Make or buy decision making for telcos towards an Intelligent Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) Support System

Because of the frequently changing environment and technologies, Telecom operators' value chain faces permanently challenges related to agility and cost effectiveness. Whether to vertically integrate or to delegate to the market is strategic decision making, influenced by a variety of factors. The theory presents rich findings about the most important factors, and we in this article are trying to apply them on the telecom industry while tuning them throughout the tmforum standard, a best known and worldwide accepted framework in the telecom industry. We are then suggesting a basis for identifying which Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) model might support decision makers in their understanding of the emerging behaviours related to the make or buy dilemma; a model that would definitely help them in adopting the best fit of internal and external execution tactics towards a cost effective execution strategy. © 2015 IEEE.