Although small and medium-sized enterprises increasingly utilize global sourcing strategies which involve the spatial relocation of their business activities, little is known about the effects of these strategies on firm performance—particularly firm innovativeness. Here, we analyze if alternative relocation strategies, specifically domestic and international relocations, differ in their performance effects on firm innovativeness by firm size and organizational configuration. Our econometric approach uses detailed micro data for German firms, and the empirical findings indicate that both product and process innovation rates negatively respond to international but not domestic relocations. Effects are more pronounced for smaller firms and are mainly associated with outsourcing arrangements. Only for large firms we observe a positive association between relocation and firm innovativeness. This indicates that short- to mid-run organizational costs associated with relocation activities can generally be better covered by larger firms.

尽管中小型企业越来越多地利用涉及其业务活动空间迁移的全球采购战略，但人们对这些战略对公司绩效（尤其是公司创新）的影响知之甚少。在这里，我们分析了替代搬迁策略，特别是国内和国际搬迁，是否会因公司规模和组织配置的不同而对公司创新产生不同的绩效影响。我们的计量经济学方法使用德国公司的详细微观数据，实证结果表明，产品和流程创新率对国际搬迁而非国内搬迁都有负面反应。对小公司的影响更为明显，主要与外包安排有关。只有对于大公司，我们观察到搬迁与公司创新之间存在正相关关系。这表明与搬迁活动相关的中短期组织成本通常可以由较大的公司更好地承担。