Petra Edoff, Project Manager (external)
Petra is a PhD student in Innovation and design. She studied the Innovation management (IMTO) program in Eskilstuna, and Bangkok, Thailand. She received a B.Sc. in Occupational Psychology in 2007, and a M.Sc. in Innovation Managment in 2008. Current reseach involves exploring what capabilities companies need to develop to efficiently manage global research, development and engineering. Large multinationals must continually innovate to produce products and services that meet the needs of a global market. In order to distribute work across multiple sites, they use techniques such as offshoring and outsourcing. This requires them to address organizational and cultural aspects to coordinate distributed product development activities. While these techniques have received great interest in business as well as research in recent years, as the latest trend is to send increasingly complex functions such as research, development and engineering (RD&E) overseas. When offshoring involves high value functions, the transitions occur rapidly, and the associated risks and costs of failing increase. In addition to the hidden costs of offshoring and outsourcing, there is a risk of losing core competences over time or spillovers of critical knowledge to competitors in the new market. Despite the criticality of succeeding with their offshoring efforts, little is known considering of how companies handle the process of distributing work globally, and the capabilities they develop to manage offshoring efficiently. The objective of this thesis is to explore the routines and capabilities that organizations´ need to develop to make offshoring an integral part of the management global RD&E. Case studies are combined with surveys and business review data to create firm specific theories which can inform both the theory and practice of managing offshoring. the cases form the base of an organizational capabilities framework for managing all stages in the offshoring process (decision, transfer, operations and governance stage). Four key capabilities were found to support the management of offshoring, namely; technological skills, process & tools, relationship management and knowledge management. Current research investigates the emergence of offshoring strategies, the interpretation of these strategies on different levels of the firm and the ways companies secure organizational knowledge during global restructuring.
Managing offshoring of complex products: Strategy and capabilities (Apr 2014) Petra Edoff
Uncovering paradoxes in managing globally distributed product development – A multiple case study (Oct 2013) Petra Edoff, Jayakanth Srinivasan International Journal of Case study method, Research and Application (IJCRA XXV/3)
The Middle Management of Offshoring (Jan 2013) Petra Edoff Advances in global sourcing: Models, Governance, and Relationships (LBIP A)
UNCOVERING THE PARADOXES OF MANAGING GLOBALLY DISTRIBUTED DEVELOPMENT – A CASE STUDY APPROACH (Jun 2012) Petra Edoff, Jayakanth Srinivasan 29TH INTERNATIONAL WACRA CONFERENCE
Offshoring of complex products – a process approach (May 2012) Petra Edoff, Jayakanth Srinivasan Offshoring Research Network International Conference 2012
Managing offshore development (Jan 2012) Petra Edoff, Christer Norström, Ylva Boivie Perspectives on supplier innovation: theories, concepts and empirical insights on open innovation and the integration of suppliers (STM 18)