Outsourcing in Ireland:a literature review, survey and case study perspective

Outsourcing, or offshoring as it is now known, has been around for many decades. In the beginning it was only the very peripheral activities that were blue-collar (lower skilled) work outsourced, but this is now all changing with the outsourcing of white-collar jobs. Historically outsourcing was used when organisation could not perform to world-class excellence in all sectors of the organisation due to incompetence of staff and/or management, lack of capacity, financial pressures, and/or technological pressures. The research currently underway is initially focusing on a literature review of current outsourcing applications in the market place and what impact outsourcing has on business performance. This paper will present the findings of the initial literature review. It will also discuss the methodology being followed to explore the Irish Industrial Sector.

Outsourcing:an Irish perspective

This paper investigates three case studies with regards their outsourcing initiatives from an Irish perspective, the benefits and problems they encountered, the contracts they have constructed, and where they have outsourced and the reasons behind them. The research took place over a period of two years, and the information for the case studies was gleaned from a number of sources including: published papers about the companies, the company websites, annual financial reports, the questionnaire they filled out, and interviews with key decision making personnel in the company. Follow up interviews were conducted where it was felt they were required. Key findings were that: it is very important to have the outsourcing initiative driven from the top down, and it is imperative to construct a contract that promotes a relationship based on mutual trust and respect, the use of Ireland for outsourcing, and the benefits and problem companies have experienced.

Outsourcing: a Theoretical Viewpoint

Outsourcing or offshoring as it is now known has been around for many decades. In the beginning, it was only very peripheral activities that were outsourced, i.e. blue-collar (lower skilled) work but this is now all changing with the outsourcing of white-collar jobs. The digital revolution, the falling costs of transport and telecom costs and the opening up of the global economy helped the outsourcing market. For companies going down or contemplating the road of outsourcing there are both potential benefits and challenges, for example, the type of outsourcing they want to get involved in, and the country they want to outsource to. Outsourcing can potentially happen anywhere in the world where the costs are lower and the quality higher. The main places that have been used for outsourcing have been India, China, Ireland, South-East Asia, Russia, Mexico and the Czech Republic. The research currently underway is initially focusing on a literature review of current outsourcing applications in the market place. From this literature review, a questionnaire is being developed to assess the impact Outsourcing has on businesses. This research focuses on the Irish Market place.

Outsourcing decisions:the case of parallel production

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate an underexplored aspect of outsourcing involving a mixed strategy in which parallel production is continued in-house at the same time as outsourcing occurs. Design/methodology/approach – The study applied a multiple case study approach and drew on qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews with wood product manufacturing companies. Findings – The paper posits that there should be a variety of mixed strategies between the two governance forms of “make” or “buy.” In order to address how companies should consider the extent to which they outsource, the analysis was structured around two ends of a continuum: in-house dominance or outsourcing dominance. With an in-house-dominant strategy, outsourcing complements an organization's own production to optimize capacity utilization and outsource less cost-efficient production, or is used as a tool to learn how to outsource. With an outsourcing-dominant strategy, in-house production helps maintain complementary competencies and avoids lock-in risk. Research limitations/implications – This paper takes initial steps toward an exploration of different mixed strategies. Additional research is required to understand the costs of different mixed strategies compared with insourcing and outsourcing, and to study parallel production from a supplier viewpoint. Practical implications – This paper suggests that managers should think twice before rushing to a “me too” outsourcing strategy in which in-house capacities are completely closed. It is important to take a dynamic view of outsourcing that maintains a mixed strategy as an option, particularly in situations that involve an underdeveloped supplier market and/or as a way to develop resources over the long term. Originality/value – The concept of combining both “make” and “buy” is not new. However, little if any research has focussed explicitly on exploring the variety of different types of mixed strategies that exist on the continuum between insourcing and outsourcing.

Strategic innovation through outsourcing:the role of relational and contractual governance

There is growing evidence that client firms expect outsourcing suppliers to transform their business. Indeed, most outsourcing suppliers have delivered IT operational and business process innovation to client firms; however, achieving strategic innovation through outsourcing has been perceived to be far more challenging. Building on the growing interest in the IS outsourcing literature, this paper seeks to advance our understanding of the role that relational and contractual governance plays in achieving strategic innovation through outsourcing. We hypothesized and tested empirically the relationship between the quality of client-supplier relationships and the likelihood of achieving strategic innovation, and the interaction effect of different contract types, such as fixed-price, time and materials, partnership and their combinations. Results from a pan-European survey of 248 large firms suggest that high-quality relationships between clients and suppliers may indeed help achieve strategic innovation through outsourcing. However, within the spectrum of various outsourcing contracts, only the partnership contract, when included in the client contract portfolio alongside either fixed-price, time and materials or their combination, presents a significant positive effect on relational governance and is likely to strengthen the positive effect of the quality of client-supplier relationships on strategic innovation.

Understanding innovation in outsourcing services

Recent years have witnessed an expansion in service industries such as finance, travel and retail. Firms in the services have shifted their traditional occupation with products to consider how value can be created and appropriated in the service industry [1]. In particular, information technology (IT) and IT-enabled business services have become central to a firm's ability to deliver value to its customers, driving firms to seek ways to improve their services and maintain their competitive position. In this regard, the last ten years have witnessed significant growth in the outsourcing industry which shifted from focus on low cost simple tasks such as coding to end-to-end delivery of services that range from IT services and customer services to more complex business services such as Finance and Accounting, Human Resources, Procurement, and knowledge-intensive services such as customer analysis and research services [2]. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Végtelen sokszor ismételt kiszerződés (Infinitely repeated outsourcing)

A cikk a kormányzat és a vállalat közti végtelen sokszor ismételt kiszerződésekkel foglalkozik. Vizsgálati eszköztárát a nem teljes szerződések elméletéből kölcsönzi. A szakirodalmat felhasználva megmutatja, hogy létezik olyan fenyegetési stratégia, köznapi szóhasználattal az adott szabályok esetén mindkét fél számára saját érdekében betartandó stratégia, ahol mind a vállalat, mind a kormányzat beruházásának értéke a társadalmilag optimális nagyság. Bebizonyítja, hogy annál valószínűbb, hogy mind a kormányzat, mind a vállalat a társadalmilag optimális beruházási szintet valósítja meg, minél nagyobb annak az esélye, hogy az adott vállalat kapja meg a következő periódusban is az ismétlődő munkafeladatot. Felhívja a figyelmet a szabályozó felelősségére az újabb szerződés valószínűségének indirekt meghatározásában. ____ The paper analyses the in¯nitely repeated contracts between the government and a firm. Methods from the incomplete contract theory are used for this analysis. Based on the literature, it is shown that there exist a trigger strategy, when both the government and the firm deploy the socially optimal amount of investment. The paper proves that the greater the chance that an excellently accomplished firm receives a new contract the higher is the probability that both actors' investments are on the socially optimal level. The regulator has a great liability in establishing indirectly the chance of receiving a new contract opportunity.

Strategic positioning of Taiwan in the outsourcing market: Evidence from information technology services and electronic manufacturing outsourcing to China

In outsourcing relationships with China, the Electronic Manufacturing (EM) and Information Technology Services (ITS) industry in Taiwan may possess such advantages as the continuing growth of its production value, complete manufacturing supply chain, low production cost and a large-scale Chinese market, and language and culture similarity compared to outsourcing to other countries. Nevertheless, the Council for Economic Planning and Development of Executive Yuan (CEPD) found that Taiwan's IT services outsourcing to China is subject to certain constraints and might not be as successful as the EM outsourcing (Aggarwal, 2003; CEPD, 2004a; CIER, 2003; Einhorn and Kriplani, 2003; Kumar and Zhu, 2006; Li and Gao, 2003; MIC, 2006). Some studies examined this issue, but failed to (1) provide statistical evidence about lower prevalence rates of IT services outsourcing, and (2) clearly explain the lower prevalence rates of IT services outsourcing by identifying similarities and differences between both types of outsourcing contexts. This research seeks to fill that gap and possibly provide potential strategic guidelines to ITS firms in Taiwan. This study adopts Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) as the theoretical basis. The basic premise is that different types of outsourcing activities may incur differing transaction costs and realize varying degrees of outsourcing success due to differential attributes of the transactions in the outsourcing process. Using primary data gathered from questionnaire surveys of ninety two firms, the results from exploratory analysis and binary logistic regression indicated that (1) when outsourcing to China, Taiwanese firms' ITS outsourcing tends to have higher level of asset specificity, uncertainty and technical skills relative to EM outsourcing, and these features indirectly reduce firms' outsourcing prevalence rates via their direct positive impacts on transaction costs; (2) Taiwanese firms' ITS outsourcing tends to have lower level of transaction structurability relative to EM outsourcing, and this feature indirectly increases firms' outsourcing prevalence rates via its direct negative impacts on transaction costs; (3) frequency does influence firms' transaction costs in ITS outsourcing positively, but does not bring impacts into their outsourcing prevalence rates, (4) relatedness does influence firms' transaction costs positively and prevalence rates negatively in ITS outsourcing, but its impacts on the prevalence rates are not caused by the mediation effects of transaction costs, and (5) firm size of outsourcing provider does not affect firms' transaction costs, but does affect their outsourcing prevalence rates in ITS outsourcing directly and positively. Using primary data gathered from face-to-face interviews of executives from seven firms, the results from inductive analysis indicated that (1) IT services outsourcing has lower prevalence rates than EM outsourcing, and (2) this result is mainly attributed to Taiwan's core competence in manufacturing and management and higher overall transaction costs of IT services outsourcing. Specifically, there is not much difference between both types of outsourcing context in the transaction characteristics of reputation and most aspects of overall comparison. Although there are some differences in the feature of firm size of the outsourcing provider, the difference doesn't cause apparent impacts on firms' overall transaction costs. The medium or above medium difference in the transaction characteristics of asset specificity, uncertainty, frequency, technical skills, transaction structurability, and relatedness has caused higher overall transaction costs for IT services outsourcing. This higher cost might cause lower prevalence rates for ITS outsourcing relative to EM outsourcing. Overall, the interview results are consistent with the statistical analyses and provide support to my expectation that in outsourcing to China, Taiwan's electronic manufacturing firms do have lower prevalence rates of IT services outsourcing relative to EM outsourcing due to higher transaction costs caused by certain attributes. To solve this problem, firms' management should aim at identifying alternative strategies and strive to reduce their overall transaction costs of IT services outsourcing by initiating appropriate strategies which fit their environment and needs.

UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER CHOICES IN SERVICE OUTSOURCING AND REVENUE MANAGEMENT

This dissertation investigates customer behavior modeling in service outsourcing and revenue management in the service sector (i.e., airline and hotel industries). In particular, it focuses on a common theme of improving firms’ strategic decisions through the understanding of customer preferences. Decisions concerning degrees of outsourcing, such as firms’ capacity choices, are important to performance outcomes. These choices are especially important in high-customer-contact services (e.g., airline industry) because of the characteristics of services: simultaneity of consumption and production, and intangibility and perishability of the offering. Essay 1 estimates how outsourcing affects customer choices and market share in the airline industry, and consequently the revenue implications from outsourcing. However, outsourcing decisions are typically endogenous. A firm may choose whether to outsource or not based on what a firm expects to be the best outcome. Essay 2 contributes to the literature by proposing a structural model which could capture a firm’s profit-maximizing decision-making behavior in a market. This makes possible the prediction of consequences (i.e., performance outcomes) of future strategic moves. Another emerging area in service operations management is revenue management. Choice-based revenue systems incorporate discrete choice models into traditional revenue management algorithms. To successfully implement a choice-based revenue system, it is necessary to estimate customer preferences as a valid input to optimization algorithms. The third essay investigates how to estimate customer preferences when part of the market is consistently unobserved. This issue is especially prominent in choice-based revenue management systems. Normally a firm only has its own observed purchases, while those customers who purchase from competitors or do not make purchases are unobserved. Most current estimation procedures depend on unrealistic assumptions about customer arriving. This study proposes a new estimation methodology, which does not require any prior knowledge about the customer arrival process and allows for arbitrary demand distributions. Compared with previous methods, this model performs superior when the true demand is highly variable.

Enabling efficient publicly verifiable outsourcing computation for matrix multiplication

Outsourcing heavy computational tasks to remote cloud server, which accordingly significantly reduce the computational burden at the end hosts, represents an effective and practical approach towards extensive and scalable mobile applications and has drawn increasing attention in recent years. However, due to the limited processing power of the end hosts yet the keen privacy concerns on the outsourced data, it is vital to ensure both the efficiency and security of the outsourcing computation in the cloud computing. In this paper, we address the issue by developing a publicly verifiable outsourcing computation proposal. In particular, considering a large amount of applications of matrix multiplication in large datasets and image processing, we propose a publicly verifiable outsourcing computation scheme for matrix multiplication in the amortized model. Security analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme is provable secure by blinding input and output in a simple way. By comparing the developed scheme with existing proposals, we show that our proposal is more efficient in terms of functionality, as well as the computation, communication and storage overhead.

Prevalencia de sintomatología musculoesqueléticade una empresa outsourcing operativa. Bogotá, Colombia, 2016

La prevalencia de sintomatología osteomuscular en los trabajadores va en aumento. La influencia de factores propios de la labor como la postura, los movimientos repetitivos, el tipo de remuneración y los factores sociodemográficos como la edad, el sexo y el índice de masa corporal pueden influir en la aparición temprana de sintomatología osteomuscular. Objetivo: Determinar la prevalencia de sintomatología musculoesquelética en trabajadores de una empresa Outsourcing operativa en la ciudad de Bogotá Colombia en el año 2016. Métodos: Se realizó un estudio de corte transversal para la estimación de la prevalencia de sintomatología musculoesquelética para lo cual se utilizó una fuente de datos secundaria de 323 trabajadores de una empresa Outsourcing operativa. Se tuvieron en cuenta las variables sociodemográficas y laborales. El análisis descriptivo incluyó el cálculo de la media y los porcentajes. El análisis comparativo se realizó por medio del Test Chi² con una significancia estadística p <0.05 para un intervalo de confianza del 95%. Por último se realizó un análisis de regresión logístico. Resultados: Del total de la población estudiada, la cual fue de 323 personas, el 55.4% de los trabajadores corresponde al sexo femenino y el 44.6% corresponde al sexo masculino. El promedio de edad fue de 30.34 años. El tiempo en el cargo que presentó mayor prevalencia fue entre 13 a 60 meses con un porcentaje de 60,7%. Para el estudio se incluyó la variable de tipo de remuneración con un porcentaje de 58.2% de pago por salario mínimo legal mensual vigente (SMLMV), mientras que el 41.8% de la población recibió pago por destajo. La prevalencia de sintomatología por segmentos en la población fue de 17.3% para espalda baja, el 12,1% para mano y muñeca, el 10.2% para piernas, el 7.7% para espalda alta, el 7,4% para cuello, el 7,1% para hombro, el 6.2% para brazos y antebrazos y el 2,5% para dedos. Se aplicó un modelo de regresión logístico, analizando variables de confusión e interacción, estas últimas no aportaron al modelo. Con la variable tipo de remuneración, se encontró una asociación estadística significativa (P= 0.005) con la sintomatología. Para las demás variables sociodemográficas y extra-laborales no se obtuvieron resultados estadísticamente significativos Conclusión: Teniendo en cuenta los resultados obtenidos en el estudio se encontró asociación estadísticamente significativa entre la sintomatología de los segmentos cuello y manos con la variable sociodemográfica (sexo) y la variable laboral (tipo de remuneración: Destajo). Para las demás variables no se encontró asociación. Se sugiere realizar programas de vigilancia epidemiológica para hacerle seguimiento a esta población y que permitan la prevención de enfermedades de origen laboral.

A influência do modelo e estrutura de recursos humanos na motivação e comprometimento dos trabalhadores: gestão interna versus Outsourcing

Com esta investigação, pretende-se fazer uma análise comparativa sobre o comprometimento e motivação dos trabalhadores, tendo como fator diferencial a gestão do recrutamento, de modo interno e a gestão por outsourcing. O objetivo principal é verificar se existem diferenças significativas nos dois grupos de trabalhadores, à luz de um quadro teórico muito vasto. Para concretizar esta análise foi elaborado um questionário on-line, com questões de escala manifestadas por afirmações elaboradas, com base no enquadramento teórico que constituiu a revisão da literatura, sobre motivação e comprometimento. Os resultados demonstraram que não existem diferenças significativas nos valores médios dos dois grupos na avaliação dos fatores de motivação, embora em ambos os grupos, se verifique uma grande vontade de darem mais de si à organização, de forma a superarem objetivos. Os valores de motivação revelaram-se muito baixos no geral, nos dois grupos. Em ambos os grupos apurou-se que há mais insatisfação face a fatores recompensatórios (tanto a nível material como imaterial): o salário e o reconhecimento do trabalho. Em relação ao comprometimento, verifica-se menor comprometimento por parte dos trabalhadores outsourcing, não numa análise de comparabilidade de médias gerais, mas numa análise de médias mais específicas de alguns fatores em avaliação: intenções de abandono. As médias das intenções de abandono foram mais visíveis neste grupo. No geral, ambos os trabalhadores dos dois grupos são movidos por um comprometimento instrumental, mais relacionado com as poucas alternativas que o mercado de trabalho dispõe , para uma evolução profissional; Abstract: The influence of human resource management structure in the motivation and commitment of employees: internal management versus outsourcing With this research aims to make a comparative analysis on the commitment and motivation of workers, with the differentiating factor the management of the internal mode recruitment and management by outsourcing. The main objective is to verify whether there are significant differences in the two groups of workers in the light of a very broad theoretical framework. To realize this analysis was prepared an online questionnaire with scale issues raised by elaborate statements, based on the theoretical framework that was the literature review of motivation and commitment. The results showed no significant differences in mean values of the two groups in the evaluation of the motivating factors, although in both groups, that there is a great desire to give more of themselves to the organization in order to overcome objectives. The motivation values proved to be very low in general, in both groups. In both groups it was found that there is more dissatisfaction with the recompensatórios factors (both material and immaterial level): wages and recognition of the work. Regarding the commitment, there is less commitment by the outsourcing workers, not an analysis of comparability of overall averages but a more average specific analysis of some factors reviewed abandonment of intentions. The average dropout intentions were more visible in this group. Overall, both employees of the two groups are driven by an instrumental commitment, more related to the few alternatives that the labor market has for professional development.

Knowledge Sharing within IT Projects

Even though today’s corporations recognize that they need to understand modern project management techniques (Schwalbe, 2002, p2), many researchers continue to provide evidence of poor IT project success. With Kotnour, (2000) finding that project performance is positively associated with project knowledge, a better understanding of how to effectively manage knowledge in IT projects should have considerable practical significance for increasing the chances of project success. Using a combined qualitative/quantitative method of data collection in multiple case studies spanning four continents, and comprising a variety of organizational types, the focus of this current research centered on the question of why individuals working within IT project teams might be motivated towards, or inhibited from, sharing their knowledge and experience in their activities, procedures, and processes. The research concluded with the development of a new theoretical model of knowledge sharing behavior, ‘The Alignment Model of Motivational Focus’. This model suggests that an individual’s propensity to share knowledge and experience is a function of perceived personal benefits and costs associated with the activity, balanced against the individual’s alignment to a group of ‘institutional’ factors. These factors are identified as alignments to the project team, to the organization, and dependent on the circumstances, to either the professional discipline or community of practice, to which the individual belongs.