Relationship between International Sourcing Partnership and Sourcing Performance in Korean Apparel Firms

The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships among partnership variables and sourcing performance. Partnership variables were included as: contract conditions, information sharing, communication, conflict, job understanding, monitoring, culture understanding, trust and commitment. Sourcing performance included perceived benefits and sourcing satisfaction. The survey research design was employed with the structured questionnaire. A sample of 104 Korean apparel firms' managers participated in this survey. Apparel firms selected for this study were casual, sports, children's wear firms doing actively international sourcing. For the data analysis, descriptive statistics (i.e., frequency, percent), factor analysis, correlation, and multiple regression analysis were used. Information sharing and job understanding were positively related with trust. That is to say, the better information sharing and the better job understanding apparel firms had higher scores of trust than others. Contract conditions, communication, conflict, and culture understanding were known as predictions of commitment to international outsourcing. The more trust firms had with their vendors, the more commitment the firms had in the international sourcing. This result showed that trust is the essential factor of commitment. Trust and commitment were significantly related with outsourcing performance (i.e., perceived benefits, satisfaction of the international sourcing). Partnership information of international sourcing assembled in the review of literature and the results from this empirical study may assist the domestic apparel firms to make better decision in the adoption process of international sourcing.

의류기업의 해외소싱 파트너쉽과 소싱성과와의 관계 연구