Offshore outsourcing to China: The suppliers' perspective on competitive priorities and the role of buyer-supplier interaction mechanisms

Abstract: In the global business environment, outsourcing and offshore outsourcing are strategies forfirms to handle the increasing competition in their specific market segments by utilizing thecapabilities of other firms in order to gain competitive advantages. China has become animportant player on the global market and is an attractive country for Western firms’offshore outsourcing initiatives. Even though outsourcing and offshore outsourcing havebeen discussed in the literature for a long period of time, firms are still not able to reach andfulfill their strategic goals and many offshore outsourcing projects fail. The purpose of thisthesis is to deepen the existing literature regarding offshore outsourcing to China byconsidering the Chinese suppliers’ perspective on competitive priorities, which are thepriorities that firms organize the production by, in order to understand how the buying firmscan be more successful in the Chinese context and reach their strategic goals.