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The nature of paid domestic work is changing, with the growth in companies delivering domestic cleaning services. Few studies have looked at why people opt to use these services and the underlying drivers. As with the outsourcing of non-core tasks in businesses, outsourcing domestic work is motivated by similar, yet different reasons, which have to do with the personal and private nature of domestic employment. This study aims to establish the reasons why “clients”, who were former employers of domestic servants, opted to outsource domestic work to a domestic cleaning service provider.

Given the limited research on domestic cleaning services in South Africa, a mixed-methods research approach is used.

The findings showed that there are three key motivations: the nature of the domestic cleaning service supplier, the services rendered by domestic workers and the tripartite employment relationships. These three benefits imply that clients have access to functional and numerical flexibility, unlike employing a domestic worker directly. This study contributes to the literature on outsourcing and domestic work by showing that clients not only look to change the economic structure of the relationship with domestic workers, but it allows them to psychologically and emotionally distance themselves from domestic workers.

This study shows that some people are no longer willing to have a relationship with the people who clean their homes, and that they believe it is simply not worth the effort to maintain a relationship. This is an aspect that needs further research, as this is the one sphere where women are united in their plight, albeit from different worldviews. Thus, a limitation is that this study only focuses on clients' views of outsourcing. Have domestic workers employed by the outsourced domestic cleaning service supplier become just like assembly-line workers, where they are anonymous to their clients, performing routine tasks with little recognition from those whose homes they are servicing? Future studies could focus on domestic workers' views on outsourcing and the effects it has on their working conditions and employment relations.

Firstly, studies mainly focus on the Global North where domestic work and outsourcing have different dynamics, regulation policies and social changes when compared to South Africa. Secondly, few studies have sought to establish why people shift from employing a domestic or care worker directly to an outsourced domestic agency when direct domestic help is available and affordable. Considering these shortcomings, this study aims to provide a better understanding of domestic cleaning service suppliers from the perspective of clients, often omitted from the literature. Accordingly, this study aimed to establish what the benefits are for clients (former employers of domestic workers) who use domestic cleaning service suppliers.

This study aims to investigate the influence of transaction cost (TC) factors and the moderating influence of firm capability factors on the extent of domestic outsourcing of a multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiary.

A new research framework is developed comprising four constructs and six research hypotheses, coupled with international experience (IE) and subsidiary scale (SS) as moderating constructs. Applying the regression model, the hypotheses were tested on data from MNC subsidiaries engaged in manufacturing in Taiwan, based on the TC theory, resource‐based view, and outsourcing literature.

The TC factors, including environmental dynamism and subsidiary technology level, are negatively related with degree of domestic outsourcing. Moreover, the MNC IE and SS can reduce the TCs, thus increasing the degree of domestic outsourcing by MNC subsidiaries at the high environmental dynamism and subsidiary technology levels.

The study data were obtained from MNC subsidiaries operating in Taiwan, and the single country research design is a limitation of this study.

This study provides useful insights into how MNCs and subsidiaries should concentrate on the factors that increase the TCs of domestic outsourcing. Moreover, MNCs and subsidiaries must endeavor to cultivate and apply capabilities to mitigate TCs and fully realize the benefits of domestic outsourcing.

This study demonstrates that TC factors can also be applied to examine the outsourcing strategies of firms operating in less advanced countries. Additionally, the capability factors of MNCs and subsidiaries can reduce TCs, thus increasing domestic outsourcing by subsidiaries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons women living in dual‐earner households give for not outsourcing domestic chores so as to understand better the barriers to the outsourcing of domestic labour.

The analysis is based on a web questionnaire survey amongst 550 staff of a large service‐sector employer in the UK. Using the Likert scale, reasons why households did or did not outsource domestic chores were investigated.

The two main reasons for not outsourcing which emerged from the research were first, not being able to afford it and second, the satisfaction individuals derived from looking after their own homes.

The first finding concerning affordability reinforces previous research that emphasises income as a determining factor in domestic outsourcing. The second finding that some women do not outsource because they put a positive value on looking after their own homes raises the question of whether the under‐development of domestic outsourcing reflects a culture of resistance to the commodification of private life or evidence of the persistence of traditional ideas concerning domesticity and gender identity.

Many studies of domestic outsourcing have focused on the provider/supplier. Fewer concentrate on the consumer and where this has been done, it has been those who outsource that have been the focus of research. This article contributes to the debate by concentrating on those who do not outsource regular domestic tasks as a way of understanding the barriers to domestic outsourcing.

Although essential to social welfare, unpaid domestic and care work is an increasingly scarce resource in modern societies. Despite the growing need, many households refrain from outsourcing their domestic chores to the market. Simultaneously, the household service sector is mostly characterised by low-qualification, informal jobs lacking quality and professional standards. Drawing on transaction cost theory, the present study aims to examine how trust problems deriving from the quality and professionalisation of domestic services can be overcome by also exploring the role of state subsidies in this context.

A factorial survey experiment in Germany (N = 4024) causally explores the effect of state-subsidised service vouchers, quality signals and professionalisation on preferences and willingness-to-pay for domestic services. The data were analysed using multilevel modelling techniques.

Hypotheses are mostly confirmed: strong quality signals help overcome trust problems, thus facilitating the demand for household services. Further, service vouchers can generate better pay for domestic workers while simultaneously reducing the costs for households.

The relevance of professionalisation and quality of service as important determinants of domestic service demand is revealed. However, the experimental survey design involves hypothetical scenarios.

The analysis offers insights into how to stimulate demand for household services and increase formal employment in a sector currently largely characterised by informal arrangements. It further shows how social policies can help secure quality and foster professionalisation by shifting paid domestic work from the informal to the formal economy.

We show that, even with flexible domestic wages, international outsourcing may worsen the welfare of the home country and reduce the profits of all firms. If wages are rigid, outsourcing is welfare-improving if and only if the sum of the “trade creation” effect and the “exploitation effect” exceeds the “trade diversion” effect. A wage subsidy may improve welfare. We also extend the model to a two-period framework. Delaying outsourcing can be gainful because the fixed cost of outsourcing may fall over time. A social planner would choose a different speed of outsourcing than that achieved under laissez-faire.

While strategic outsourcing decisions are crafted by senior executives, they are executed by middle managers and staff who may not share the vision or enthusiasm of their senior leadership team. The purpose of this paper is to provide a deep understanding of the effects of outsourcing on one of those stakeholder groups – the client project managers – responsible for the implementation of outsourcing strategies, and to identify practices to better empower and enable them.

Interviews with 67 client project managers in 25 organizations responsible for integrating suppliers into project teams.

Client project managers report 27 effects of outsourcing on their roles, including six positive effects and 21 negative effects.

Senior executives who implemented the following practices had more success with their outsourcing decisions: provide enough resources to implement the sourcing strategy, be willing to change internal work practices, build social capital with key supplier executives and seek independent assessment of sourcing strategy effectiveness.

The paper presents an original framework to categorize the effects of outsourcing on client project managers. The framework addresses six areas of concern: organizational support, project planning, knowledge transfer, process standards, managing work and managing people. The paper identifies four practices senior executives use to align and empower their employees to deliver the expected business benefits from strategic outsourcing decisions.

The study aims to examine consumer attitudes toward offshore-outsourcing of professional services in the USA. It focuses on the services of accountants, attorneys and doctors to provide a framework for discussing policy and marketing implications.

The study reviews a review of the literature on consumer decision-making under uncertainty and attitude formation, and a focus group study to examine consumers’ attitudes toward offshore-outsourcing of professional services.

Contrary to reports in the popular press, this paper suggests that consumers do not have a generalized negative attitude toward offshore-outsourcing of all forms of professional services. While consumers do not mind offshore-outsourcings of the services of medical doctors and attorneys, they seem to be concerned about offshore-outsourcings of accounting or financial services. These results suggest that persons engaged in offshore-outsourcings of tax and other related services must re-strategize.

While the results of this study offer a window into the US consumers’ feelings about offshore-outsourcings of professional services, the results lack generalizability, as they are based on an exploratory study.

Even though outsourcing has received a lot of media attention and some limited attention from academics, no study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, has specifically investigated US consumers’ attitudes toward offshore-outsourcings of professional services. Given the fact that the trend is growing instead of abating, a study, such as the current one, that investigates how consumers feel about the practice is not only timely but will also provide valuable information to managers for strategy reformulation and to lawmakers for regulation purposes.

This paper, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is the first to specifically examine consumer attitude toward offshoring of the basic professional services – the services of doctors, accountants and attorneys.

This paper aims to evaluate critically the assumption that the main reason for acquiring domestic services from the off‐the‐books economy is to save money.

Data are reported from an internet survey of 5,500 people living in households with one or more members in employment in the city of Sheffield in the UK, which resulted in 418 responses (a 7.6 per cent response rate).

In just 13 per cent of cases where domestic tasks were outsourced to the off‐the‐books economy the main reason was to save money or cost. Instead, off‐the‐books workers were used principally due to the problems customers confronted regarding the availability and quality of formal service providers.

This survey covers only households with one or more members in employment, a population group previously shown to be more likely to outsource domestic services and use off‐the‐books workers. It does not cover no‐earner households and is not a nationally representative sample.

The implication is that using penalties to change the cost/benefit ratio confronting those acquiring domestic services from the off‐the‐books economy is unlikely to be successful since cost is in most cases not their major rationale. Instead, attention needs to be paid to improving the availability and quality of formal service provision so as to negate the need for customers to outsource to off‐the‐books workers.

The paper refutes the assumption that goods and services are acquired from the off‐the‐books economy in order to save money.

The purpose of this paper is to provide industry insights on the business models, practices, and capabilities that suppliers need to deliver cost‐effective information technology (IT) outsourcing services from rural locations within the USA. As rural outsourcing has not yet been studied by academics, many questions have not yet been answered. How can suppliers attract enough talent to rural areas to make rural outsourcing viable? How can suppliers scale operations? Will the value proposition attract serious clients? An ongoing research project was launched to answer these and other questions about rural outsourcing. This paper aims to report on the first set of findings based on four case studies.

This paper reports on the results from four case studies of rural outsourcing suppliers. In total, 35 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with founders, executives, delivery center managers, and delivery team members and a visit was made to a rural delivery center owned and operated by each of the four suppliers.

After comparing and contrasting the value propositions, location strategies, human capital development, and scalability of operations across the cases, in general, it was found that rural outsourcing suppliers position their value proposition as lower in price than urban outsourcing but higher in value than offshore outsourcing. Rural outsourcing suppliers achieve this value proposition by locating delivery centers in low‐cost areas and by recruiting, developing, and retaining a high‐performing workforce. Rural suppliers scale operations either by building multiple, small‐sized delivery centers or by building one large delivery center.

There are still many aspects of this phenomenon that warrant additional study. The paper identifies areas of future research pertaining to client experiences, competition from large suppliers, government support, and rural outsourcing in countries outside the USA.

The paper identifies five lessons for practice: rural outsourcing works best when clients engage a team to deliver a service; rural outsourcing is not freelance outsourcing or staff augmentation; rural outsourcing addresses an unfilled gap in a client's sourcing portfolio; rural outsourcing suppliers will continue to move up the value chain; and most rural outsourcing suppliers operate best on a sell‐build sequence, so clients should plan ahead.

This paper reports on industry insights from one of the first known, ongoing academic studies of rural outsourcing.

Outsourcing manufacturing and services to differing locations throughout the world is a common practice today. Yet, very little research has dealt with the known risks of outsourcing when it takes place between business organizations in differing countries or in an international context. This study presents a quantitative model that permits the inclusion of international risk factors in the outsourcing‐insourcing decision. A Fortune 500 firm case study is used to illustrate the informational efficacy of the decision model.