Time to Success in Offshoring Business Processes

This paper contributes to the emerging debate about offshoring of support functions in international business research. We analyze the success of offshoring activities and focus on the time a firm takes to achieve its expected cost savings and its targeted service level.We hypothesize that firm-specific offshoring experience, publicly available knowledge on offshoring, path dependencies, cultural distances, and the chosen governance mode influence the success of offshoring activities.An analysis of detailed data about 525 offshoring implementations of US and German firms confirms the anticipated relationships and provides further crucial insights.

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