制造企业服务外包【外文翻译】

外文翻译原文Business services outsourcing by manufacturing firmsMaterial Source:/upload/2009/02/12/1234402015734_186015.pdfAuthor: Fernando Merino and Diego Rodriguez RodriguezOutsourcing of services is one of the most important phenomena that are reshaping firms’ boundaries in the last decades. This article assesses the reasons leading manufacturing firms to contract out some service activities instead of providing them internally. The theoretical framework, inspired in transaction cost economics, emphasizes the effects that firm heterogeneity and service-specific decisions have on the decision to outsource. Our empirical analysis, using Spanish firm data, suggests the relevance of nonlineal effects related to firm size, wage differentials and location, among other factors, with clear differences among groups of services.1. IntroductionThe increasing implementation of outsourcing strategies is one of the most remarkable changes that has characterized firm behavior in the last decades. This strategy allows firms to concentrate their capabilities and resources in their respective core businesses, giving up those activities where firms do not have any competitive advantage to incorporate to their value-added chain. Consequently, management, execution, and development of innovations in outsourced activities become the responsibility of an agent external to the firm.The study of the reasons for outsourcing and their effects both on firms and economy-wide activity has become an important topic of analysis. From the firm’s perspective, outsourcing strategies are part of the reorganization process that has characterized its behavior in the last two decades. It fits in the set of downsizing strategies and the diversification decrease that many firms have adopted (Jovanovic, 1993). Firms have carried out a vertical disintegration process in manymanufacturing activities, with an increasing use of sub-contractors of components (contract manufacturing). Additionally, its extension to offshore suppliers has opened a hot debate in many countries due to its effects on key elements such as domestic employment (Braconier and Ekholm, 2000 and Egger and Egger, 2003), wage inequality (Feenstra and Hanson, 1996), pattern of trade (Hummels et al., 2001), and firm dependence on foreign providers, among others. Though there are differences among authors about the meaning of outsourcing, ranging from the exclusively procuring of goods and services from a foreign located provider to arm’s-length trade, throughout this article we mean the process by which in-house provided activities are replaced by the provision from external agents.This article studies the reasons that lead firms to outsource part of their intermediate production and, specifically, outsourcing of business services. That decision is usually analyzed as a “make or buy” dilemma. Following the initial contribution by Ronald Coase, seventy years ago, two opposite forces come into play. On the one hand, market imperfections, such as measurement problems and difficulties to control the collaboration between the customer and the provider, increase complexity in arm’s-length contracts and favor the “make” option. This is probably more evident in the case of service provision, whose intangible character hinders the comparability of output and prices and reduces market transparency. Additionally, asymmetric information generates adverse selection and moral hazard problems, emphasizing the role played by reputation (De Bandt, 1996). On the other hand, there are other arguments that favor the “buy” option. Among them, cost reduction is very commonly considered one of the main reasons to justify outsourcing strategies. Besides, specialized providers can be more efficient than vertically integrated firms not only for scale economies but, also, due to other efficiency advantages as those related to knowledge or flexibility.2. Theoretical framework2.1 An industry-based viewSince, the early work of Ronald Coase on the nature of the firm, the reasons why different activities are embedded in a single organization instead of being developed by separate agents coordinated through market-based arrangements have been a main topic on economic research. It can be said that transaction cost economics underlies most of the approaches to justify a single organization developing different activities. With this background, Grossman and Helpman (2002) (GH hereinafter) develop a framework for the analysis of the industrial structurewhere vertical integration or outsourcing emerges as equilibrium. The well-known trade-off between costs related to in-house provision and arm’s-length contracts that transaction cost economics emphasizes underlies the GH model. On the one hand, vertical integration faces the costs of managing a larger and nonspecialized organization. Consequently, specializedproducers have cost advantages for the production of inputs with respect to integrated firms. On the other hand, a firm that chooses to outsource faces costs related to the search for a potential provider and, also, costs derived from incomplete contracting and hold-up problems. These costs favor the vertical integration alternative. In this framework, the industry organization will be the result of a process with five consecutive stages: entry (which requires incurring some fixed costs), search for a partner (with additional fixed costs), production of the intermediate good, bargaining and, finally, production of final goods.The GH model suggests two main characteristics related to the probability of observing a vertically disintegrated industry that are useful for empirical analysis: the matching process and the degree of product differentiation. The first one emerges because users and providers match randomly (in the second stage) and the probability of matching (i.e., finding a firm to buy/sell) increases with the number of firms on the other side. In this context, the expected profits for outsourcing depend positively on the matching probability that is determined in the industry equilibrium. In that sense, note that introducing the matching process avoids treating the industry environment as given. The interdependence among the decisions facing the firms in an industry emerges as a result of the fact that individual choices on the vertical structure affect the entry of potential suppliers and, therefore, the attractiveness of outsourcing. In fact, McLaren (2000) pointed out a similar, though not identical, argument with regard to the interdependence of firms’decisions.In summary, the industry equilibrium of the GH model points out the relevance of two variables not explicitly linked to the specific transaction, such as the number of providers and the degree of competition in the industry. However, while the former positively affects the probability of outsourcing, the effect of higher competition on final goods markets is not straightforward. It depends on the balance between cost advantages and diseconomies of scope for specialized and integrated firms. We may remember that they were remarked by Levy (1984), when he discussed the Stigler hypothesis on the effect of the extent of the market on vertical integration. This question has also been analyzed by Wilder and Tucker (1984) and,more recently, by Elberfeld (2002).2.2 The effects of firm-related characteristicsA general result of the GH model is that mixed In summary, the industry equilibrium of the GH model points out the relevance of two variables not explicitly linked to the specific transaction, such as the number of providers and the degree of competition in the industry. However, while the former positively affects the probability of outsourcing, the effect of higher competition on final goods markets is not straightforward. It depends on the balance between cost advantages and diseconomies of scope for specialized and integrated firms. We may remember that they were remarked by Levy (1984), when he discussed the Stigler hypothesis on the effect of the extent of the market on vertical integration. This question has also been analyzed by Wilder and Tucker (1984) and, more recently, by Elberfeld (2002).In the GH model, the relevant comparison lies in the cost ratio between integrated and specialized firms. The rationale is that the larger the difference, the more probable is outsourcing as equilibrium. In fact, this is the main force driving outsourcing in the model. This conclusion is in keeping with empirical evidence, because cost saving is usually the first reason cited to explain the increase of outsourcing decisions by firms. It is exemplified by reductions in the payroll and it is based on the presumption that external firms (i.e., service providers) pay lower wages than users. Given that service activities are usually labor-intensive, reductions in wages and corresponding benefit packages become the main point of attention in this decision. From this point of view, outsourcing allows firms to take advantage of differences in wages across activities that cannot be set internally. This will be more relevant when wages are set in centralized collective bargaining,6 because in this case least-skilled jobs will be over-paid as their wages are pegged to the ones in the whole firm.3. Data and descriptive analysisThe empirical analysis uses the panel of firms included in the Encuesta Sobre Estrategias Empresariales, ESEE (Survey on Business Strategies) of the Spanish Ministry of Industry. This survey contains annual data for a representative sample of about 1800 firms located in Spain across the different manufacturing industries in the year 1998. The questionnaire covers a wide range of issues, among them the services used by firms and their degree of externalization, which can take three states: provided in-house, contracted out partially or fully.Analysis of outsourcing decisions only makes sense for those serviceseffectively used by firms. As can be seen in Table 1, the set of business services to be analyzed is formed by 12 very commonly used activities. In particular, the most frequently used services in firms with 200 or less employees are tax-related advising, administrative tasks, and cleaning. They can be considered as “supportive activities”because they are basic for almost any production process. Additionally, it seems that services are more commonly used by large firms than by small-medium size firms. In order to provide an insight of the difference related to firm size, we have computed the average number of services for each size-class. The obtained values show small differences: 10.2 for small and medium firms and 11.7 for large firms. Table 1 also shows how firms using those services obtain them. As can be seen, outsourcing is very often the chosen option. Note, for example, that more than 80% of those firms using services such as legal and tax-related advising, couriers, or vigilance externalize them, whether fully or partially. A general pattern about the kind of services contracted out seems to emerge. Those services linked to the most sensitive areas of the firm (such as recruitment services, administrative tasks, and training staff) are contracted out less frequently. This result might be coherent with a learning process in which firms start to contract out those services beyond their core activities.Table 2 shows the results for every manufacturing sector with a two-digit basis classification and distinguishing firms’ size. On the one hand, small differences are found between large and small-medium firms when the complete set of services is considered. The statistical test of equality of means between both size classes shows that there are not significant differences in most of the sectors. On the other hand, there are some differences across sectors. With the exception of basic metal products, industries below the average are those that are more labor intensive (food and tobacco, textiles and clothing, leather, fur, and footwear). However, inter-industry heterogeneity is not very relevant. In fact, the null hypothesis of nonstatistical differences among industry averages is not rejected among large firms.4. Concluding remarksOutsourcing has become one of the main characteristics of firm behavior worldwide since the 1990s. It implies a redefinition of the firm’s boundaries and plays a key role in the adaptation to a changing global economy in which increasing competition obliges firms to search for any possibility to be more efficient and flexible. This article analyses the outsourcing decisions of business services by Spanish manufacturers. As in other countries, business services are currently one ofthe most dynamic industries in the Spanish economy and its weight is close to the EU average. Though the analysis does not incorporate the location of service providers, it may help to better understand the forces driving international service outsourcing, a strategy that is currently in its first stages.This article analyses outsourcing decisions for a large set of business services. Although outsourcing activities are frequently considered as a single decision, this article maintains that the effect of some explanatory variables may differ according to the kind of service under consideration. It should be borne in mind that services are a very heterogeneous group of activities. They cover from activities such as legal or economic advising, which require a highly skilled and updated staff where geographical distance is relatively unimportant, to others such as cleaning or couriers, characterized by a low skilled workforce where proximity accounts for a large part of costs. Given that the same samples of firms and explanatory variables are used in the empirical analysis, this article allows us to compare results among different business services in a homogeneous context.The econometric analysis has shown the importance of wages in the decision to outsource. User firms that pay a wage premium tend to externalize services intensive in low-skilled activities. This premium seems to move the make-or-buy dilemma in the opposite direction for services such as legal economic and financial advisory, which are closer to the core activities and usually require a more skilled workforce. Therefore, results allow us to conclude that the wage formation mechanism is a relevant characteristic for the firm’s outsourcing decisions.We believe that some lines for future research could be fruitful. The first one is to pay more attention to the geographical dimension of service activities. While the GH model underlines the importance of matching probability, the influence of the distance between the user and potential providers may differ greatly across services. The second is to consider the decision process from a dynamic perspective. In fact, it could be considered that outsourcing strategies are not simultaneously initiated by firms, but they might follow a strategic pattern. Consequently, firms start to externalize as a way to reduce costs. But as firms assimilate externally provided services, managers consider outsourcing from a strategic perspective, devoting more resources to their core activities and contracting out the rest of them. In that way, firms would start with the externalization strategy with supportive activities, and then advance towards other more sensitive activities, incorporating the expertise gained from first experiences. Finally, alternative datasets might provide moreclear-cut evidence on some aspects that the database used in this article measures with difficulties, such as the effect of desired flexibility on firms’ incentive to outsource.译文制造企业服务外包资料来源：/upload/2009/02/12/ 1234402015734_186015.pdf作者：费尔南多·梅里诺，迭戈·罗德里格斯罗德里格斯在过去的十年中，服务外包最重要的现象之一是企业重塑。