Sourcing portfolio diversity in new product development: Antecedents and performance implications

Abstract

This paper examines the antecedents and performance outcomes of sourcing portfolio diversity in firms’ new product development (NPD). Sourcing portfolio diversity measures the degree to which a firm uses multiple sourcing choices along both organizational and geographic dimensions including domestic in-house sourcing, domestic outsourcing, captive offshoring, and offshore outsourcing. We extend transaction cost economics (TCE) to the portfolio level of analysis and predict that sourcing portfolio diversity in NPD is driven by heterogeneity in two transactional characteristics—technological application diversity, reflecting asset specificity, and variance in project-stage uncertainty. We also argue that the positive effect of sourcing portfolio diversity on firms’ financial performance is driven by aligning sourcing portfolio configuration with the sources of transactional heterogeneity, increased strategic agility, and complementarities between individual sourcing choices. Our empirical study of NPD in the bio-pharmaceutical industry confirms our predictions. We contribute to research on sourcing and NPD by conceptually building and empirically establishing relevance of the sourcing diversity at the portfolio level of analysis and bringing the question of sourcing strategy to the forefront of NPD portfolio management concerns.