Outsourcing service activities

International conference KNOWLEDGE-BASED ORGANIZATION, 2015

In today's world the sophistication of modern organizational processes requires the development of outsourcing services. The organization seeking to dispose of non-key services in order to increase economic activity appears as a common practice. This causes the need for cooperation between the private and public sector, which is the beginning of outsourcing. This paper studies and analyzes the development of outsourcing as a form of public - private partnership in the practice of business and in the armed forces.

European Management Journal, 2002

Brazilian Business Review, 2011

This study identifies the reasons firms decide to outsource activities instead of performing them internally. The study is restricted to the logistics, information technology, gate-keeping and/or reception and cleaning services as well as part of the production activities. The research was carried out in two steps. The first one consisted of interviews with four executives of large companies and the second one consisted of a survey of executives of 80 industrial companies and more than 100 direct employees. From the quantitative date we prepared contingency tables, cross-referencing the frequencies of the main factors given as leading the firms to outsource services with the corresponding activities, using Pearson's Chisquare test. The results show that the option for outsourcing is the result of a combination of factors, mainly involving the service to be contracted out and the firm's economic segment. Specialization of services and reduction and control of operating costs were the reasons given most often for outsourcing. This study contributes to the debate over the reasons companies outsource their activities and can serve as a reference for firms involved in the outsourcing processes.

Economies, 2021

The global pandemic has affected all sectors and disrupted not only supply chains but also had a particular impact on the range of services provided and the whole service sector. Outsourcing is used to adapt to business environment changes. However, in the scholarly literature, outsourcing of services is analysed as a complementary part of the manufacturing process—there is a lack of research on outsourcing in service companies. This article analyses the enablers of outsourcing in all service groups. The aim of the semi-structured interview was to determine not only the enablers, their significance in each WTO (World Trade Organisation) group of services but also the use of outsourcing in the provision of core and non-core services. The results of the empirical study revealed that outsourcing is increasingly used in the service sector; however, enablers vary depending on the provision of services, the nature of the service company’s activities, and the needs they meet, public or for...

Management : Journal of Contemporary Management Issues, 2016

1. INTRODUCTIONGlobal business trends have led to the growth of competition, which urges companies to react more rapidly to market changes and to ensure high quality of products at low costs. In this battle, companies cannot ensure this quality in all segments on their own, and they are compelled to focus on those activities for which they specialized in the most, and to outsource the rest of activities. Sometimes those are activities that a company cannot handle on its own, or activities that a supplier can perform cheaper or simply better. Outsourcing less significant activities to companies specialized in those activities, enables a company to generate more value by focusing on its core activities.Activities that a company considers for outsourcing must meet certain criteria so that the decision to outsource these activities could be justified. The assumption is that the decision on which activities to outsource, made strategically and following certain rules, should lead to crea...

1998

SA Journal of Information Management

Background: Organisations outsource Information Technology (IT) services in order to keep up with the IT evolution and to remain competitive. Although the IT operations department is responsible to manage service provider service quality, they are not in a position to evaluate IT services performance because of the loss of control and capability in the IT environment.Objectives: This article investigated the impact of outsourcing in-house IT services on the performance of IT operations and how it affects the performance of the organisation.Methods: The qualitative approach was used in this research. Data was collected using structured interviews and were analysed using thematic analysis.Results: Outsourcing of IT services was found to have negative and positive impact on the organisation. Knowledge of the operating environment proved to be significant in the provision of relevant services that add value to the organisation. The results of the analysis revealed that in-house IT and t...

2008

Information Technology (IT) has made it easier for firms to communicate globally. Improved IT capabilities and the increased global collaboration have been drivers of the growth of IT 'outsourcing'. This growth has resulted in a variety of IT 'outsourcing' terms used to denote both global and domestic client-IT-supplier relationships. An introductory literature review showed that there exist no common standard definitions of 'outsourcing' terms used for describing the contracting of ISD activities between a client and an IT-supplier. This may lead to confusion. The first purpose chosen for the paper is therefore to review how the variety of commonly used ISD 'outsourcing' terms are defined in the literature. Based on these identified definition differences, the second purpose is then to propose a structured set of definitions of ISD 'outsourcing' terms. The review process of IT/ISD 'outsourcing' research included two steps. Firstly, a literature search study was conducted. The literature search study resulted in the collection of about 240 articles. The second step of the literature review process included reading each paper. The selection criterion for the articles to be included in the review study was that the article should focus on IT/ISD 'outsourcing'. As a result, about 100 of 240 articles were reviewed. These articles constitute the majority of the articles studied in the literature review. From the literature review, different definitions of the variety of ISD 'outsourcing' terms have been identified. One conclusion drawn from the literature review is that many of the different ISD 'outsourcing' terms are used as special cases of the generic 'ISD outsourcing' term. The different ISD 'outsourcing' terms found in the literature have been analysed and categorised based on a geographical distance perspective. Another finding from the literature review is that the relationship perspective often is neglected when ISD 'outsourcing' terms are defined. Therefore, definitions from a relationship perspective for the majority of the ISD 'outsourcing' terms identified are proposed. The proposed ISD 'outsourcing' definitions provide a structured set of definitions based on both the geographical distance perspective and the relationship perspective. Furthermore, a graphical representation of how different IT-supplier locations, from the client perspective, relate to the definitions of six of the proposed ISD 'outsourcing' terms is provided.

Business Horizons, 2009

Thunderbird International Business Review, 2005