Drawing on extant literature and eight case firms, this paper explores reputational risk as an essential factor in selecting offshore locations. By categorizing and aggregating insights from the empirical data and the relevant literature, the paper identifies country reputational risk as a factor determining the firm's propensity to exclude specific offshore locations. However, its effect is contingent upon managers' interpretation of the critical elements of the business environment in a particular country. Thus, the study contributes by demystifying the role of ‘managerial inputs’, which are often neglected within international sourcing literature. Further, reputational risk is delineated as a higher-order construct comprised of three lower-order constructs: unethical practices, institutional weakness, and quality concerns. Our findings distinguish reputational risk from the CSR framework because the dimensions of reputational risk identified in this study transcend beyond the governance, ethics, environmental and social spheres of CSR. This way, the study contributes to a holistic representation of reputational risk that can allow researchers to match its broad predictors with broad outcomes.

借助现有文献和八家案例公司，本文探讨了声誉风险作为选择离岸地点的重要因素。通过对经验数据和相关文献的见解进行分类和汇总，本文确定了国家声誉风险是决定公司排除特定离岸地点倾向的因素。但是，其效果取决于管理者对特定国家/地区商业环境中关键要素的解释。因此，本研究通过揭开“管理投入”的作用的神秘面貌，而“管理投入”在国际采购文献中经常被忽略。此外，声誉风险被描述为由三个较低级别的结构组成的较高级别的结构：不道德的做法，制度上的弱点和质量问题。我们的发现将声誉风险与CSR框架区分开来，因为本研究中确定的声誉风险的范围超越了CSR的治理，道德，环境和社会领域。这样，该研究有助于声誉风险的整体表示，使研究人员能够将其广泛的预测指标与广泛的结果相匹配。