Technology sourcing: How and why Bang & Olufsen’s capability, identity, and supplier interface change
研究B&O公司三十年间技术采购决策如何与组织能力、身份和供应商界面共同演变，揭示外包关键组件引发的内部不匹配及界面调整。
While the literature on technology sourcing has examined how make-buy decisions influence organisational boundaries, scholars have argued that this analytical scope is too narrow, as it neglects critical issues concerning how technology sourcing relates to organisational capabilities, identity, and supplier interfacing. This study investigates the dynamic interplay between technology sourcing decisions, organisational capabilities, organisational identity, and supplier interfaces to identify how these elements co-evolve over time. Adopting a processual perspective, we conduct a longitudinal study of B&O's sourcing decisions over three decades. Our findings reveal that as the company gradually outsourced an increasing number of critical components of television technology to keep pace with technological change, it experienced mounting tensions in realigning the congruence between organisational identity (who they are) and organisational capabilities (what they do). These realignments manifested as substantive changes to buyer–supplier interfaces (i.e., how they interact). The study contributes insights into the dynamic nature of technology sourcing, demonstrating how it can generate intra-organisational misalignment between capabilities and identity, subsequently forcing adaptations in buyer–supplier interfaces.