The configurational logic of management control: exploring pathways to offshoring performance

Abstract This study investigates how management control (MC) practices—formal and informal controls—and contextual factors, including trust, cultural competency, and relationship continuity, combine in configurations associated with offshoring performance. Existing research has largely examined control mechanisms in isolation, and prior work has not yet offered a configurational perspective on how MC practices and contextual factors jointly shape offshoring performance. Using data from 55 Swedish firms engaged in offshore outsourcing and applying fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the study identifies multiple configurations of MC practices and contextual factors linked to offshoring success and offshoring failure. The findings reveal two distinct pathways to offshoring success. The first is a hybrid MC package that combines outcome control with informal controls, namely social control and self-control, alongside contextual factors. The second is a relational MC package characterized by the joint presence of social control, competence trust, goodwill trust, and relationship continuity in the absence of formal controls. In contrast, the configurations associated with offshoring failure are consistently marked by the absence of social control, goodwill trust, cultural competency, and relationship continuity, demonstrating that failure is not simply the inverse of success. The study contributes to the MC package literature by showing how MC practices and contextual factors combine in offshoring relationships. It also clarifies the role of contextual factors in offshoring performance and extends research on offshoring failure by showing causal asymmetry between success and failure configurations.