The effects of global outsourcing strategies on participants’ attitudes and organizational effectiveness

Abstract

Global outsourcing is a management strategy by which an organization delegates major, non‐core functions to specialized and efficient service providers. Global outsourcing represents a significant shift in the way organizations manage and staff their business support activities. While global outsourcing has received considerable attention from practitioners and consultants, there has been little empirical research published on global outsourcing. This study explores why and how organizations are using global outsourcing and identifies problems that effect global outsourcing success. The results showed that organizations generally considered themselves successful at global outsourcing. However, while they achieved significant improvement in organizational effectiveness, they were not achieving the order of magnitude improvements ascribed to global outsourcing.