Should you set up your own sales force or should you outsouce it? The standard analysis uses a cost basis to answer this question. It assumes that the direct sales force is largely a fixed cost and that the outsourced sales force is largely a cost that varies with sales. It then calculates the...

This paper discusses the reasons that drive organizations to interrupt outsourcing, reverse their previous decision, and then reintegrate activities formerly delegated to providers. Contractual approaches, mainly derived from Transaction Costs Economics, offer some plausible explanations for...

This paper focuses on the link between the three types of specificity and the complexity of outsourcing contracts because specificity is generally considered as the most important transaction cost attribute. It also integrates external uncertainty in the model. External uncertainty is a...

Despite the fact that vertical integration has been a key question of management studies for more than fifty years, we still do not have a unified, coherent view of outsourcing. In particular, multiple theoretical perspectives such as transaction cost economics, industrial organization, and...

We examine an unusual form of path dependence, in which suppliers that take different decision paths end up in the same position: excessive vertical integration of the personal selling function. We argue that this is the case even though outsourcing is more seriously considered than ever, and...