Sourcing practices and boundaries of the firm in the financial services industry
研究了金融服务公司108个后台运营流程的采购决策，发现服务定制化和业务量是两大关键驱动因素，两者都倾向于内部采购。
Abstract We investigate sourcing decisions related to the back‐office operations of 108 processes used by financial services companies. Guided by the arguments of transaction cost economics and the resource‐based and knowledge‐based view of organizations, we hypothesize that service customization and volume represent two key drivers of a service company's sourcing decisions. The inherent uncertainty of service customization gives rise to the transaction cost risks of opportunism and holdups and thus favors insourcing. Moreover, the competency gained from performing high‐volume back‐office operations aligns with the tenets of the resource‐based view, which also favors insourcing. The empirical results corroborate these theoretical expectations. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.