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To close the inaugural volume of Strategic Outsourcing, an International Journal (SOIJ), this paper's objective is to suggest a research agenda for outsourcing related studies, aiming to identify a limited number of key and most urgent research areas in need of scientifically valid research.

The authors draw on their personal experience and knowledge as well as the content of the first volume of SOIJ, to identify key seminal studies in the field, observe gaps in current knowledge, and provide suggestions for future research.

The major outcome of the paper is our suggestion for the top‐10 most urgent outsourcing research areas. Also interesting are the other three top‐10s we propose: the top‐10 theories underpinning current outsourcing research; the top‐10 research areas investigated by past research on outsourcing; and the top‐10 research questions that have emerged this year.

Considering the methodology we chose for this article, we are aware, and indeed so should you be, that this research is biased and subjective by our own admission. Hence its categorisation as a viewpoint. Nonetheless, considering the large amount of information we have used and the very narrow focus we have kept in identifying only the most urgent gaps, we believe the article has relevant implications in terms of clarifying a short‐term roadmap for research in the field.

From a practical perspective, as with all research agendas, the longer‐term implications are much more important and visible than the shorter‐term ones. The extremely fast pace at which outsourcing practice develops, coupled with the slower pace at which theoretical formulation and education move, are leaving outsourcing practitioners short of the proper “tools of trade”. A clear and focused research agenda can help generate knowledge supporting a drastic reduction in the confusion surrounding this practice and hence increase practitioners’ ability to develop the proper skills, learn from and apply validated theories and, in turn, more successfully manage their outsourced operations or contracts.

That outsourcing related research is going to increase over the next few years, is undisputed. The key question is how we can maximise current and future efforts to shorten the development time. Being part of the editorial team of SOIJ puts us in the privileged position to have visibility over most current research being undertaken in the field of outsourcing. Complementing this with our own experience as researchers and practitioners in the field, we can provide relevant suggestions to those researchers who share an interest in developing this field into a fully‐fledged scientific discipline.

To identify gaps in current research concerning the critical issues, threats and opportunities in the design of a system for managing performance in collaborative enterprises; and to define a performance management research agenda.

An interdisciplinary study examines performance management from different disciplinary perspectives with the purpose of giving insights into the area, which is currently not sufficiently explained. Three sources of knowledge are investigated: scientific literature; practitioners' magazines; and research project reports.

There is a lack of understanding of what collaboration means and what it implies on the development of appropriate performance measurement systems. Future research should study the nature of collaboration and the characteristics of performance indicators to support it.

The selection of the disciplines to be investigated and knowledge sources to be searched is based on the authors' definition of collaborative performance management. This implies that different definitions of the same concept could lead other researchers to study different disciplines, reach different conclusions and define a different research agenda.

It helps researchers build a sound knowledge base in collaborative performance management and focuses their research efforts on the most relevant issues.

The value of this paper resides in its ability to structurally gather most of the information available in the area, which is usually scattered in several different disciplines. This paper's contribution should be seen in the context of an ever‐increasing use in performance management research of the constructive approach, where a priori knowledge is very important.

The purpose of this paper is to consider research that has been conducted on the offshoring of manufacturing activities, and more specifically to synthesize results regarding the question of how firms integrate and govern geographically dispersed production activities.

A set of 100 carefully selected articles on offshoring and offshore outsourcing of production published in international peer-reviewed journals during the past 15 years are systematically analyzed. The focus is on 34 articles that touch on issues of integration and governance of dispersed production facilities.

Offshoring and offshore outsourcing of production is a cross-cutting subject of research. Most research is recent and largely conceptual. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the decision to offshore is often followed by the need to build more integrated operations.

One of the major constraining factors of this research, like many literature reviews, is a limited sampling period.

The paper demonstrates the importance of both intra-firm relationships and governance in dispersed production operations. The authors suggest that new offshore plants need to learn and develop their own capabilities in new markets on one hand, while also developing governance structures to facilitate coherence within a production network on the other hand.

This is a valuable paper for researchers in offshoring and global manufacturing areas. While literature reviews in other areas such as information systems offshoring and services offshoring do exist, one specific to production offshoring was lacking. This paper should be seen as a systematic and concerted effort for research and knowledge in this area.

Recently a tool called the performance management analysis (PMA) was developed, which can help an organisation evaluate its degree of performance drive. The purpose of this article is to describe the application of this tool at a Dutch municipality.

This article looks at a study undertaken by the University of Amsterdam which performed a performance management analysis at the city of Lelystad in The Netherlands.

The results of the analysis offered the municipality a clear insight into the areas that needed attention, which enticed the start of several performance management improvement projects.

Researchers are increasingly interested in the relation between behaviour and the use of performance management systems. It is important to study this relation because the use of performance management improves performance driven behaviour, and consequently the results of an organisation.

In this study, the authors look at the case of Ferdinand Marcos, President of the Philippines between 1965 and 1986. Documenting the life and career of Marcos on Wikipedia provides an excellent example of the pitfalls confronting those seeking to address disinformation without first reflecting deeply on the reasons why people subscribe to views deemed outlandish by the intellectual or cultural mainstream.

The authors sampled the version of the Marcos article on Wikipedia as it existed after the first edit of each year since its inception (2002). This resulted in 22 texts for analysis. Content and thematic analyses were conducted on these texts as well as on the entire body of talk page comments for the article.

The authors' work suggests that the basic elements of responsible encyclopedic writing have prevailed in the case of Wikipedia's biography of Marcos. However, this is not an unalloyed victory, as issues of polarization remain unaddressed.

Underlying revisionist or distorted claims about Ferdinand Marcos (and other controversial topics) lie very real grievances that give these claims traction for many people. Hence, it is not enough to “just present the facts” to readers. Rather, the authors argue that what is needed is a synthesis of positions that would allow for common ground to be found between them. This could be done in the case of Wikipedia by cultivating editors who are capable and willing to engage with the subject literature in a deeper and richer fashion.