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1 Introduction
Outsourcing has been defined by [16] Chase et al. (2004, p. 372) as an "act of moving some of a firm's internal activities and decision responsibilities to outside providers". Outsourcing is a broad phenomenon and it can cover many areas and industries. In the last few years, many papers appeared on the development of outsourcing strategies in various industries, which also show that outsourcing is developing in many industries in the last few years. [2] Abraham and Taylor (1996) provide evidence of rising outsourcing of business services in 13 US industries and [31] Helper (1991) documents the increased outsourcing of parts in the US automobile sector. A survey in 1997 of more than 600 large companies by the American Management Association finds that substantial numbers of companies are now outsourcing in many areas (information systems, finance, accounting, manufacturing, maintenance, and personnel). More than half of the manufacturing companies outsourced (part) of their production process ([13] Bryce and Useem, 1998).
Outsourcing decisions and strategies have been widely investigated and documented in the literature. Based on a survey of more than 1,200 companies, [23] Deavers (1997) identifies five main reasons for outsourcing: improving company focus, accessing world-class capabilities, acceleration of benefits from reengineering, sharing of risk, and freeing of resources for other purposes. In many papers, outsourcing has been mainly motivated by an economical trade-off to allow companies to focus on their core competences ([52] Prahalad and Hamel, 1990). The idea of focusing on core competences has been recognized in the strategy literature as a critical success factor in the long-term survival of a company ([52] Prahalad and Hamel, 1990; [12] Brandes et al. , 1997). Some papers consider the managerial implications of outsourcing, like the loss of control and the focus on core activities ([48] Momme, 2002). Other papers focus on strategic implications ([53] Quinn and Hilmer, 1994), the financial and human resource implications ([44] Lever, 1997) or the outsourcing of logistics functions to service providers ([54] Rabinovich et al. , 1999; [4] Andersson and Norrman, 2002). Besides the motivations and implications of outsourcing, many papers have looked into the benefits of outsourcing ([33] Jiang et al. , 2007) and the risks of outsourcing ([59] Schniederjans and Zuckweiler, 2004).
Although some review papers ([40]...