An investigation into outsourcing on resource dependency perspective

Nowadays, firms tend to produce their products and services under valuable quality and cost in order to sustain their competitive advantages. In this purpose, firms effort to sight many non-core business process and functions via outsourcing. Outsourcing has become an important phenomenon, as firms of each has many different reasons in terms of using outsourcing.The aim of this study is to investigate the outsourcing reasons of the firms in Resource Dependency context. We attempt to address the outsourcing decisions of the firms by synthesising resource dependency theory which suggests that firms are in charge of managing their external environment by using some adaptation strategies. As resource dependence theory addresses interorganizational relationships referring to the resource based relations that comes with uncertainty, dependence and power sub-concepts, we develop a framework in a resource dependeny context to understand whether outsourcing can be defined as an active firm strategy or not.In the first chapter, the concept of resource dependency theory, sub-concepts as uncertainty, dependence, power, and the related strategies can be use to manage firms? external environments have been reviewed. In the second chapter; the outsourcing definitions, the reasons for using outsourcing, advantages and disadvantages of this implication have been reviewed. In the last chapter, the extent of outsourcing decisions examined in the context of resource dependency theory by the research is done among twelve high-ranking textile-apperal industry firms fuctioning in Turkey. Our results indicate that the reasons of outsourcing are a potential evidence of the mentioned reasons in the literature so far. Another finding of this study is, -although the firms do not have the theoretical knowledge of the resource dependence theory and its concepts-, we found that some of the implications are a significant evidence that firms are actively managing their external environment in terms of outsourcing implications.Key Words: Resource Dependence theory, Outsourcing, Turkish Textile- Apparel Industry Firms.