Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Offshoring (4)
- Outsourcing (4)
- Certification (2)
- Co-evolution (2)
- Coffee industry (2)
-
- 24/7 operations (1)
- Africa (1)
- Agency theory (1)
- Bond (1)
- Born-global firms (1)
- Brain Circulation (1)
- Brazil (1)
- Business-to-business industries (1)
- Client-specific investments (1)
- Commoditization (1)
- Complexity (1)
- Context (1)
- Contracting (1)
- Dynamic capability (1)
- Emergence and design (1)
- Emerging markets (1)
- Engineering (1)
- Fairtrade (1)
- Geographic Clusters (1)
- Geographic distance (1)
- Global Race for Talent (1)
- Global Service Delivery Model (1)
- Global Services Sourcing (1)
- Global Value Chains (1)
- Global commodity chains (1)
Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Business
The Ambivalent Effect Of Complexity On Firm Performance: A Study In The Global Service Provider Industry, Marcus M. Larsen, Stephan Manning, Torben Pedersen
The Ambivalent Effect Of Complexity On Firm Performance: A Study In The Global Service Provider Industry, Marcus M. Larsen, Stephan Manning, Torben Pedersen
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Prior literature is ambivalent about whether organizational complexity has positive or negative effects on firm performance. Using rich data on global service providers, we explore this ambivalence by disentangling performance consequences of different types of organizational complexity. We show that complexity arising from the coordination of different services and operations negatively influences profit margins through increased coordination costs, whereas complexity coming from the sophistication of particular services may positively influence margins through informational advantages. We also investigate the moderating effects of process commoditization and client-specific investments. Our findings point to critical performance dilemmas facing global service providers in a highly …
Africa Business Research As A Laboratory For Theory-Building: Extreme Conditions, New Phenomena And Alternative Paradigms Of Social Relationships, Helena Barnard, Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Stephan Manning
Africa Business Research As A Laboratory For Theory-Building: Extreme Conditions, New Phenomena And Alternative Paradigms Of Social Relationships, Helena Barnard, Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Stephan Manning
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Africa is an increasingly important business context, yet we still know very little about it. We review the challenges and opportunities that firms in Africa face and propose that these can serve as the basis for extending current theories and models of the firm. We do so by challenging some of the implicit assumptions and stereotypes on firms in Africa and proposing three avenues for extending theories. One is taking the extreme conditions of some Africa countries and using them as a laboratory for modifying current theories and models of the firm, as we illustrate in the case of institutional …
The Strategic Potential Of Community-Based Hybrid Models: The Case Of Global Business Services In Africa, Stephan Manning, Chacko G. Kannothra, Nichole K. Wissman-Weber
The Strategic Potential Of Community-Based Hybrid Models: The Case Of Global Business Services In Africa, Stephan Manning, Chacko G. Kannothra, Nichole K. Wissman-Weber
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
As a latecomer economy, Africa faces persistent difficulties with catching up in global markets. This study examines the strategic potential of community-based hybrid models, which balance market profitability with social impact in local communities. Focusing on the global business services industry in Kenya and South Africa, and the practice of ‘impact sourcing’ – hiring and training of disadvantaged staff servicing business clients – we find that while regular providers struggle to compete with global peers, hybrid model adopters manage to access underutilized labor pools through community organizations, and target less competitive niche client markets. We further identify key industry, institutional …
How Hybrids Manage Growth And Social-Business Tensions In Global Supply Chains: The Case Of Impact Sourcing, Chacko G. Kannothra, Stephan Manning, Nardia Haigh
How Hybrids Manage Growth And Social-Business Tensions In Global Supply Chains: The Case Of Impact Sourcing, Chacko G. Kannothra, Stephan Manning, Nardia Haigh
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This study contributes to the growing interest in how hybrid organizations manage paradoxical social—business tensions. Our empirical case is ‘impact sourcing’ – hybrids in global supply chains that hire staff from disadvantaged communities to provide services to business clients. We identify two major growth orientations - ‘community-focused’ and ‘client-focused’ growth - their inherent tensions and ways that hybrids manage them. The former favors slow growth and manages tensions through highly-integrated client and community relations; the latter promotes faster growth and manages client and community relations separately. Both growth orientations address social-business tensions in particular ways, but also create latent constraints …
Global Delivery Models: The Role Of Talent, Speed And Time Zones In The Global Outsourcing Industry, Stephan Manning, Marcus Larsen, Pratyush Bharati
Global Delivery Models: The Role Of Talent, Speed And Time Zones In The Global Outsourcing Industry, Stephan Manning, Marcus Larsen, Pratyush Bharati
Management Science and Information Systems Faculty Publication Series
We investigate antecedents and contingencies of location configurations supporting global delivery models (GDMs) in global outsourcing. GDMs are a new form of IT-enabled client-specific investment promoting services provision integration with clients by exploiting client proximity and time-zone spread allowing for 24/7 service delivery and access to resources. Based on comprehensive data we show that providers are likely to establish GDM configurations when clients value access to globally distributed talent pools and speed of service delivery, and in particular when services are highly commoditized. Findings imply that coordination across time zones increasingly affects international operations in business-to-business and born-global industries.
Emerging Capability Or Continuous Challenge? Relocating Knowledge Work And Managing Process Interfaces, Stephan Manning, Thomas Hutzschenreuter, Alexander Strathmann
Emerging Capability Or Continuous Challenge? Relocating Knowledge Work And Managing Process Interfaces, Stephan Manning, Thomas Hutzschenreuter, Alexander Strathmann
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This study examines interface management as a dynamic organizational capability supporting an increasing global distribution of knowledge work, based on an in-depth case of an automotive supplier. We show how local responses to experiences of task and interface ambiguity following the relocation of R&D processes may lead to a shift of organizational attention from ex-ante process design to continuous process and interface management. Findings suggest that flexible interface manager positions and partnership structures across locations facilitate local experimentation with effective transfer and handling of ambiguous and partially tacit tasks. This enhances the firm’s capacity to distribute an increasing variety of …
New Silicon Valleys Or A New Species? Commoditization Of Knowledge Work And The Rise Of Knowledge Services Clusters, Stephan Manning
New Silicon Valleys Or A New Species? Commoditization Of Knowledge Work And The Rise Of Knowledge Services Clusters, Stephan Manning
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This paper explores knowledge services clusters (KSCs) as a distinct and increasingly important form of geographic cluster, in particular in emerging economies: KSCs are defined as geographic concentrations of lower-cost skills serving global demand for increasingly commoditized knowledge services. Based on prior research on clusters and services offshoring, and data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN), major properties and contingencies of KSC growth are discussed and compared with both high-tech clusters and low-cost manufacturing clusters. Special emphasis is put on the ambivalent effect of commoditization of knowledge work on KSC growth: It is proposed that KSCs attract most projects if …
National Contexts Matter: The Co-Evolution Of Sustainability Standards In Global Value Chains, Stephan Manning, Frank Boons, Oliver Von Hagen, Juliane Reinecke
National Contexts Matter: The Co-Evolution Of Sustainability Standards In Global Value Chains, Stephan Manning, Frank Boons, Oliver Von Hagen, Juliane Reinecke
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
In this paper, we investigate the role of key industry and other stakeholders and their embeddedness in particular national contexts in driving the proliferation and co-evolution of sustainability standards, based on the case of the global coffee industry. We find that institutional conditions and market opportunity structures in consuming countries have been important sources of standards variation, for example in the cases of Fairtrade, UTZ Certified and the Common Code for the Coffee Community (4C). In turn, supplier structures in producing countries as well as their linkages with traders and buyers targeting particular consuming countries have been key mechanisms of …
Securing Access To Lower-Cost Talent Globally: The Dynamics Of Active Embedding And Field Structuration, Stephan Manning, Joerg Sydow, Arnold Windeler
Securing Access To Lower-Cost Talent Globally: The Dynamics Of Active Embedding And Field Structuration, Stephan Manning, Joerg Sydow, Arnold Windeler
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This article examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) shape institutional conditions in emerging economies to secure access to high-skilled, yet lower-cost science and engineering talent. Based on two in-depth case studies of engineering offshoring projects of German automotive suppliers in Romania and China we analyze how MNCs engage in ‘active embedding’ by aligning local institutional conditions with global offshoring strategies and operational needs. MNCs thereby contribute to the structuration of field relations and practices of sourcing knowledge-intensive work from globally dispersed locations.Our findings stress the importance of institutional processes across geographic boundaries that regulate and get shaped by MNC activities.
The Emergence Of A Standards Market: Multiplicity Of Sustainability Standards In The Global Coffee Industry, Juliane Reinecke, Stephan Manning, Oliver Von Hagen
The Emergence Of A Standards Market: Multiplicity Of Sustainability Standards In The Global Coffee Industry, Juliane Reinecke, Stephan Manning, Oliver Von Hagen
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
The growing number of voluntary standards for governing transnational arenas is presenting standards organizations with a problem. While claiming that they are pursuing shared, overarching objectives, at the same time, they are promoting their own respective standards that are increasingly similar. By developing the notion of ‘standards markets,’ this paper examines this tension and studies how different social movement and industry-driven standards organizations compete as well as collaborate over governance in transnational arenas. Based on an in-depth case study of sustainability standards in the global coffee industry, we find that the ongoing co-existence of multiple standards is being promoted by …
The Stability Of Offshore Outsourcing Relationships: The Role Of Relation Specificity And Client Control, Stephan Manning, Arie Y. Lewin, Marc Schuerch
The Stability Of Offshore Outsourcing Relationships: The Role Of Relation Specificity And Client Control, Stephan Manning, Arie Y. Lewin, Marc Schuerch
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Offshore outsourcing of administrative and technical services has become a mainstream business practice. Increasing commoditization of business services and growing client experience with outsourcing have created a range of competitive service delivery options for client firms. Yet, data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN) suggests that, despite increasing market options and growing client quality and cost efficiency expectations, clients typically renew provider contracts and develop longer-term relationships with providers. Based on ORN data, this paper explores drivers of this phenomenon. The findings suggest that providers promote contract renewal by making client specific investments in software, IT infrastructure and training, and …
Political Contestation In Global Production Networks, David Levy
Political Contestation In Global Production Networks, David Levy
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This paper develops a critical framework on international management and production that draws from the literatures on global commodity chains and global production networks (GPNs), from institutional entrepreneurship, as well as from neo-Gramscian theory in international political economy. The framework views GPNs as integrated economic, political, and discursive systems, in which market and political power are intertwined. The framework highlights the contingent stability of GPNs as well as the potential for actors to engage politically in contestation and collaboration over system governance and the distribution of benefits. The framework offers a multidimensional and multi-level approach to understanding power relations, ideology, …
Bond And Stock Market Linkages: The Case Of Mexico And Brazil, Arindam Bandopadhyaya
Bond And Stock Market Linkages: The Case Of Mexico And Brazil, Arindam Bandopadhyaya
Financial Services Forum Publications
This paper examines the Brady bond market of two largest Latin American economies, Mexico and Brazil. Results indicate that stripped yield of each market in the very near future is determined primarily by the past yields in the respective markets. However, over a longer-term horizon the interrelationships between the bond markets and the stock markets of the two countries become important. Future yields in the Mexican bond market are affected by the current returns in the Mexican stock market, and to a certain extent the yields in the Brazilian bond market. A significant portion of the future variation in the …