1 IS OFFSHORING AN INTERNATIONAL PROCESS ONLY FROM DEVELOPED COUNTRIES TO EMERGING ECONOMIES?

The offshoring business is booming and what was used by few US pioneers are now spreading through the world (Economist Intelligent Unit, 2006). It is a very new issue at least regarding the origin of the expression and related to services and, even a common sense definition with a complete detailed explanation clarifying the cases is not available. Mol (2007), for instance, presents a variety of conceptual lens has been applied to outsourcing (and also can be applied to offshoring process): transaction cost economics, resource-based view, core competences, micro-economics, industrial organization, among others. From this list of perspectives, in this article we propose to analyze the applicability of transaction cost economics- TCE (Coase, 1937; Williamson, 1975, 1979) through its characteristic make-or-buy expression, considering the offshoring pace and emerging economy firms. The make-or-buy decision must be flexible enough to explain offshoring characteristics and developed and emerging economy firms scenarios. As secondary objectives, and to show the trail to the main purpose, two research questions were identified and discussed during the paper: Is offshoring process an international movement only from developed countries to emerging economies? Is the main reason of offshoring the looking fo