Inter-organizational Rents in Global Service Sourcing: A Process Perspective

Inter-organizational rents are results of a collaboration of two partner firms that is leading to supernormal profits, which cannot be generated by either firm in isolation. These rents, such as the creation of relation-specific assets, knowledge-sharing routines, complementary resources and capabilities, as well as relationship governance effectiveness, are based on the interaction between firms, evident for example in the global production of knowledge-intensives services (KIS). Due to the nature of these collaborations, interactions are diverse in different relationship phases and can change during the process. We study to what extent inter-organizational rents are created in different phases of a global KIS collaboration. Through a multiple case study analysis, we find that despite the asymmetric relationship between the client and the service provider in the global service sourcing domain, it is possible to achieve mutually beneficial inter-organizational rents. However, a range of factors influence whether and to what extent these rents are achieved. Theoretically, we contribute to the literatures on global service sourcing and inter-firm collaboration with a process perspective on the creation of inter-organizational rents. Moreover, we go beyond the firm as level of analysis and consider the micro-foundations of inter-firm collaboration, i.e. including the role of individual boundary spanners.