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Globalisation accompanied by the rapid development of the information and communication technology (ICT) has largely boosted international trade in services over the past decade or so. Because services account for a higher proportion of production costs, firms are taking every opportunity to go for lower-cost solutions for the provision of business process services. International sourcing of business support services has, therefore, been a preferred solution to the ongoing cost pressures and related skill shortages experienced in many developed countries.

This chapter examines the influence of outsourcing on airlines’ performance from countries of the Asia Pacific region. Performance in the context of this study is drawn from productivity growth and technical efficiency scores that are calculated using the standard data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. We utilize data from airlines over the period 2003–2011 and estimate the impact of outsourcing on productivity and technical efficiency using generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators. The findings from DEA reveal an improvement in the technical efficiency score of airlines from Asia Pacific. Nonetheless, productivity estimates indicate fluctuations in the productivity growth trend of airlines, attributable to global economic recession in 2007/2008. GMM estimation results, however, suggest negative impacts of outsourcing on technical efficiency and productivity of the airlines from Asia Pacific countries. We offer several explanations for these outsourcing findings. Heavy outsourcing of airlines activities particularly maintenance of aircraft may negatively affect aircraft utilization and ultimately erode the service level of airlines. The erosion of the service level of airlines would affect the demand for air travel in a downward manner, thereby lowering the technical efficiency and productivity of airlines. Also, relatively low labor costs enjoyed by airlines in the Asia Pacific region would suggest that having many airline activities in-house would save operating expenses attributable to labor costs.

This paper examines the experiences of welfare clients on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Indian immigrant information technology (IT) workers on the H-1B visa to analyze how public–private collaborations in the spirit and practice of outsourcing, i.e. systematic fragmentation and decentralization of both corporate and state activities, function as mechanisms for disciplining labor. Through an analysis of these groups’ parallel experiences with exploitative work and employers in the U.S., this paper identifies how outsourcing is not merely a business model for cross-border trade, but also a key principle, component, and outcome of policy-based neo-liberal economic restructuring.

In the late 1990s, Yair Aharoni was one of the early international business scholars who spearheaded exploration of FDI in services. This chapter reviews a more recent development of trade in business services that involves the demand for and the emergence of a global sourcing industry for business services such as business processes, information technology infrastructure, software development, engineering services, innovation (product development and design, technology and process breakthrough, etc.), marketing and sales (e.g., customer relationships management), human resource management, contact centers, and knowledge process outsourcing. The chapter is based to a large extent on findings from the longitudinal international Offshoring Research Network (ORN) project, which was initiated in 2004 by the Duke University, Fuqua School of Business Center for international Business Education and Research (CIBER).

Outsourcing of business-logistics services is a well-established business practice that allows an outsourcer to obtain the services or products from a logistics-service provider (LSP). The outsourcer can order a range of logistics services, including but not limited to warehousing, transportation, and forwarding. The outsourcers had traditionally focused on service-provider selection criteria such as costs, quality, and responsiveness while having devoted considerably less attention to how sustainably the practices are carried out. Past research identified different external and internal motivators that facilitate consideration of sustainability in selection of the service providers, whereas the current study investigates the outsourcers’ perception of importance of environmental sustainability in adoption of green logistics practices and selection of LSPs. We use a vantage point of outsourcers (“buyers”) to conduct the quantitative research based on a survey conducted on large manufacturing companies. The findings reveal a (mis)match between the perception of importance and realized inclusion of environmental-sustainability criteria. Ultimately, this study finds a link between the levels of perception and rate of adoption, and provides recommendations for the future adoption of environmental-sustainability criteria in the selection of the LSPs.

The chapter presents case evidence to argue that rather than comprising noncore, back-office business support services, shared service centers (SSCs), when viewed from a knowledge management perspective, can create both valuable and firm-specific resources and dynamic capabilities.

Literatures in strategic management, knowledge management, and business process sourcing are drawn on as a prelude to a longitudinal case study conducted by the authors in a large private sector utility company.

A knowledge management perspective demonstrates how the SSCs, as a hybrid organizational form, may help to redefine core versus noncore activities and thus, to play a role in the creation and protection of firm-specific resource and dynamic capabilities.

The SSC model is an emerging phenomenon and the field work is restricted to a single case study. Further field research is suggested.

The findings should be useful to those organizations embarking on the reconfiguration of back-office support services which might gain from further consideration of what activities might be seen as constituting core enterprise architecture. The case study demonstrates that when the traditional core activities of the organization become commoditized over time, a core competence becomes the management and administration of a bundle of technical projects premised on the processes and information systems of the SSC.

Shared services is an emerging phenomena and scholar literature is nascent. The chapter explores potential benefits of the SSC model beyond the headline agenda of cost reduction through efficiency savings and labor arbitrage.

Outsourcing is an important phenomenon in hotel sector. It is changing from a tactical to a strategic perspective, with greater scope and relevance to the creation of competitive advantages. The opening up of hotels to outsourcing and strategic alliances improves individual competitiveness, but also has strong repercussions on destinations, especially those in a stage of maturity and requiring new approaches to improve competitiveness. This change in interorganizational relationships to a strategic perspective requires new theoretical and practical frameworks to make it easier for hotels to outsource their operations with greater potential for competitive advantage. This work proposes the types of relationship and degree of process integration required for relational capabilities to be achieved in the hotel sector when operations are outsourced. Finally, a series of conclusions are presented.

Leaders derive their capacity for driving institutional change from their power over organizations, but prior research says little about how leaders with limited power over a dominant intraorganizational group can acquire such a capacity for institutional action. This chapter develops a multilevel model that helps to understand how leaders of public service organizations were able to introduce “contract organization” form of organizational governance that enabled them to outsource the provision of public services to private firms. By doing so, this chapter adds to existing accounts of how power and political processes can give rise to organizational and institutional change.