Developing a Theoretical Framework for Logistics Outsourcing

Outsourcing has become popular in management literature and practice. The way in which it is implemented, however, differs from one organization to another. This makes our understanding of the concept very difficult because outsourcing means different things to different organizations in different situations. One reason for this confusion may be the lack of established theoretical frameworks for evaluating organizations' decisions and their application and impact on logistics. This article applies multiple social science theoretical perspectives to develop a framework within which logistics outsourcing decisions can be examined and evaluated.