Courses taught

MBA Global Strategy.
Diploma in Global Business
Diploma in Organizational Leadership.
Diploma in Strategy and Innovation.
MSc in Major Programme Management
Executive programmes for professional services firms.

Expertise

Outsourcing and offshoring of business services.
Legal services market
Global strategy.
Human resources and labour markets.

Overview

Professor Sako is Professor of Management Studies at Saïd Business School, Co-Director of the Novak Druce Centre for Professional Service Firms and a Professorial Fellow of New College, Oxford. Mari's research and teaching focus has been on understanding how business enterprises are governed in different ways in different locations, with specific attention to human resources and supply chains. 

Mari has 20 years’ experience of research on the subject of global strategy, resulting in the publication of five books and numerous articles in management and economics journals. Her books include Prices, Quality and Trust (1992) and Shifting Boundaries of the Firm (2006).  During 1993-2006, she was a principal researcher of the MIT International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP), working on modularization, outsourcing, and supplier parks in the global automotive industry. As a Senior Fellow of the ESRC/EPSRC Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM), Mari researched on productivity and performance in business services, the impact of outsourcing on professions, and origins of the creation of shared and outsourced services. At Said, as a member of the Novak Druce Centre for Professional Service Firms, she carries out research on the role of in-house geneneral counsel, the globalisation of law firms, and the impact of legal process outsourcing on the legal profession.

At the School, Mari teaches on executive programmes for professional services firms, including the Clifford Chance Advanced Management Programme. She also teaches Global Strategy on the MBA Programme, and Globalisation to students on the MSc in Major Programme Management and on the Diploma in Strategy and Innovation. She is Academic Director for the School’s new Diploma in Global Business.

After reading PPE at Oxford, Mari studied for an MSc in Economics at the London School of Economics and an MA in Economics at Johns Hopkins University, before completing her PhD at London University in 1990.  She also held visiting positions at Kyoto University, Tokyo University, Ecole Polytechnique, RIETI (Research Institute of the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry in Tokyo), and MIT Sloan School of Management.  She is President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) during 2011-12.

Research interests

Global strategy
Comparative business systems.
Economic sociology.
Human resources and labour markets.

Current projects

- Outsourcing and offshoring of business services.
- Impact of outsourcing/offshoring on the professions.
- Grand Challenges in Services

Books

Sako, M., Shifting Boundaries of the Firm: Japanese Company - Japanese
Labour, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Crouch, C., Finegold, D., & Sako, M., Are Skills the Answer?, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Dore, R., Sako, M., How the Japanese Learn to Work, Routledge, 1998.

Sako, M., Sato, H., Japanese Labour and Management in Transition: Diversity, Flexibility and Participation, Routledge, 1997.

Teaching Cases

Evalueserve: Globalizing the Business of Giving Insight? 

Journal articles

‘Driving Power in Global Supply chains’, Communications of the ACM, July 2011 Vol.54 no.7, pp.23-25.

‘Outsourcing vs Shared Services’, Communications of the ACM, July 2010, Vol.53 no.7, pp.27-29.

The Unbundling of Corporate Functions: the Evolution of Shared Services and Outsourcing in Human Resource Management (with Howard Gospel),Industrial and Corporate Change, March 2010, vol.19 no.5 pp.1369-1396.

Management Innovation in Supply Chain: Appreciating Chandler in the Twenty-First Century (with Susan Helper), for a special issue of Industrial and
Corporate Change in honor of Alfred Chandler, edited by William Lazonick and David Teece, 2010, vol.19 no.2 pp.399-429.

Sako, M. Globalization of Knowledge-Intensive Professional Services,Communications of the ACM, Vol. 52 No. 7, 2009, pp.31-33

Sako, M., 'Do Industries Matter?', Labour Economics 15, 2008, pp.674–687

Sako, M.,'Outsourcing and Offshoring: Implications for Productivity of Business Services', Oxford Review of Economic Policy Vol.22 No.4, 2006, pp.499-512.

Sako, M. and Jackson, G., 'Strategy Meets Institutions: the Transformation of Management-Labor Relations at Deutsche Telekom and NTT', Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol.31 (April), 2006, pp.347-366.

Sako, M., 'Supplier development at Honda, Nissan and Toyota: comparative case studies of organizational capability enhancement', Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol.132.6, 2004, pp.281-308.

Sako, M., Helper, S., 'Determinants of Trust in Supplier Relations: Evidence from the Automotive Industry in Japan and the United States', Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol.34:3, 1998, pp.387-417.

Sako, M., 'Suppliers Associations in the Japanese Auto Industry: Collective Action for Technology Diffusion?', Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol.20:6, 1996, pp.651-671.

Helper, S.R.,Sako, M., 'Supplier relations in Japan and the United States: are they converging?', Sloan Management Review, Vol.36:3, 1995, pp.77-84.

Book chapters

‘Outsourcing of Tasks and Outsourcing of Assets: Evidence from Automotive Supplier Parks in Brazil', chapter in Annabelle Gawer (ed.) Platforms, Markets, and Innovation, Edward Elgar, 2009.

Organisational Diversity and Institutional Change: Evidence from Financial and Labour Markets, in Masahiko Aoki, Gregory Jackson and Hideaki Miyajima (eds) Corporate Governance in Japan: Organizational Diversity and Institutional Change, OUP, 2007.

National Institutions and UK Competitiveness (with Rachel Griffith and Jonathan Haskel), a chapter for a book, The Exceptional Manager, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Sako, M., 'Between Bit Valley and Silicon Valley: Hybrid Forms of Business Governance in the Japanese Internet Economy', in: Kogut, B. (Ed.), The Global Internet Economy, MIT Press, 2003.

Sako, M., 'Modularity and outsourcing: the nature of co-evolution of product architecture and organisation architecture in the global automotive industry', in:
Prencipe, A., Davies, A., & Hobday, M. (Ed.), Business of Systems Integration, Oxford University Press, 2003.

Working papers and reports

Sako, M., General Counsel with Power? 2011

Sako, M., Make-or-buy decisions in legal services: a strategic perspective, 2010.

Sako, M., Global Strategies in the Legal Services Market: Institutional Impacts on Value Chain Dynamics.

Sako, M., Outsourcing and Offshoring: Key Trends and Issues, Background Paper prepared for the Emerging Markets Forum, November 2005.

Abramovsky, L., Griffith, R., & Sako, M.,Offshoring of business services and its impact on the UK economy, 2004.

Griffith, R., Harrison, R., Haskel, J., & Sako, M., The UK Productivity Gap & The Importance Of The Service Sectors, 2003.