A longitudinal examination of partnership governance in offshoring: A moving target

Abstract

The complexity of the global marketplace is driving the growth of new corporate strategies that are centered on creating “synergistic alliances in procurement, distribution, marketing, and technology”. This study employs a grounded qualitative approach to investigate a growing belief that perspectives of relational governance and the resource-based view of the firm should be integrated to help explain the evolution of offshoring relationships in international marketing and supply chain settings. Specifically we ask—how well do general theories of organization correspond to governance in offshoring relationships? The premise of our longitudinal study found that offshoring relationships begin with calculative trust and opportunism, which later gives way to resource-based competency building and non-economic trust. Over time the offshoring relationships focus on building dynamic capabilities to increase process value through a trust-based relationship. In this way, offshoring relationships are a moving target in terms of governance of relationships from transactional to resource complementarity to a phase where trust and long-term orientation governs the offshored process or processes.