Research On Vendor Selection In Knowledge Process Outsourcing

Vendor selection is an important process which determines outsourcing success,it‘s also a vital part of outsourcing strategic decision making.Choosing an appropriate vendor will improve project performance.So far research on vendor selection in outsourcing area focus on economical elements,we use mathematical modeling,simulation and other methods,to judge vendor from the perspective of cost,quality,risk,and flexibility.Most of these studies are based on the hypothesis of symmetric information,problems of asymmetric information in the supplier selection is given little attention.Studies have showed that asymmetric information will have a negative effect on resources allocation,corporate decisions and investment capital performance.In practice,KPO outsourcing exists inevitable situation of asymmetric information.Particularly,in recent years,high knowledge-intensive,professional strong,complex knowledge process outsourcing(KPO)has become a new trend of service outsourcing.How to choose KPO vendor under these cases of information asymmetry,became the main issue of concern in this paper.To solve above question,our research combine signal theory and perspective of legitimacy,to explore which elements of the KPO vendor will result in excellent performance,and we use these elements as signals to choose vendor.Using empirical research on 133 offshore KPO vendor located in Dalian,Suzhou and XI‘an,we tested the effects of vendor‘s legitimacy on outsourcing project performance.Also,the moderating effects of task uncertainty and competitive intensity were examined by subsample regression.The empirical results showed:(1)Vendor‘s strategic alliance,number of patents and technical certification are positively related to project performance.(2)when task uncertainty is high,the positive relationship between strategic alliance,number of patents and project performance is strengthened.(3)when competitive intensity is high,the positive relationship between strategic alliance,technical certification and project performance is weakened.