Taking Engineering Services Offshore - The Scandinavian Experience
Paper in proceeding, 2013

“Offshoring” has become increasing attractive for European engineering consulting firms, either through the use of external resources (outsourcing) or by relocating internal activities (the captive arrangement of foreign direct investment). Consulting companies may experience lack of skilled personnel and or an increasing pressure on costs. Moreover countries like China and India provide highly qualified engineers at a relative low level of remuneration compared with their Western counterparts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the experiences of Scandinavian based consulting engineers concerning offshoring, which often begins with a single project, but early positive results and the production flexibility of many developing countries can quickly lead to a more profound collaboration and even to a strategic transformation of the Scandinavian firm. For its theoretical foundations the paper builds on international business and strategic management approaches. The empirical research uses desk research investigations of companies in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. An exploratory study focuses on a single case supplemented with a preliminary evaluation of the 30 largest consulting engineering companies in Scandinavia.

Scandinavia

international business.

Offshoring: consulting engineers

Author

Christian Koch

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Construction Management

David Bennett

Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Supply and Operations Management

Wu X, Shi Y, Du J and Guo B (Eds) “High Performance Manufacturing - Global Perspective”, Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Global Manufacturing and China, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, UK.

155-159
978-1-902546-18-6 (ISBN)

Subject Categories

Other Engineering and Technologies

Construction Management

Business Administration

Areas of Advance

Production

ISBN

978-1-902546-18-6

More information

Created

10/6/2017