engleski

Outsourcing of R&D versus operational outsourcing and its effects on flexibility and time to market

In this work strategic and operational outsourcing is analysed in terms of three theoretical lens, dominantly used for explaining outsourcing phenomena and its impact on volume flexibility and time to market. Theoretical lenses are Resource based view, Transaction cost theory and Contingency theory. It is hypothesized that strategic outsourcing is performed due to lack of skills in accordance with Resource based view. That is, if the company does not possess necessary knowledge it is better to outsource. Indeed our results confirm this hypothesis. Operational outsourcing (outsourcing of manufacturing and assembly) would according to Transaction cost theory be performed if it is less costly to outsource and indeed our OLS regression analysis shows positive signs. That is, operational outsourcing raises Return on sales but the coefficients are not significant. Non significance of operational outsourcing is attributed to the fact that overall capacity utilisation in the two researched countries (Croatia and Slovenia) is still low. Contingency theory lens was introduced through control variables (batch size, complexity of the product, capacity utilisation and size of the company in terms of number of employees) and if those situational factors would become significant in the analysis the contingency view would be more appropriate. However, the analysis did not show that these contingency factors affected outsourcing.

Outsourcing, R&D, Manufacturing

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