Task attributes and process integration in business process offshoring: A perspective of service providers from India and China

Yadong Luo, Stephanie Lu Wang, Qinqin Zheng and Vaidyanathan Jayaraman
Additional contact information
Yadong Luo: 1] Department of Management, School of Business Administration, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA[2] Sun Yat-Sen Business School, Sun-Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China
Stephanie Lu Wang: Department of Management, School of Business Administration, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA
Qinqin Zheng: Department of Management, School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Vaidyanathan Jayaraman: Department of Management, School of Business Administration, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA

Journal of International Business Studies, 2012, vol. 43, issue 5, 498-524

Abstract: This study addresses an important issue in designing and managing business process offshoring (BPO): process integration between an offshore service provider and its global BPO client. We applied the information-processing lens in global BPO and developed the logic that internationally disaggregated process integration requires a fit between process integration and BPO's task characteristics (i.e., task complexity and security) and task interdependence (task connectivity, stickiness, and dependency). This alignment is further moderated by the task context, such as the geographic dispersion of the global client's end-customers and the type of offshore provider (independent vendor vs captive and joint venture). Finally, we suggest that process integration has a positive but curvilinear relationship with the economic returns achieved by offshore providers. Our analysis of 308 BPO companies in India and China supports our propositions. We conclude that international managers monitoring and integrating globally disaggregated activities in BPO should establish a proper alignment with the BPO project's task traits and task interdependence, and look closely at the conditioning effect of external complexity. By redressing the paucity of research on governing global BPO, this study offers some insights into the integration–externalization dynamics for growing business/knowledge process offshoring.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jibs/journal/v43/n5/pdf/jibs20128a.pdf Link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jibs/journal/v43/n5/full/jibs20128a.html Link to full text HTML (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jintbs:v:43:y:2012:i:5:p:498-524

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/41267/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Business Studies is currently edited by John Cantwell

More articles in Journal of International Business Studies from Palgrave Macmillan, Academy of International Business
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().