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Companies are increasingly engaged with global engineering networks through offshoring of product development activities from R&D to production. This creates many new challenges as operations get physically and culturally decoupled. The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding of how to effectively manage engineering offshoring activities in a context of global engineering networks. The main research question, therefore, is: “Can offshoring of engineering tasks be explained and managed using the concept of Global Engineering Networks (GEN)?” Effective approaches to handling the associated risks of engineering offshoring will be a key area of the investigation.

The research approach is based on the engineering design research methodology developed by Blessing and Chakrabarti, including a descriptive phase and a prescriptive phase. Four case studies of large multinational corporations in Denmark were carried out. Data gathering was mainly documentary studies and interviews. The main data analysis approaches were coding (Strauss and Corbin) and pattern‐matching (Yin). The dataset was analysed using the GEN framework suggested by Zhang et al. and Zhang and Gregory.

Engineering offshoring presents companies with challenges related to communication and knowledge sharing which is addressed through formal and informal mechanisms as well as a more streamlined operation. However, this did not remove the challenges. The GEN framework suggests a systematic approach to understanding global engineering networks through investigating their contextual features, critical capabilities to compete in a particular contextual circumstance, and configuration characteristics to deliver the capabilities. Using the GEN framework, the challenges faced by companies and the risks associated with their engineering offshoring activities can be explained as a mismatch between the required capabilities and the companies' ability to deliver these capabilities.

This paper provides new theoretical insight into both engineering offshoring and GEN theories by extending the GEN framework to address complications within engineering offshoring. This strengthens both academic fields, and will be able to help engineering managers to develop appropriate engineering network configurations for offshore engineering operations.

Is the rise of the Indian software industry simply another Asian state-dominated industrial growth story or is India distinctive, an economy where small technology entrepreneurs also find niches for development and can be drivers of innovation? Research has focused on the large integrated Indian and international service providers. This study examines the opportunity for growth among smaller innovative technology entrepreneurial firms. Two areas of inquiry are: What factors have been responsible for spurring growth in the Indian IT industry? What type of work is being carried out at Indian firms and is this profile changing? This paper aims to examine the emergence of technology entrepreneurs, particularly in terms of their links to multinational firms and their role and position in global value chains. The paper takes a multi-level approach to understanding development trajectories in the IT sector in India: a global value chain approach to the extent that company processes are seen in their larger networked context across organizations and an institutional approach in terms of state policies that influence the creation of infrastructure that, in turn, shapes organizational development trajectories. Additionally, it examines the role of the various actors within IT sector organizations – the workers, the managers and, in the case of the small companies in our sample, the owners – on the outcome of growth trajectories in the Indian IT sector. We find that the various levels of change and policy all contribute to the outcome in company trajectories: the dominance of multinational enterprises on the market, the entrepreneurial vision and survival strategies of returned technology expatriates, and the changing policies of the government in promoting indigenous business.

Qualitative research interviews; comparative case study; literature review; multi-tier analysis.

The technology entrepreneurial development in India appears to represent quite a distinctive path in terms of both firm development and broader economic development. It is focused on the IT sector, in which high skill “knowledge work” is carried out and which has been able to develop despite lack of basic infrastructure (roads and reliable electricity).

After the opening up of the business environment to large Western multinational enterprises (MNEs), it was difficult for indigenous Indian entrepreneurs to compete in innovative product development markets. Developing such companies depended on individual risk taking, as no specific infrastructure existed for niche production. However, the knowledge base and innovation clusters did offer opportunities for obtaining contracts. The Indian entrepreneurs did have to make a lot of compromises about defining their business and the tasks they could undertake. More research is needed on the paths and development opportunities for these smaller Indian-owned firms.

Unique opportunities are emergent and defy easy policy prescriptions, other than precluding change that does not foreclose emergent possibilities (e.g. such as strong state controlled business development).

Indian-owned innovative companies, although having difficulties competing with large Indian and Western MNEs, do put pressure on these MNEs to move work up the value chain, thereby providing more interesting and challenging opportunities for Indian knowledge workers.

This paper provides a unique company-level perspective about entrepreneurialism in the Indian software sector from the perspective of different actors in the process. It then links this company-level perspective to a larger context both in terms of trajectories of development at the macro level, as well as the role that the company’s place in multinational value chains has in its development perspectives. It gives a special insight into the motivations and obstacles facing entrepreneurs in India’s dynamic software sector.

The construction industry faces three emergent developments that in all likelihood will transform the industry into the future. First, engineering project networks (EPNs), in which teams collaborate on projects remotely in time and space, are transforming global construction practices. Second, as a major consumer of resources and significant producer of green-house gases, construction is under pressure to reduce its carbon footprint. Third, the construction industry presents as one of the least socially sustainable work environments, with high job dissatisfaction, skewed work–life balance and over representation of depressive and mental disorders. It is incumbent on the industry to reconcile these issues. Specifically, what scope is there to shape the evolution of EPNs towards a configuration that both promotes sustainability generally, and enhances quality of work-life issues, while at the same time continuing to apprehend the economic dividends for which it is adopted? As salient as this question is, it has not been broached in the literature. Therefore, this study aims to survey the extent to which EPNs align with the sustainability agenda, more broadly, and that of employee work-place satisfaction, more specifically.

A literature review of current knowledge of these concerns is explored and a summative assessment presented.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, as the first in its kind, the study brings to light that EPNs go a long way towards facilitating economic objectives, part way towards realising ecological and sociological objectives but make hardly any impact on improving employee work satisfaction.

This paper examines an entirely novel area that has not been studied yet. Future research should take up this finding to determine how EPNs may be further adapted to accommodate these wider necessary objectives.

This paper seeks to explore the processes by which the offshoring of technology development to India and China by Western and Japanese multinationals has evolved from the localization/simplification of technology for local markets to the development of advanced technology in India and China for global markets.

Case studies were developed based on 190 interviews conducted in China, India and several other countries. Respondents included multinational home country and offshore managers, as well as local entrepreneurs.

Rather than following carefully thought out corporate strategies, the offshoring of technology development by multinationals is more often incremental and driven by the ambitions and expectations of Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs and managers. Meanwhile “technology competition” policies proposed in the USA and elsewhere are not taking sufficient account of the processes by which technology development is being offshored.

Techno‐nationalistic policies designed to allow one country to win a race with others in developing and monopolizing new technologies are increasingly dysfunctional. The identification of multinationals with “home countries” continues to weaken. At the same time, technologies and technology workers are more mobile than ever before. Better policies would allow nations to seek mutual benefit through today's more globally dispersed technology development capabilities. Multinational managers in our study were not sufficiently accounting for the costs of offshoring and outsourcing technology, nor were they giving much thought to the longer term implications of their diminishing capabilities to develop or even control the development technology. More thought should be given to what aspects of technology constitute “core competencies” and which provide sustainable competitive advantage in the emerging global environment.

The author's research using published internal reports and news reports suggests that some of Boeing problems with its innovative 787 Dreamliner aircraft are symptoms of a deeper calamity that has been causing US industry to waste away for decades: flawed offshoring decisions by the C‐suite. This paper aims to address this issue.

The paper defines seven lessons about the risks of outsourcing that executives need to learn from observing the problems Boeing is having with the 787 plane.

The paper finds that in analyzing offshoring, firms must get beyond rudimentary cost calculations focused on short‐term profit and consider the total cost and risk of extended international supply chains.

In contrast to Boeing's practices, what Apple has done has worked amazingly well, because they have the capability to do the perfect prototype in the USA, before it gets offshored to Foxconn.

In addition to highlighting the risk of attempting to offshore technological innovation, the paper offers a vision for the future. Success in this new world of manufacturing will require a radically different kind of management. It will require a different goal (adding value for customers), a different role for managers (enabling self‐organizing teams), a different way of coordinating work (dynamic linking), different values (continuous improvement and radical transparency) and different communications (horizontal conversations).

This paper aims to offer a long-term systematic picture of the evolution of manufacturing offshoring (in terms of intensity, geography and drivers) highlighting the changes in the surrounding context and the resulting transitions points (“points in time”) that have shaped its development path.

Three statistical tools were adopted on a dataset of 644 cases. First, the authors resorted to multiple structural change tests to identify the transition points. Second, the authors explored offshoring geography by conducting a network analysis. Finally, the authors adopted gravity models to shed light on offshoring drivers.

Results highlight three offshoring phases: expansion (2002–2006), reconsideration (2007–2009) and rationalization (2010 onwards). During the first phase, characterized by economic growth, firms were mainly interested in economic savings; offshoring to low-cost countries was the prevailing location strategy. Subsequently, during the economic crisis, the number of cases declined and the main drivers became market-based factors together with the research for cost savings. Finally, in the third phase, when the economy was still stagnating and new manufacturing technologies appeared, the number of offshoring cases has further decreased, and technological- and market-based factors have become the main location drivers.

The study is the first to adopt a systematic, empirical and quantitative approach to analyze the evolution of the manufacturing offshoring considering both the phenomenon itself and the triggering changes in the surrounding context. In doing this, the authors also tested the importance of considering the point in time in offshoring strategies.

A service production system has a structure composed of task execution, agents performing tasks and a resulting service output. The purpose of this paper is to understand how such a service production system changes as a consequence of offshoring.

Drawing on practice theory, the paper investigates how offshoring leads to reconfiguration of the service production system. Through a multiple case methodology, the authors demonstrate how agents and structures interact during reconfiguration.

The paper analyses the reconfiguration of components of a service production system in response to change ignited by offshoring. The authors find recurring effects between structures that enable and constrain agents and agents who shape the structure of the production system.

The paper offers a novel contribution to the service operations management literature by applying practice theory. Moreover, the authors propose a detailed, activity-driven view of service production systems and service offshoring. The authors contribute to practice theory by extending its domain to operations management.

Service production systems have the ability to self-correct any changes inflicted through offshoring of the systems, which helps firms that offshore.

The paper is aimed at service professionals and offshoring managers and proposes a novel presentation of the service production system with a description of how it responds to offshoring. The authors contribute to theory by applying practice theory to the fields of service operations management and offshoring.

This paper aims to investigate the application of unsupervised machine learning in the international location decision (ILD). This paper addresses the need for a fast, quantitative and dynamic location decision framework.

Unsupervised machine learning technique, i.e. k-means clustering, is used to carry out the analysis. In total, 24 different indicators of 94 countries, categorized into five groups, have been used in the analysis. After the clustering, the clusters have been compared and scored to select the feasible countries.

A new framework is developed based on k-means clustering that can be used in ILD. This method provides a quantitative output without personal subjectivity. The indicators can be easily added or extracted based on the preferences of the decision-makers. Hence, it was found out that the unsupervised machine learning, i.e. k-means clustering, is a fast and flexible decision support framework that can be used in ILD.

Limitations include the generality of selected indicators and clustering algorithm used. The use of other methods and parameters may lead to alternate results.

The framework developed through the research intends to assist the decision-makers in deciding on the facility locations. The framework can be used in international and national domains. It provides a quantitative, fast and flexible way to shortlist the potential locations. Other methods can also be used to further decide on the specific location.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the value of decolonial approaches (DAs) such as epistemic locus (Mignolo, 1995, 2000) in studying innovation.

This paper is based on a case study of a stem cell surgical innovation developed in India. A critical hermeneutic analysis method has been followed for data analysis.

Epistemic locus influences the framing of the problem, perceptions of risks/opportunities as well as the envisioning of alternate institutional systems. Persistent and strategic effort at building connections changes local improvisation into a globally legitimate innovation.

It indicates the value of using DAs for innovation studies especially epistemic locus, enactment and connections in understanding knowledge generation and innovation.

Innovation in Global South can be encouraged by giving more space to the innovator to attempt or experiment. More conscious conversation of epistemic locus of the researcher could help.

Countries have to move beyond a mere technological imitation to include discussions on epistemic imitation. Epistemic imitation prevents one from seeing what one has and one only looks at conditions from the eyes of the dominator.

This study documents the development of an innovation from an Indian epistemic locus which differs from a western epistemic locus and the impact this has on an innovation.

To determine the views of a distinguished member of the engineering community about the state of engineering R&D in the UK and how the various issues are being addressed.

The paper is based on an interview with Philip Ruffles CBE, Main Board Director for Engineering and Technology for Rolls Royce, until his retirement in 2001.

Traces the origins of today's problems to rapid and uncontrolled cost‐cutting and change in the 1980s and 1990s, which opened up gaps in R&D. Also looks at some positive developments such as a greater focus on customers' needs, the fostering of relationships between industry and academia, university spin‐outs and development of science and technology parks. Recognizes recent government initiatives and suggests that continuing economic development should encourage industry to invest and adopt a longer‐term approach.

Outlines some of the concerns expressed as to the state of engineering R&D in the UK.