The work of Eduardo Melero, George Chondrakis, and Mari Sako accepted for publication in the Strategic Management Journal

The article “The effect of coordination requirements on sourcing decisions: Evidence from patent prosecution services”, co-authored by Eduardo Melero, George Chondrakis (ESADE) and Mari Sako (University of Oxford), examines the contracting of patent prosecution services in large, innovative companies. The authors show that internal contracting is more beneficial when coordination requirements between inventors and lawyers increase. Furthermore, they find that plural sourcing firms, that is, those that work with both in-house counsel and external law firms, are more likely to respond to these increases and switch to internal sourcing compared to firms that only use external sourcing. This suggests that plural sourcing can be considered as a strategic investment in sourcing flexibility, which allows companies to respond to changes in coordination requirements. This is an adaptive capacity that is especially useful in highly innovative sectors.