Kraiwinee Bunyaratavej

Conceptual Issues in Services Offshoring Research: A Multidisciplinary Review

Offshoring has emerged as an important economic and social phenomenon that has generated intense interest from practitioners, the popular media, and policy makers. In addition, there is a nascent but rich research literature on offshoring developing in management, international business (IB), and related fields. In this review, we survey and integrate offshoring literature from several disciplines and draw implications of this review for management and IB research. We conclude that offshoring may challenge some aspects of established management and IB theory or require revision and/ or modification of those theories. We adopt a multilevel coevolutionary perspective as one potential integrative approach to offshoring research and identify important future areas for further enrichment of this emerging area.

Convergence and Its Implications for a Common Currency in ASEAN

The successful introduction of the euro brings renewed interest to the topic of whether similar approaches might be successfully implemented in other regions. One region that may be a promising candidate for this process is Southeast Asia, comprising the ASEAN member countries. These nations have long seen the value of co-operation in order to promote peace, stability, and economic growth. Nonetheless, important differences between the euro area and the ASEAN zone suggest that a wholesale importation of the European approach may be inopportune at the moment. The issues are examined by using economic convergence modelling perspectives. In general, the findings clearly suggest that further work remains before ASEAN will be able to fully benefit from having a single currency area.

Are the pacific island countries ready for a single currency

The introduction of the euro in 1999 has led to many initiatives and inquiries in other regions regarding the merits and prospects of currency unions. One of the regions where a currency union has been of interest is the Pacific island countries along with Australia and New Zealand. This paper investigates the degree of economic convergence among these countries and maps out the movement of regional currencies with the core currency, the Australian dollar. Overall, we found the economies in this region show a trend toward divergence. While most currencies closely moved with the Australian dollar, the evidence suggests such a currency union may be premature at this time.

Offshoring of Services from Developing Countries: The New Wave of Emerging Offshorers

Offshore outsourcing of services accelerated at the end of 1990s in developed countries. Recently developing countries have also increasingly offshored services, not only to developed countries but also to other developing countries. Yet, to date little attention has been paid to the emergence of this reverse offshoring. This paper examines the determinants of offshoring of services from developing countries; as such the authors investigate what location factors drive these firms from developing countries to offshore services. Using data on service offshoring projects during 2001-2007 originating from developing countries, the authors found that the determinants of offshoring of services from developing countries followed similar patterns of conventional offshoring yet for different reasons. In addition, the authors also found that services offshoring from developing countries in some sectors appeared to occur because of the desire to be closer to customers.