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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.

Offshore outsourcing of customer services is growing rapidly but there is little known about its impact on customer perceptions and behavior. This paper aims to combine the learnings from the country‐of‐origin and service research to address this gap.

An online survey was conducted by contacting a sample of 5,000 customers randomly chosen out of a database of over 100,000 customers provided by a large American retail financial services company, immediately after they had an interaction with an offshore service representative, resulting in 548 complete and usable questionnaires.

Consumer ethnocentrism has a negative influence on the attitude towards offshore outsourcing and the perceived service quality and customer satisfaction with offshore call centers. Customer satisfaction also mediates the influence of perceived service quality on customer complaint behavior, brand image, brand loyalty, and repeat purchase intentions.

This paper focuses on the effects of consumer ethnocentrism and attitudes towards offshore outsourcing on several perceptual and behavioral variables in a B2C context with American customers and Indian customer service executives. Hence, its findings may not apply to the B2B context and other country settings.

The findings highlight the need for greater employee training as well as customer education for firms using offshore customer service centers, to minimize customer complaints and protect their brand image, loyalty, and repeat purchase intentions.

The study offers new insights on the impact of consumer ethnocentrism and attitude towards offshore outsourcing on customer perceptions and behavioral intentions, mediated by customer satisfaction and perceived service quality.

This paper is based on a portion of the research undertaken as part of the author's doctorate study and aims to look at change and its management in the context of the offshore outsourcing of IT services.

Two longitudinal case studies were conducted in a large multinational. The study looks at the scenario mainly from the viewpoint of the onshore IT front‐line staff; some high level managers were also included. Offshore staff did not form part of the research.

Change and its management form an important aspect of the process of offshore outsourcing of IT services; observing this aspect from the new service development point of view gives an in‐depth picture of the issues involved. A pictorial representation of this process has been presented in this research.

This paper looks at change and its management from the perspective of the offshore outsourcing of IT services in terms of new service development – previous studies have not focused on this area in this context.

This paper aims to present a managerial framework that facilitates successful supplier selection and ongoing management for purchasing services from offshore suppliers.

This research is grounded in transaction cost theory and developed using data from case studies of six Fortune 500 firms that have a minimum of three years experience purchasing services from suppliers located in India.

Viewing the selection and management of suppliers for the purchase of offshore outsourced services as strategic in nature helps organizations ensure quality and low cost in the service delivery and also reduces complexity and associated risk to the organization.

The overarching limitation is the number and size of the companies being researched.

This research presents a framework to guide managers in reducing risk and improving performance in these complex service purchases. Formalizing the selection and management of offshore outsourced services and investing in supplier improvements/measurement was found to improve operating relationships and enhance the business‐to‐business relationship.

This research provides a supply management perspective on a relatively new phenomenon. There has been little academic research on business process offshoring and few theoretical insights to guide managers in the purchase of services from suppliers located in different geographies with different cultures and operating structures. This paper looks at this phenomenon from a US‐based perspective and provides guidelines for managers.

Offshore outsourcing offers competitive advantages when goods and services are produced economically and with acceptable or superior quality by suppliers located outside a firm's home country. The purpose of this paper is to focus on India as a destination for offshore outsourcing of services and the challenges it faces in maintaining its leadership in this area. The paper discusses the growth of services outsourcing and the economic and environmental forces that have contributed to the outsourcing of high‐end services, also known as knowledge process outsourcing (KPO).

This article surveys the literature of offshore outsourcing and identifies strategic drivers and options that can help India to grow and consolidate its position as an exporter of services and build long‐term competitive advantages in its relationships with global partners. To understand why nations gain competitive advantage in certain industries, Porter's “diamond” model is utilized as a broad framework for examining policies and national strategies that can sustain India's competitive advantage in outsourcing of knowledge‐based services. The paper discusses India's current and prospective assets and liabilities that correspond to the model's four components.

The article discusses India's competitive edge as a leading supplier of knowledge‐based services and proposes a model for sustaining this edge. The model proposes key policy steps to move from the current position (e.g. supplier of business process outsourcing services) to a role of knowledge leader by providing advanced value added services to global clients. This model suggests ways in which a supplier nation can gain leverage in the value chain.

The article is conceptual, not empirical. Public and corporate policy implications are presented to strengthen India's competitive advantages in outsourced services.

The article presents a strategic roadmap with policy implications that can help move India up the value chain from being primarily a destination for low‐end business process outsourcing (BPO) to that of a co‐equal, high value‐adding partner or principal who offers knowledge leadership in the design and delivery of services for global markets.

The article discusses a nation's technical strengths, as well as cultural and infrastructure weaknesses, that can contribute to volatility as a global outsourcing leader. The article also presents strategies that can reduce a nation's vulnerabilities to competitive actions.

Finance and accounting (FA) offshore outsourcing is a growing trend involving a relocation of business processes to Asia but only few studies focus on understanding the issues that underlie the relocation of FA services. This paper aims to provide understanding of transaction costs economics (TCE) issues in FA offshore outsourcing using a case study of the Malaysia outsourcing industry which is growing and experiencing significant change.

This study uses a qualitative case study approach. Interviews cover several foreign firms, which are based in Malaysia and involved in FA offshore outsourcing services worldwide. Interviews also include related regulatory bodies in Malaysia.

Using TCE and management control theoretical framework, findings indicate issues and challenges faced by the firms and the need for contract management skills to mitigate the issues.

This study is limited to a broad discussion of FA offshore outsourcing, TCE and contract management but it could be a basis for future studies on specific issues of managing attrition in FA offshore outsourcing. This study contributes to prior works in TCE and FA offshore outsourcing by establishing controls to minimise costs at contact, contract and control stage. Specifically, this study emphasises contract management such as negotiating contract and using long‐term contractual arrangement.

This study not only identifies TCE issues in offshore FA outsourcing, but also provides suggestions for minimising transaction costs. For example, firms should consider the type of transaction costs involved and plan for appropriate contract management to mitigate the costs.

There is no study yet that discusses in‐depth the issues of TCE in FA offshore outsourcing especially in Malaysia and the need for contract management in mitigating such issues.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how country-of-origin (COO) perceptions of managers affect their provider selection for offshoring and offshore-outsourcing of services. In particular, it examines how economic and cultural attributes of the supplier’s host nation shape these choices and identifies whether these attributes have a substitutive, complementary, or competing relationship.

A quantitative study was performed using data collected from 235 managers in Saudi Arabia, which has relatively homogeneous managerial population with a clear significant cultural attribute and so presents an ideal setting to study the theory developed in this paper. Data were analyzed using a repeated-measures analysis of variance and a repeated-measures and doubly multivariate analysis of variance.

Building on signaling theory, it is shown that buyers from developing countries prefer suppliers from developed rather than culturally distant developing economies as stronger institutions in developed nations increase the credibility of firms. It is also shown that they prefer suppliers from developing countries that share a common cultural attribute such as religion over other developing countries, supporting social identification behavior and a substitutive relationship between cultural and economic attributes. Finally, they are indifferent between suppliers located in a developed and in a culturally similar developing country, even when the cost of obtaining the service is the same in both countries. In such cases, economic and cultural COO attributes have a competing relationship in provider selection.

It would be interesting to examine if the results of the current study extend to cultural attributes/cues other than religion that may shrink the social distance between buyers and suppliers.

Service multinationals from developing countries may struggle to establish credibility in the eyes of potential customers, who consistently evaluate them lower than firms in developed markets or firms from developing countries that share a common social trait with the potential customers. They can compensate for this by adopting policies that enhance pre-contract trust, invest in homogeneity capital that decreases the social distance between the two firms, or by focussing their sales efforts on countries with which they share a social/cultural attribute.

This paper contributes to the marketing and international business literatures by providing insights on how firms from developing countries can effectively compete in the global marketplace given COO effects. Overall, the results provide novel evidence of the importance of co-membership in transnational communities (for instance, religious groups across countries) in supplier selection and its relationship to economic attributes.

Offshore outsourcing of non‐core business process has rapidly evolved as a ubiquitous organisational phenomenon. However, failure to follow a clear, systematic and effective outsourcing strategy to evaluate threats, uncertainties and numerous imponderables can cause global enterprise businesses major setbacks. The reasons for such setback could be largely due to lack of core competency, careful legal planning and due diligence to operating models associated with an outsourcing initiative. This paper attempts to collate and exemplify the distinct qualifying processes accommodating contractual and intellectual property rights and provide a worthwhile debate on intricate legal considerations when structuring multi‐jurisdictional outsourcing deals.

The paper presents a comparative analysis of strategic legal and management framework by weighing the risks and evaluating the threats which would assist the decision making process of firms when selecting an appropriate offshore partner to carry out their IT‐development work.

Importance of legal intervention and due diligence to service agreements is further elevated as, at every phase of an outsourcing arrangement, compliance issues and contractual obligations can affect the success of an enterprise customer and its relationship with their outsourcing service provider.

The authors suggest that an exhaustive qualitative and quantitative industry specific research analysis be conducted in order to better define the principles and standards governing sub‐contracting arrangements.

A broader exposure to the strategic management and regulatory framework might provide firms with vantage points from which they could assess and identify new opportunities, evaluate threats and adopt effective risk mitigation strategies. Compliance to security standards and safeguard of information acquisition, analysis and usage should emerge as the mainstream strategy for outsourcing.

The paper offers insights and an overview of management and legal issues in the context of offshore technology outsourcing.

The present paper has as its aim to deepen in the study of information systems offshore outsourcing, proposing three essential steps to make this decision: weighing up the advantages and risks of offshore outsourcing; analysing the taxonomy of this phenomenon; and determining its current geography.

With that objective in mind, it was decided to base the research work on the literature about this topic and the review of reports and statistics coming from different sources (consultants, the press, public institutions, etc.).

Offshore outsourcing has grown vertiginously in recent years. Its advantages exceed even those of onshore outsourcing, though it also involves greater risks derived from the (cultural and physical) distance existing between customer and provider. Various types of services and customer‐provider relationships hide under the umbrella of offshore outsourcing; i.e. it is not a homogeneous phenomenon. The main offshore outsourcing customers can be found in the USA and Europe, mainly in the UK but also in other countries such as Germany and France. As for provider firms, most of them are located in Asia − outstandingly in India but also in China and Russia. At present, there are important providers scattered in other continents as well.

The conclusions suggest that the range of potential offshore outsourcing destinations must be widened and that the search for a provider cannot be based exclusively on cost savings; other considerations such as quality, security and proximity of the provider must also be taken into consideration. That is precisely the reason why the study of new countries like Spain as offshore outsourcing destinations is proposed.

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.