywhere in the world and how can these capabilities lead to new sources of competitive advantage?
· How do offshoring and third party service providers affect the capabilities of small and medium-sized enterprises to enter and compete in global markets?
· How does offshoring affect the capabilities and opportunities for state-owned enterprises and centrally planned economies to span organizational boundaries and country borders with private firms and traditional capitalist economies?
· How does the co-evolution of global markets for offshored organizational processes challenge firms to develop capabilities to select third party providers for business or IT processes anywhere in the world as well as to manage diverse networks of providers and captive units?
· What governance issues and new organizational models pertain to decisions to outsource or provide services internally, and simultaneously, whether this should occur onshore or offshore?
In order to advance the state of research on these topics, and more generally on the strategic and organizational implications of offshoring white-collar work, we invite both theoretical and empirical papers as well as theory-guided case studies.
References
Lewin, A.Y., & Volberda, H.W. (1999), Prolegomena on Coevolution: A Framework for Research on Strategy and New Organizational Forms. Organization Science, 10 (5): 519-534.
Volberda H.W. & Lewin, A.Y. (2003), Co-evolutionary Dynamics Within and Between Firms: From Evolution to Co-evolution. Journal of Management Studies, 40 (8): 2111-2136.