Outsourcing Under Uncertainty

Author:

Feng, Baichun

Graduate Program:

Industrial Engineering

Degree:

Doctor of Philosophy

Document Type:

Dissertation

Date of Defense:

July 23, 2009

Committee Members:

Tao Yao, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Tao Yao, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Terry Lee Friesz, Committee Member
Bin Jiang, Committee Member
Soundar Rajan Tirupatikumara, Committee Member
Susan Xu, Committee Member

Keywords:

outsourcing
supply chain management

Abstract:

In this dissertation, I conduct three studies on outsourcing in emerging Market under uncertainty. My first study examines a market-based gainsharing outsourcing contract. Specifically I develop an analytical model of how the client, vendor, and spot market interact and co-evolve in a complex and non-linear manner over time under a gainsharing contract. Then starting from an outsourcing contract, my second study focuses on an incentive outsourcing contract for technology adoption under uncertainty, and investigate how the client should promote the vendor to adopt a new technology when the client and vendor are already bounded with an existing outsourcing contract. Finally, taking the vendor’s perspective, my third study develops a new valuation tool for the vendors to avoid the “winner’s curse” based on the real option theory. By modeling these three important and fruitful topics in outsourcing, this dissertation contributes to supply chain management in general and to the outsourcing literature in particular. These three studies also generate many fruitful implications for theory and directions for future research that are suggested.