Publication

The attention stimulus of cultural differences in global services sourcing

Peeters, Carine
Dehon, Catherine
Garcia-Prieto, Patricia
Citations
Altmetric:
Publication Type
Journal article with impact factor
Editor
Supervisor
Publication Year
2015
Journal
Journal of International Business Studies
Book
Publication Volume
46
Publication Issue
2
Publication Begin page
241
Publication End page
251
Publication Number of pages
Collections
Abstract
Contrasting with extant research centred on the organizational challenges of sourcing services in culturally distant countries, we show that cultural differences between home and host countries do not prevent firms from achieving their cost savings targets. Instead, the effect is positive, both for the captive and outsourcing governance models. Using insight from social psychology research and the theory of organizations, we build the argument that the positive effect is due to cultural differences providing an attention stimulus for decision-makers to thoroughly gather and process information on the costs and benefits of global sourcing, thereby reducing the risk of cost estimation errors. The empirical validation uses a data set of 624 global services sourcing initiatives obtained from the Offshoring Research Network, complemented with multiple external sources of cross-country data on cultural differences, languages, geographic distance and education levels. The main contribution of the article is to add much needed nuance to the otherwise monotonic negative view of cultural differences in extant global sourcing literature. Moreover, the original theoretical framework and resulting attention stimulus argument we develop open new avenues for research on the consequences of cultural differences in international business operations more broadly.
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Cultural Differences, Global Sourcing, Attention Stimulus, Cost Estimations, Survey Method, Econometrics
Citation
Knowledge Domain/Industry
Other links
Embedded videos