Does interfirm modularity complement ignorance? A field study of software outsourcing alliances
研究了知识密集型外包联盟中，增加企业间模块化能否降低知识共享需求，从而补充外包方的无知。基于209个美国公司与俄罗斯、爱尔兰、印度软件服务公司的联盟数据，结果支持这一观点。
Abstract Knowledge‐intensive outsourcing alliances present outsourcers with a tension between simultaneously sharing enough private knowledge to accomplish alliance goals and safeguarding such knowledge against misappropriation. This study explores the perspective that increasing interfirm modularity lowers the need for interfirm knowledge sharing. Put another way, modularity complements outsourcee ignorance. Analyses of data on 209 alliances between U.S. firms and software services firms in Russia, Ireland, and India provide strong support for this idea. Our theoretical elaboration and empirical testing of the complementarities between modularity and outsourcee ignorance has significant implications for strategy theory, which are also discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.