Archetypes of Global Sourcing Decision-Making: The Influence of Contextual Factors

Abstract

The study provides a first step towards a taxonomy of global sourcing decision-making (GSDM) process archetypes, by answering the questions ‘which archetypes of global sourcing decision-making exist?’ and ‘how do contextual factors determine these types of global sourcing decision-making?’. We highlight the extent to which differences in decision-making processes are explained by variations in environmental, organizational and decision-specific factors. In order to do so, we employ a multiple case study approach with five in-depth cases drawing on 19 interviews as well as publicly available and internal data from large buying firms headquartered in Austria and Germany. Our findings identify three different GSDM archetypes (i.e., bureaucratic-discursive, pragmatic-impartial and political-unstructured) which are mainly influenced by the three main contextual factors: global sourcing maturity, product complexity and leadership style. These factors determine how companies make decisions on sourcing complex components when global sourcing is considered a viable option. This study contributes to theory development at the intersection of organizational buying behavior and global sourcing literature and answers the call for more rigorous investigation of the influence of contextual factors on GSDM processes and their variance. Further, we enable practitioners to better understand and consequently manage GSDM processes and their outcomes. By identifying which GSDM context sourcing managers and teams face, this study allows to make better decisions by avoiding problems that occur in situations, in which their preferred decision-making type would cause them to act irrationally.