Technology sourcing: How and why Bang & Olufsen’s capability, identity, and supplier interface change

While the literature on technology sourcing has examined how make-buy decisions influence organisational boundaries, scholars have argued that this analytical scope is too narrow, as it neglects critical issues concerning how technology sourcing relates to organisational capabilities, identity, and supplier interfacing. This study investigates the dynamic interplay between technology sourcing decisions, organisational capabilities, organisational identity, and supplier interfaces to identify how these elements co-evolve over time. Adopting a processual perspective, we conduct a longitudinal study of B&O's sourcing decisions over three decades. Our findings reveal that as the company gradually outsourced an increasing number of critical components of television technology to keep pace with technological change, it experienced mounting tensions in realigning the congruence between organisational identity (who they are) and organisational capabilities (what they do). These realignments manifested as substantive changes to buyer–supplier interfaces (i.e., how they interact). The study contributes insights into the dynamic nature of technology sourcing, demonstrating how it can generate intra-organisational misalignment between capabilities and identity, subsequently forcing adaptations in buyer–supplier interfaces. • Both organisational capabilities and organisational identity influence technology sourcing decisions. • The conjecture between capabilities and identities are reflected in supplier interfaces. • Technology sourcing may lead to temporal intra-organisational misalignment of organisation capabilities and identities.