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Prioritization of Strategic Intangible Assets in Make/Buy Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Franco Maria Battagello

    (Department of Business Engineering, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, 00133 Rome, Italy)

  • Livio Cricelli

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples “Federico II”, 80125 Naples, Italy)

  • Michele Grimaldi

    (Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, 03043 Cassino, Italy)

Abstract

Every company, in a knowledge-based economy and, in a sustainability-aware era, is “doomed” to deal with a critical mass of strategic assets, in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Maintaining this system up-to-date requires financial/organizational efforts. Therefore, in order to optimize performance, it is necessary to detect which are the assets that can be outsourced/externalized without jeopardizing the business model architecture. Nevertheless, several studies confirm the inherent risks upcoming with any decision of outsourcing; pursuing a bearable long-term advantage over competitors mostly involves combinations of resources and capabilities, i.e., intangible assets. By the means of a multi-criteria indicator, the proposed framework builds a quantitative relational ranking of such resources, disclosing their critical weight (revealing which assets are actually strategic), hence the convenience for each of them to be outsourced or kept “in-house” to create sustainable value. This solution permits a strategy-level prioritization to take informed decisions on outsourcing candidates, also returning further analytics on the status of each investigated entity. Designed as a discriminating tool in make/buy resolutions to be used alongside traditional cost-based criteria, it represents a comprehensive approach capable of appreciating the complexity of the problem and the involved risks in order to keep a sustainable momentum.

Suggested Citation

  • Franco Maria Battagello & Livio Cricelli & Michele Grimaldi, 2019. "Prioritization of Strategic Intangible Assets in Make/Buy Decisions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-25, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:5:p:1267-:d:209599
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Hyun-Joon Jo & Timothy Connerton & Hyun-Jung Kim, 2019. "Dynamic Outsourcing Development for Sustainable Competitive Advantage in a High-Tech Backend Semiconductor Equipment Firm," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, December.
    2. Marlena Ciechan-Kujawa & Michal Buszko, 2020. "The Susceptibility of the Business Model to Changes - Empirical Analysis of Internal Determinants of Variability," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(4), pages 739-757.

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