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This paper aims to present findings on outsourcing practices in small service firms in Iceland, where the prime focus is on knowledge-intensive service firms.

To gain information on the scope and reason for outsourcing, telephone and online surveys were used. In total, 802 firms participated in the surveys, which were conducted in the period 2009-2018.

The results show that knowledge-intensive firms outsource far more than other service firms and are also more likely to have an outsourcing strategy. The grounds for increased outsourcing are cost reduction and strategic reasons, such as a focus on core competency and the search for external knowledge. In comparison with other firms, knowledge-intensive firms are increasingly outsourcing cleaning, security services, canteen and transportation, IT processes, human resource management, training and consulting. Additionally, managers of these firms select suppliers more on the basis of cost and quality. They also realize more cost savings as a consequence of outsourcing. Outsourcing had a very limited effect on employment in the firms, while cost reduction was achieved in 48.3 per cent of the firms involved.

The findings are in line with the resource-based theory and, interestingly, this is not limited to knowledge-based firms, but to a large portion of service firms as well.

This is the first in-depth study on outsourcing patterns in knowledge-intensive firms, which uses theoretical classification in empirical analysis.

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 aims of this paper are, first, to consider the impact of organisational size and the strategic involvement of the human resource management (HRM) function on the decision to outsource, second, to consider the impact of HRM outsourcing on organisational performance for organisations of different size and where the HRM function has access to positions of elevated political power.

The research examines responses from 441 Australian senior HRM managers who participated in an online survey of a national HRM professional association. The hypotheses were tested using multiple regression.

Although results did not confirm the expected relationship between smaller organisational size and increased outsourcing, there was a positive relationship between HRM strategic involvement and the decision to outsource. The relationship between HRM outsourcing and perceived financial performance was positive for smaller firms and negative for larger firms. The positive relationship between strategic HR involvement and organisational effectiveness was also enhanced when HRM activities were kept in‐house rather than when they were outsourced.

Overall, the research findings confirm advantages for smaller firms that seek out external HRM assistance. The results of the study also indicate that there are organisational benefits when an elevated strategic HRM role in an organisation is combined with the decision to develop in‐house HRM activities rather than externalise these responsibilities.

Using political influence theory, the research applies an alternative theoretical perspective to the analysis of HRM outsourcing.

In this article, the area of interest is an emerging type of organisation called human resource intermediaries (HRIs), which focus on delivering human resource (HR) services to public sector organisations and private companies. The purpose of this article is, thus, to explore HRIs as deliverers of HR services. More specifically, the article will seek to analyse and discuss how employees in HRIs understand their role as providers of HR services to their clients and what characterises the HRIs' work and the nature of their assignments.

The empirical foundation of this article comprises a longitudinal case study of three Swedish HRI organisations. The data consist of interviews with 19 managers and consultants from the three HRIs.

The results indicate that HRIs want to take on a broad, strategic and proactive role in relation to their customers. However, due to external and internal constraints, such as the HRIs' internal work processes, the nature of their assignments and the client's HR competence level, the roles that HRIs play in practice tend to be more specific, operational and reactive.

An important challenge for HRIs is to avoid being overwhelmed by short‐term and reactive assignments that deliver value to their clients through the use of standard solutions. Long‐term relationships, the structures of ownership and membership, and the availability of unique networks can also prove to be valuable for clients.

This study explores HRIs as an emerging type of organisation within the area of human resources. Compared with HR consultants who specialise in handling specific HR‐related problems, HRIs target the entire flow of human resources in, within, and out of client organisations.

The questions of when and what types of human resource (HR) support are needed tend to be unanswerable for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This article addresses this gap in the strategic HR literature. Hiring, training, employee retention/satisfaction, wages and benefits programs, and worker's compensation insurance are important to SMEs seeking to build strong capabilities and resources and to increase their competitive advantage.This article presents an analysis of the existing HR literature for SMEs. It introduces a decision model to help SMEs choose a cost-effective HR strategy, listing a range of options from hiring the HR function to electronic HR (eHR) and outsourcing

Pursuing objectives despite limited internal resources and leveraging external resources despite non‐ownership are familiar hallmarks of entrepreneurial firms. Although outsourcing is the standard way for businesses to surmount these barriers, entrepreneurial firms often lack the resources to purchase outsourcing arrangements. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on how entrepreneurial firms can better procure and benefit from outsourcing arrangements.

The paper examines six entrepreneurial firms in a Shanghai business incubator as they undertook a variety of outsourcing arrangements. It utilizes an integrative framework based on transaction cost theory, resource dependency theory, and the resource‐based view. It then cross‐hatches those three theory bases with four outsourcing modes (full, partial, spinout, inter‐outsourcing) and case study methodology.

The paper's findings yield three novel propositions for strategic and ex ante entrepreneurial firm outsourcing activities. The propositions pertain to the exchange of non‐traditional resources, vendor‐buyer power differentials, and linkages between internal operations and external resources.

Entrepreneurial firms stand to benefit in particularly vital ways from outsourcing arrangements. Yet, they are often severely constrained with respect to resources. Such strong need combined with limited means is a peculiarly valuable setting but only a paucity of research exists. The original study targets this important setting.

The objective of this literature review is to provide a background and a synthesis of existing studies conducted on IT outsourcing. The IT outsourcing trend has become increasingly popular and heavily documented and studied in Europe and the USA. It is therefore appropriate and timely to consider the value and incidence of IT outsourcing in Australian organisations. The literature review deals with the impetus for outsourcing and factors contributing to its success. It covers two useful theoretical frameworks, transactional cost theory, and resource‐based theory that facilitate research into outsourcing.

To face the onslaught of hypercompetition, organizations need to be responsive and flexible. The human factor, if managed effectively, is perhaps the most important in imparting organizational flexibility. Managing the human factor as a competitive tool falls in the domain of strategic human resource management. This article discusses the state of HRM in Singapore. It identifies five important issues in strategic HRM field that, if fully understood, would help scholars and practitioners develop better theoretical frameworks. Specifically, it is proposed that the link between HR and strategy depends on the type of strategy pursued by the organization; organizational culture influences the status of HR and its integration with the rest of the organization; the competencies of HR managers affect the status of HR and its link with organizational strategy; HR strategy or lack of it affects the HR function’s vertical and horizontal fits; these factors all influence the outsourcing of HR activities.

Offshoring has been studied widely in the literature on strategic management and international business. However, apart from its consideration as an administrative activity, scant attention has been paid to the offshoring of the human resource (HR) function. Research in this regard has instead focussed on outsourcing (Reichel and Lazarova, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of companies’ decisions to offshore HR activities. It adapts the outsourcing model of Baron and Kreps (1999) by including the HR offshoring phenomenon and a dynamic perspective.

While the analysis is mostly conceptual, the authors ground the author’s arguments in offshoring data from the Offshoring Research Network, to explore whether the drivers for offshoring HR differ from the drivers for offshoring other administrative activities. The idiosyncrasy of the HR function is supported by the authors’ exploratory analysis and also by the descriptive case of a multinational and its experience with offshoring.

A coevolutionary model is proposed for understanding the behaviour of companies offshoring their HR activities. This study contends that companies should address their decision to offshore HR activities from a dynamic perspective, being aware of three processes that are in constant change: the evolution of the HR function, the evolution of service providers, and the evolution of offshoring decisions.

This study seeks to make a threefold contribution to the international business, strategy, and HR management disciplines.