The Middle Management of Offshoring: Understanding Offshoring Strategy Implementation at a Meso Level

摘要

A majority of the research on offshoring is positioned on a macro level, explaining firm level strategies for offshoring and the antecedents of offshoring decisions, but research on implementation of offshoring strategies is rare. The author suggest that the actual development and implementation of offshoring can be better understood by applying a meso level approach; the middle management in the organization and its relation to top management directives, when implementing an offshoring strategy. A multiple case study of two multinational company's offshoring product development to captive centers in India and China show how middle management facilitates the transfer process. By placing the study at a meso level and taking a strategy-as-practice perspective, the findings included: a) the iterative nature of the offshoring process, b) the lack of (communicated) strategies for offshoring and its consequences, and c) a set of routines connected to offshoring emerging at different levels in the company.