Outsourcing for Development: Towards a Developing Country Firm Perspective

Changes of the global economy have led to a much deeper integration of firms from developing countries. Multinational corporations are increasingly using offshore-outsourcing to maintain competitiveness and market shares. While the implications of this trend has been studied from the point of view of the multinational firm and its home economy, far less attention has been paid to the developing country firm participating in the outsourcing arrangement and its strategic options. From this point of view this paper reviews the outsourcing literature and identifies theoretical contributions that can be employed to build a platform for analyzing the strategic implications of outsourcing for local firms in developing countries.