Time-based competition — the aspect of partner proximity

Globalisation has become extremely important in the business world. Companies internationalise, source and sell globally, and establish factories abroad. Time-based competition (being fast and reliable) becomes extremely difficult in such a global context. Advantages of partner proximity, one crucial supportive tool of time-based competition, might be completely overridden by core competence and supply chain integration issues. In this paper the importance of partner proximity for time-based competitors is investigated in the era of globalisation using an international database with data on 750 companies from 2009. According to our results, partner proximity is still more important for time-based competitors than for other companies. Companies' decisions are moderated, however, by the extent of product design modularity, ordering policies and the origin of the parent company.