<p>The global competition and as the worldwide market has become more open a company’s ability to outsource activities to external companies based in other countries, i.e. offshore outsourcing, has increased dramatically. Companies are starting to transfer higher value-added activities that require certain skills, domain knowledge and experience, i.e. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). These activities are getting more difficult and complex to manage compared with standardised activities such as payroll, and predict another kind of co-operation and communication between the companies. When the sender and receiver are based in different context, such as organisational and cultural, other aspects might be added to the difficulty. The purpose of this thesis is to describe, and analyse knowledge transfer in a cross cultural context based on three categories identified in the theoretical framework: character of knowledge, distances between sending and receiving context and mutual understanding. Also to answer how cultural differences might affect the knowledge transfer process. The objective of this study is mainly from a Swedish R&D company’s perspective that has an established relation with an external consultancy company based in India. The activities are within the area of dynamical changing software development of complex, communication and knowledge intensive products.</p><p>A qualitative case study has been performed based on open target interviews. The findings show that the character of knowledge is an important factor to consider when establishing the knowledge transfer process. It was a need to transfer knowledge not only related to the product itself but also knowledge embedded in organisational routines, processes, practises and norms. This is related to distances between sending and receiving context: organisational and knowledge differences shown in organisational skills and previous experience, and cultural differences mainly visible in communication such as raising problems and an expected top-down approach by managers. The geographical distance adds to the difficulty due to the missing face-to-face contact. The sending company must therefore be very active and can not just expect the receiving company to handle the activity, and especially when the companies’ prerequisites differ as much as in this case. Culture awareness and mutual understanding are factors that improve knowledge transfer.</p>

The global competition and as the worldwide market has become more open a company’s ability to outsource activities to external companies based in other countries, i.e. offshore outsourcing, has increased dramatically. Companies are starting to transfer higher value-added activities that require certain skills, domain knowledge and experience, i.e. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). These activities are getting more difficult and complex to manage compared with standardised activities such as payroll, and predict another kind of co-operation and communication between the companies. When the sender and receiver are based in different context, such as organisational and cultural, other aspects might be added to the difficulty. The purpose of this thesis is to describe, and analyse knowledge transfer in a cross cultural context based on three categories identified in the theoretical framework: character of knowledge, distances between sending and receiving context and mutual understanding. Also to answer how cultural differences might affect the knowledge transfer process. The objective of this study is mainly from a Swedish R&amp;D company’s perspective that has an established relation with an external consultancy company based in India. The activities are within the area of dynamical changing software development of complex, communication and knowledge intensive products. A qualitative case study has been performed based on open target interviews. The findings show that the character of knowledge is an important factor to consider when establishing the knowledge transfer process. It was a need to transfer knowledge not only related to the product itself but also knowledge embedded in organisational routines, processes, practises and norms. This is related to distances between sending and receiving context: organisational and knowledge differences shown in organisational skills and previous experience, and cultural differences mainly visible in communication such as raising problems and an expected top-down approach by managers. The geographical distance adds to the difficulty due to the missing face-to-face contact. The sending company must therefore be very active and can not just expect the receiving company to handle the activity, and especially when the companies’ prerequisites differ as much as in this case. Culture awareness and mutual understanding are factors that improve knowledge transfer.

Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att öka förståelsen och beskriva hur små svenska företag som har offshore outsourcat sin produktion till tillväxtmarknader hanterar relationen med leverantören. Vi har i denna uppsats använt oss av en kvalitativ metod och genomfört en flerfallsstudie på tre stycken mindre svenska företag.     Teoretiska referensramen är främst inriktad på två teoretiska områden; offshore outsourcing och relationer. Dessa har vidare delats in i tre huvudblock för att ge en så lättöverskådlig bild som möjligt samt att täcka in de väsentliga delarna som krävs för att besvara syftet. De tre huvudblocken är följande; relationsetablering, relationsstyrning och relationskoordinering. Den teoretiska referensramen har sedan sammanställts i en teoretisk syntes som analytiskt sammankopplar teorin och ligger till grund för analysen. I analyskapitlet genomförs en analys, där den teoretiska syntesen förenas med den insamlade empirin.   Analysen har utmynnat i en slutsats som besvarar forskningsfrågan där vi kan fastslå att det främst är två faktorer som urskiljer sig särskilt viktiga i relationshanteringen för små svenska företag som har offshore outsourcat sin produktion till tillväxtmarknader. Genom personliga relationer med leverantören byggs en stark relation upp mellan partnerna som bidrar till en effektivare hantering av leverantörsrelationen. Slutligen utmärker sig företagens nätverk som en viktig faktor i hanteringen av relationerna då nätverket fungerar som ett slags understöd till företaget på allehanda vis under arbetets gång.

<p>This thesis focuses on how companies in Sweden should manage the processes of offshore outsourcing IT services to low-cost locations, but also how they should manage the planning and accomplishment to achieve their goals and the expected result in a good way. The thesis states that companies in Sweden need to put a lot of effort into planning and research considering potential location and vendor. Different aspects and phases of the offshoring processes will be stated, discussed and analyzed concerning a fictive</p><p>company called AbcIT. A visualization of internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats is presented by a SWOT analysis regarding offshore outsourcing of IT-services to India.</p> / <p>Denna uppsats fokuserar på hur företag i Sverige skall gå tillväga när de överväger offshore outsourcing av IT-tjänster till lågkostnadsländer, hur de ska genomföra planeringsarbete och genomförande för att på bästa sätt uppnå både mål och resultat. I uppsatsen konstateras att företag i Sverige behöver lägga stor vikt vid planering och förundersökning av framtida område och affärspartner. Olika faktorer och delar av offshoringprocessen tas upp, diskuteras och analyseras med hjälp av det fiktiva företaget AbcIT. En SWOT-analys visualiserar interna styrkor och svagheter samt externa möjligheter och hot vid offshore outsourcing av IT-tjänster till Indien.</p>

In the era of globalization, multinational corporations are the center in international economics. Most studies are based on investment flows between developed countries, however. With a firm-level dataset on South Korean multinational corporations, this dissertation adds new insights to the research of multinational corporations from the perspective of an emerging country. The first essay investigates the impact of the level of development of the destination country on employment growth of the multinational corporations in the home country. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we assess the impact of starting to invest in less-advanced countries compared with investing in more-advanced countries. To obtain suitable control groups in each case, we use the propensity score method. The method selects national firms that ex post did not take the investment decisions even though ex ante they would have been equally likely to. We find that moving to less-advanced countries decreases a company's employment growth rate especially in the short run. On the other hand, moving to more-advanced countries does not consistently affect employment growth in any significant way. Including investment decisions of established multinationals in the estimation somewhat weakens but does not overturn this conclusion. The second essay studies the location decision of South Korean multinationals across China's regions with a firm-level dataset. Our conditional logit estimates confirm previous studies that found agglomeration effects along industry and along national lines. In particular, South Korean investors target the region where there are more firms in an industry irrespective of their nationality. At the same time, more affliates from South Korean multinationals also attract new entrants. More importantly, however, we add an upstream and downstream (backward and forward) linkage effect. We find that the presence of upstream and downstream South Korean affiliates significantly increases the likelihood that a South Korean multinational invests in a particular region. At the same time, however, backward and forward linkages at the industry level that do not differentiate by nationality do not seem to matter much. As such, our analysis of investors' location choice brings together two perspectives: (backward and forward) linkages and agglomeration along national lines. The third essay explores regional production networks and off-shoring of material and service inputs in East Asia using the Asian International Input-Output Table (1990, 1995, and 2000). In process of doing so, off-shoring is directly measured from the Table which is not used in the previous literature on this issue. It turns out that East Asian countries source the significant share of inputs within East Asia. Besides material off-shoring, services off-shoring becomes more and more common in the era of globalization. In particular, countries in this region have used goods and services inputs mainly from Japan and the United States. However, in recent years, China and Korea started to supply greater amounts of goods and services inputs. / text

Offshoring, meaning the movement of business operations to foreign countries, has recently grown. It provides the company with opportunities which are not available domestically, but it also bears risks. The public has recently blamed the strategy of offshoring for weak growth of domestic economy, decreasing competitiveness, salary stagnation, job losses, lower worker morale, and poverty. As a consequence, a firm carrying out offshoring activities could suffer from consumers' negative attitudes towards offshoring, as the consumers are unwilling to buy their products/services or take actions against the company. This study addresses the Swedish young adults' attitudes towards offshoring. Young adults are playing an important role in economy as consumers, future workers, innovators, leaders and decision makers. The study investigates the factors that were underlying the formation of attitudes towards offshoring. We focused especially on three factors, namely consumer ethnocentrism, economic threat and quality beliefs. In order to address these issues, a quantitative research approach was applied and primary data were collected. The variables for the online survey were mainly distilled from Durvasula and Lysonski (2009) as well Grappi, Romani and Bagozzi (2013). The gathered data have been analyzed via the software of SPSS by performing correlation tests and analyzing descriptive statistic measures. The results indicated that Swedish young adults had neutral attitudes towards offshoring. We also found that two of the studied factors, consumer ethnocentrism and economic threat, were vital in the formation of the attitudes towards offshoring.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Göteborg University, 2008. / Added title page with thesis statement and English abstract laid in. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Directed by Susan Walcott; submitted to the Dept. of Geography. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Sep. 4, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-78).

Thesis (MTech (Retail Business Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / In an effort to remain competitive and maintain stable sales level and profitability, companies across the world have turned to global sourcing. This was a result of analysing the benefits of globalisation and advancement in technology which enabled this sourcing strategy to become very popular in many industries across the world. This was no different with the shoe retail industry in Cape Town. Shoe retailers have become dependent on international trade as it is synonymous with low costs and affordable shoes. However, despite these benefits, global sourcing is well known for being difficult to implement. For an industry so dependent on international trade, it was imperative to investigate how well shoe retailers have adopted global sourcing. This thesis aimed to investigate the implementation of global sourcing by shoe retailers in Cape Town, Western Province. Global sourcing is categorised into three main stages which include domestic sourcing, international procurement and global sourcing. These were the stages used to categorise the level of global sourcing adaptation by shoe retailers in the province. The challenges and improvements required were also examined and explored. A mixed-methods approach was implemented which involved adopting both quantitative and qualitative research. Eighty survey questionnaires were administered to retail buyers, logistics managers and executive management. This represented the quantitative research category, while twenty in-depth interviews represented the qualitative research phase which were conducted on global sourcing committee members in various shoe retail companies. The research outcomes unveiled that most shoe retailers in Cape Town source domestically through middlemen, known as sourcing intermediaries. The reasons for this included a lack of finance to support the global sourcing activities; the strategy is less risky as compared to global sourcing which is risk prone; a lack of adequate information to effectively execute global sourcing; and some retailers are too small in terms of business activity to fully implement global sourcing. The remaining retailers were split between international procurement and global sourcing. Fluctuation in exchange rates, internal communication problems, bad weather, and communication problems with manufacturers or suppliers were identified as challenges that retailers face. Areas highlighted by retailers which require improvement included internal communication between departments, increase in financial support towards global sourcing and quality control of shoes before shipment to Africa. In conclusion, global sourcing has yet to be fully adopted by most retailers in Cape Town, and sourcing intermediaries, wholesalers or agents are currently imperative for the existence of the shoe industry as they provide services which retailers cannot execute on their own

This thesis focuses on how companies in Sweden should manage the processes of offshore outsourcing IT services to low-cost locations, but also how they should manage the planning and accomplishment to achieve their goals and the expected result in a good way. The thesis states that companies in Sweden need to put a lot of effort into planning and research considering potential location and vendor. Different aspects and phases of the offshoring processes will be stated, discussed and analyzed concerning a fictive company called AbcIT. A visualization of internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats is presented by a SWOT analysis regarding offshore outsourcing of IT-services to India. / Denna uppsats fokuserar på hur företag i Sverige skall gå tillväga när de överväger offshore outsourcing av IT-tjänster till lågkostnadsländer, hur de ska genomföra planeringsarbete och genomförande för att på bästa sätt uppnå både mål och resultat. I uppsatsen konstateras att företag i Sverige behöver lägga stor vikt vid planering och förundersökning av framtida område och affärspartner. Olika faktorer och delar av offshoringprocessen tas upp, diskuteras och analyseras med hjälp av det fiktiva företaget AbcIT. En SWOT-analys visualiserar interna styrkor och svagheter samt externa möjligheter och hot vid offshore outsourcing av IT-tjänster till Indien.