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Outsourcing agrochemical services: economic or strategic logic?

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Abstract

Although the different perspectives of outsourcing—strategic versus economic—are taken into account in this research, our main objective is not to analyze the main reasons underlying this logic or to explain the decision behind outsourcing different activities. Instead, we aim to carry out a thorough analysis of the relationship between the characteristics of different service activities in terms of complexity, from a development point of view and the amount of knowledge firms’ gain from it and the theoretical approach underlying the outsourcing process. In this article, we test this proposal by analyzing the decisions to outsource services in R&D activities in the agrochemical industry.

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Notes

  1. The findings of this study are part of a wider research project which has studied outsourcing activities in Spanish agrochemical firms. For this article, we have only used the information on R&D activities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Valencia, Avda. Tarongers, s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain

    Ana Redondo-Cano & M. Teresa Canet-Giner

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  1. Ana Redondo-Cano
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  2. M. Teresa Canet-Giner
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Correspondence to Ana Redondo-Cano.

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Redondo-Cano, A., Canet-Giner, M.T. Outsourcing agrochemical services: economic or strategic logic?. Serv Bus 4, 237–252 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-009-0089-z

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