Issues in relationship management for obtaining the benefits of a shared service center

Abstract

Shared service centers (SSCs) are gaining importance in public administration as a means to innovate, reduce costs and increase service levels. By unbundling and concentrating activities, the basis premise for a SSC seems to be that services provided by one local department can be provided to others with relatively few efforts. Within public agencies there is a debate about how to manage SSCs to gain the benefits expected. The goal of this research is to investigate how to deal with management issues to obtain the promised benefits. It is likely that many of the issues and managerial problems can be associated with more traditional forms of outsourcing. Therefore we investigate a case study based on insights from outsourcing literature and the framework of Kern and Willcocks proposed in the relationship advantage. The framework was found to be appropriate for analyzing our case study. The management of a SSC demands complicated relationships consisting of a mix of cooperative and competitive characteristics. The outcomes of this case study have resulted in a number of observations about SSCs and also about the differences between the management of relationships in SSCs and outsourcing.