Dynamics of Firm--Supplier Relationships in a Less Developed Economy: Evidence from African Manufacturing Firms‪.‬

1. Introduction There exists a significant literature on issues relating to outsourcing in both economics and business management. (1) This literature emphasizes that organizations have limited senior managerial time and financial resources to invest in maintaining efficient performance. Therefore, organizations should focus their efforts on those activities that can be most effectively managed internally, and outsource activities that can be more effectively managed externally. Thus the focus has been more on considering, in an incomplete framework setup, the means to efficiently organize the productive activities (Hart 1995 provides an overview of the above issues).