The purpose of this paper is to highlight the general environmental constituents (Economic, Technological, Political and Institutional) and businesses networks influence on the offshoring stages in MNCs transferring processes abroad. The literature on offshoring and business networks is polar in acknowledging the role either general environmental constituents or business networks has on the defined stages of offshoring. However the specific influences they have on each other and subsequently on the offshoring stages have remained significantly underdeveloped. The paper seeks to address this issue conceptually and link changes in MNC strategy, structure and activities in the offshoring stages with general environmental constituents and business networks influence. The paper further posits that in many instances the literature considers environmental constituents and business network relationships institute or in their environments but in the four stages of offshoring this is not the case, as the environment partly becomes the stages of the offshoring.
The paper is of a conceptual nature and critically examines and merges literatures to generate insight on the implications of general environmental constituents in home and host markets of offshoring processes and their impact on business network relationships and thus the enhanced influence of these networks on the stages of offshoring. Against this departure it is proposed this will allow for better capture of the related processes involved in the four stages of offshoring and subsequently reflect the internal and external business network relationships influencing the offshoring process. The finding is that the four stages of offshoring are similarly described amongst the literatures and that the influences and activities are very similar within MNC borders. However this changes somewhat when MNCs act outside their borders irrespective of market particularly when focusing on the four stages of offshoring. This paper finds that there are significantly enhanced dependencies between general environmental constituents and business network relationships in the divisional and offshore sites when considering offshoring and subsequently there exist significant implications in the environment and business networks influence for explorative and exploitative behaviour.