Meeting the Global Challenge through Production Offshoring: Trajectories and Strategic Implications of the Process

This PhD study is concerned with the implications of globalisation for industrial firms from the traditional industrial triad of North America, Western Europe, and Japan. Taking the perspective of lead firms from advanced industrial economies, the study attempts to make a contribution to the current debates about how these firms could assert themselves in a world of far-reaching transformation. As the title of the study suggests, this contribution is made through focusing the discussion upon production offshoring, which is currently commanding attention of so many practitioners, academics and policy makers.
Building on ground that is already well trodden within the academic literature, the study searches for novel multidisciplinary explanations about how the production function can be organised by lead firms on a global scale and, more importantly, what the strategic implications of this process are. While the study concentrates on the production function, the implications of the discussion stretch much wider; the study also reveals implications for other functions and the company as a whole, as well as it points towards broader societal implications.
The study employs a qualitative methodology based on multiple case studies. By applying the process perspective to the offshoring phenomenon, this study develops a framework which can be distilled into a number of propositions addressing: 1) the unfolding of offshoring process in a firm over time, 2) factors affecting the trajectories of the process, 3) the role of peculiarities of the society and locality from where offshoring initiatives originate, 4) strategic implications of offshoring initiatives.