Outsourcing, Foreign Ownership, and Productivity: Evidence from UK Establishment‐level Data

Abstract

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Non-union worker representation, foreign owners, and the performance of establishments

“…Bernard and Sjoeholm (2003) obtain a similar result for Indonesia. Girma and Goerg (2004) find for the UK that foreign owned firms have higher levels of outsourcing. Relatedly, Scheve and Slaughter (2004) show for the UK that foreign ownership is associated with individual perceptions of economic insecurity.…”

How does investing in cheap labour countries affect performance at home? Firm-level evidence from France and Italy

“…Consequently, our outcome is not a binary indicator, and we face a multiple treatment problem (Lechner, 2001). We address this issue by estimating a multinomial logit and computing propensity scores for each of the three possible outcomes: not switching (denoted as outcome=0), investing in LDC (outcome=1), 5 This methodology has already been used in international economics to evaluate the effects of exporting and of acquisitions on firms' performance and returns to scale by Wagner (2002), , Girma and Görg (2004), Arnold and Javorcik (2005), Arnold and Hussinger (2005), and Girma et al (2007) and in the context of the relation between FDI and firms' performance, employment and R&D by Barba Navaretti and Castellani (2003), Egger and Pfaffermayr (2003), Debaere et al (2006), and Hijzen et al (2006). 6 Admittedly, this model would include other modes of internationalisation, such as export and contractual modes of international production (such as licensing, outsourcing, and joint ventures), which we will not be able to control for in our empirical analysis.…”

The Impact of Business Process Outsourcing on Firm Performance and the Influence of Governance: A Long Term Study in the German Banking Industry

“…Further, respondents answers in surveys may be self-justifying (Ang et al, 1998). Previous studies analyzing either firm level determinants or financial impact of outsourcing employ several measures for profitability (D'Aveni et al, 1994;Görg et al, 2004;Görzig et al, 2002;Hall et al, 2005;Jiang et al, 2006;Smith et al, 1998), cost efficiency (D'Aveni et al, 1994Hall et al, 2005;Jiang et al, 2006;Smith et al, 1998), and factor or labour productivity (Girma et al, 2004;Görzig et al, 2002;Jiang et al, 2006). Some authors also use different financial measures like financial slack, free cash flow or growth rates to explain the firm level consequences of outsourcing.…”

“…Distinguishing service outsourcing and material outsourcing, they find that only large plants profit from material outsourcing while they can derive no clear-cut results for service outsourcing. Girma and Görg (2004) study the determinants for outsourcing as well as the impact of outsourcing on firm productivity using panel data from UK firms in the manufacturing industry between 1980 and 1992. They use the value of industrial services received over total labor costs of the firms as a proxy for outsourcing intensity.…”