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The purpose of this paper is to discuss business processes as building‐blocks of organisational capabilities and outsourcing of business processes as a viable management approach to building strategic organisational capabilities.

The paper develops a conceptual framework based on “strategic partnering” to successfully implement “global sourcing” of organisational capabilities and validates this framework using multiple case studies research.

The paper identifies business process management, relationship management and the outsourcing value propositions as the key dimensions for business process outsourcing (BPO) success.

The paper is based on case studies of seven European clients and ten Indian service providers of BPO services. A larger survey of BPO clients and service providers may further strengthen the proposed framework and make the findings more conclusive.

The proposed framework helps both the BPO client and the service provider organisations in understanding the critical role of relationship management in realising the intended BPO service outcomes. It also helps the BPO clients and the service providers to understand the risk and business value implications of BPO value proposition.

The paper addresses a dearth of literature on BPO service provision and establishes the need for dyadic study of BPO services from both the client and the service provider perspective simultaneously for understanding the dynamics of this emerging service sector.

Nowadays, outsourcing has proved to be an enterprise management strategy in the face of globalization and growing competition. The decision to outsource a business process for any organization has far‐reaching consequences and risks. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of business process management (BPM) and knowledge management (KM) on reduction of outsourcing risks and pitfalls.

Outsourcing models and frameworks are reviewed to find the main risks in outsourcing. One of the most important groups of risks is emergent KM issues arising from widespread outsourcing. A strategic KM approach can reduce this risk. Communication and coordination difficulties between outsourcing partners is another group of risks that could be decreased by using the BPM approach in organizations. Then the contribution of a business process outsourcing (BPO) framework based on BPM and KM lifecycles is tested.

The paper finds that BPM and KM could reduce risks of outsourcing and enable a BPO lifecycle.

A contemporary case of IEI Company's outsourcing practices with one of its subsidiaries, Irancell, is discussed as an illustrative example.

The paper demystifies BPM and KM could enable BPO via coordinating BPM, KM, and BPO lifecycles.

To examine the development of research into the relationship between business process outsourcing (BPO) and innovation, a bibliometric methodology utilizing quantitative analytical methodologies was used. With the aid of a visualization analysis of scientific publications, this study also assessed the state of BPO and innovation practices.

Using the Web of Science database, articles on BPO and innovation that published between 1992 and 2022 were retrieved. Records that had been extracted were examined in terms of publication year, nation, journal, subject area, authors and affiliations with organizations. The research on acupuncture for pain relief was visualized using the VOSviewer application.

An analysis of 219 original and review papers found that during the past 30 years, the overall number of publications has fluctuated constantly. The London University, the Copenhagen Business School and the London School of Economics were the institutions that produced the most articles in this topic. The three main categories of research that emerged from a network analysis based on the co-occurrence of keywords are innovation, outsourcing and performance.

A BP-innovation model must be created, and BPO must go beyond operational duties to incorporate management-wide shared strategic decisions in order to ensure improved performance of the firms. BPO enables a company's management to share knowledge and expertise about the strategic difficulties of outsourcing. A variety of technological and non-technological resources must also be considered when integrating an information technology (IT) infrastructure into BPO decisions in order to achieve greater performance.

Validity of the paper can be justified by it contribution to the existing knowledge. First, linking BPO and innovation – by integrating the arguments of various academics, the study unifies the disparate components and contentious discussions in the relationship between BPO and innovation. Second, this study highlights a research trend, significant studies, relevant terms and concepts in the real world. Third, the study provides future researchers with a tip for statistically analyzing BPO, particularly in light of innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss business processes as building blocks of organizational capabilities and outsourcing of business processes as a viable management approach in building winning relationships.

The paper develops a conceptual model to successfully implement “global sourcing” of organizational capabilities for the service provider and validates this framework using questionnaire survey methodology.

The paper identifies business process management and relationship management value propositions as the key dimensions for business process outsourcing (BPO) success. However, these value propositions fall short of building winning relationships.

The research is based on questionnaire survey of Indian BPO service providers. A survey of BPO clients may further strengthen the proposed framework and make the findings more conclusive.

The proposed framework helps both the BPO client and the service‐provider organizations in understanding the critical role of relationship management in realizing the intended BPO service outcomes.

The paper establishes the importance of capability service provision by the service provider as value proposition.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that incorporates both firm- and process-level factors for understanding location distance choice in the business process outsourcing (BPO) decision.

The research involved undertaking in-depth case study analysis of a number of BPO decisions in six German companies, and employing transaction cost economics (TCE) and the resource-based view (RBV) as a theoretical basis.

The findings have shown that existing literature in the operations management (OM) literature does not provide a complete understanding of the complexities of location distance choice in the BPO decision. This decision requires an understanding of a range of factors at both the firm- and process-level. The findings here enhance the understanding of how these factors interact to influence the potential distance options.

The findings have shown how organisations can influence the factors that affect the location distance choice including modularising business processes, developing outsourcing capabilities, and supplementing internal skills in areas such as cultural management and performance monitoring.

This is one of the first studies in the OM field to analyse how organisations make the decision in relation to local, nearshore, and offshore location distance options. The paper has highlighted the importance of OM concepts such as performance management and continuous improvement to this phenomenon, and the paper has offered a number of important areas for further research.

The decision to operate BPO-IT organisational model by a business process outsourcing (BPO) service provider has far reaching benefits. The purpose of this paper is to develop a service provider’s BPO-IT framework that provides in-house IT function (software) required to process client services.

The multi-case study adopted an exploratory sequential mixed method research approach. In the first instance, seven BPO service provider organisations were investigated in the qualitative phase and 156 in the quantitative phase, respectively.

The adoption of the developed framework indicates that it could reduce failures in BPO relationships through reduced turnaround time in processing client services, improved quality of service, reduced cost, improved client and provider’s competitiveness, and confidentiality of client operations. Outsourcing clients could lay the foundation for a successful relationship by adopting a selection process that could choose the right provider.

The paper reveals BPO-IT organisation’s operation towards in-house provision of software required to process client services. A research exploring BPO service providers from a top outsourcing destination like India could provide offshore outsourcing clients the information to move towards onshore outsourcing.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in‐depth analysis of the benefits senior management associate with business process outsourcing (BPO) and how these benefits are valued against each other.

A quantitative empirical study of the 200 largest banks in Germany was conducted: 218 senior managers from 126 different banks responded giving a response rate of 36.8 per cent. The answers were analysed using the partial least squares method (PLS).

The quantitative analysis shows surprising findings. A remarkable one is that there is a significantly higher value associated to the programmability of cost in a BPO case than to actual cost savings. This implies that the BPO market gained in maturity and that banks are much more critical to the marketing statements of outsourcing service providers than in previous years.

This paper supports the case for a more detailed analysis of the benefits associated with BPO. Although it is empirically supported that the benefit perceptions differ significantly, more questions need to be asked about the actual differences and thus what organizations learned over the last decades when IT outsourcing (ITO) was the predominant form of outsourcing. More research needs to be devoted to transforming the knowledge gained into advantages for the future. Additionally, for the research community using PLS, this paper offers a variety of successfully tested formative indicators in a BPO context.

For outsourcing service providers this paper provides a straight forward message. Potential clients of BPO are valuing other benefits than those ITO promises. Therefore, new concepts are needed to communicate the value of BPO to these customers.

This is the first quantitative research study on the perceived benefits of BPO. It provides valuable insights into management's perception and how the benefit associated with BPO are valued.

This paper aims to answer the question: how do clients and BPO service providers work together to foster dynamic innovation? Dynamic innovation is a process by which clients incent providers to deliver many innovations each year that improve the client's performance in terms of operational efficiency, process effectiveness and/or strategic impact.

The paper is based on research conducted in 2011 and 2012 and includes 202 survey responses and 48 in-depth interviews in 24 client organizations.

The most effective innovation incentives are mandatory productivity targets, innovation days, and gain-sharing at the project level. Threat of competition and special governance arrangements for innovation also positively influence innovation. The least successful incentives for innovations were found to be innovation funds, gainsharing at the relationship level, what has been called “pain-sharing”, and benchmarking.

The 24 BPO relationships do not represent a random sample, but rather a convenience sample. The authors aimed to understand emerging best practices from high-performing BPO relationships, thus the paired interview samples are purposefully biased towards higher-performing relationships.

Delivering innovations requires a process the authors call AIFI – acculturating, inspiring, funding, and injecting. The research finds that leadership pairs are key drivers of the dynamic innovation process. Leadership pairs jumpstart the dynamic innovation process by starting with innovation incentives. Even so, just having one right leader makes a positive difference. The positive difference is stronger if that leader is on the client side rather than the provider side. With no right leaders, the practices that the authors describe are less efficacious but still have positive impacts on the levels of innovation experienced.

In the ITO and BPO literatures, researchers have under-examined the more strategic drivers of outsourcing, including innovation. This research examines the process and practices that deliver dynamic innovation in client organizations.

The goal of this research is first to investigate the outsourcing needs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in each of the following HR sub‐processes: recruiting, training, HR administration, payroll, and benefit processes. Then, the outsourcing needs are analyzed against the characteristics of the companies such as company size, operating environment, culture and information technology maturity. Lastly, integrated business process outsourcing (BPO) service models are developed according to the characteristics of the company.

To fulfil the objective of this research, the questionnaire is used to assess the outsourcing needs of the companies. The data collected by questionnaire are analyzed against the characteristics of the companies. Then integrated BPO service models are developed based on the analysis of the questionnaire data and the interviews with HR managers. This study used both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

This study suggests BPO service industry with two different service models: partially integrated model where e‐recruiting and e‐learning are integrated and fully integrated model where all of the HR‐subprocesses are integrated.

As BPO is expected to be booming in the next few years, this study helps BPO service industry to better serve SMEs in the area of human resource management.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute towards development of a management framework for offshore business process outsourcing (BPO).

This paper utilises longitudinal case studies to identify success factors in managing offshore BPO via the captive model (i.e. wholly‐owned subsidiary).

Success in offshore BPO is based on a combination of cost savings, technical service quality and strategic issues, is specific to business context and will change over time. Choice of engagement model (e.g. captive operation or arms‐length contracting) is an important success factor. Advantages of captive centers arise from higher levels of relationship quality, trust and collaboration effectiveness.

This paper focuses on two global companies in two industry sectors (airlines and telecommunications), and both have adopted one particular BPO model (i.e. captive operation).

The paper contributes to scarce literature on offshore captive BPO operations, the most common but also least researched engagement model. The findings have practical implications for managers designing offshore BPO strategy.