Classification of Outsourcing Phenomena in Financial Services

Financial service companies have developed a wide variety of outsourcing phenomena over the course of recent years. The goal of this paper is to conceptualize these phenomena to the extent that they can be specified in descriptive dimensions, thus making it possible to differentiate between different outsourcing scenarios. This classification will form the basis for the subsequent development of scenario-specific methods. Only then will it be possible for companies in the financial services sector to depart from their previous approach to outsourcing which up to now has largely been individual if not intuitive in many cases. Instead, they will be able to systematically analyze which outsourcing scenario applies to them, and adopt methods developed for the respective scenario while drawing on the experiences of other companies in comparable situations. Based on interviews and the discussion of related work, a four dimensional framework and appropriate scales are proposed. Using references to the “outsourced components”, “outsourced activities”, “service individualization” and “degree of independence” dimensions, respectively, various current outsourcing phenomena are then classified

New Trends in Development of Services in the Modern Economy

The services sector strategic development unites a multitude of economic and managerial aspects and is one of the most important problems of economic management. Many researches devoted to this industry study are available. Most of them are performed in the traditional aspect of the voluminous calendar approach to strategic management, characteristic of the national scientific school. Such an approach seems archaic, forming false strategic benchmarks. The services sector is of special scientific interest in this context due to the fact that the social production structure to the services development model attraction in many countries suggests transition to postindustrial economy type where the services sector is a system-supporting sector of the economy. Actively influencing the economy, the services sector in the developed countries dominates in the GDP formation, primary capital accumulation, labor, households final consumption and, finally, citizens comfort of living. However, a clear understanding of the services sector as a hyper-sector permeating all spheres of human activity has not yet been fully developed, although interest in this issue continues to grow among many authors. Target of strategic management of the industry development setting requires substantive content and the services sector target value assessment

The Use of Hosted Enterprise Applications by SMEs: A Dual Market and User Perspective

YesThis deliberately dual perspective paper seeks to deepen our understanding of the engagement of SMEs in hosted enterprise applications in the UK. The emergence and development of the ASP sector has attracted much interest and highly optimistic forecasts for revenues. The paper starts by considering ICT adoption by SMEs in general before reviewing the provision of hosted enterprise applications in the US and UK (market perspective). The study is extended by qualitative empirical data collected by semi-structured interviews with SME users of hosted enterprise applications (user perspective) and subsequent analysis in order to develop the key findings and conclusions. From an SME user perspective the key findings to emerge from the study include: i) confirmation that ICT infrastructure was no longer a barrier to adoption, ii) the pragmatic approach taken to security issues, iii) the use of both multiple information systems and multiple service providers, iv) the financial attractiveness of the rental model and v) the intention to continue or extend the use of hosted applications. It also highlights the opportunity for gaining competitive advantage by using hosted enterprise applications to reduce costs. There are very few empirical studies of hosted applications which take deliberately market and SME user perspectives - this paper makes an important contribution in this emerging field

Working paper 06-07 - Potential ICT-enabled Offshoring of Service Jobs in Belgium

This paper provides a rough estimate for Belgium of the proportion of service jobs at risk of being offshored in the wake of ICT-developments, and compares the results for Belgium with results for the EU15 and the US. Occupational employment data from the Labour Force Survey are used to produce this estimate by identifying service jobs that could possibly be offshored due to ICT-enabled tradability. The results show that the share of such jobs is lower for Belgium than for the EU15 or the US, but that there is an upward trend in this share over the period 1993 to 2005. Industry-level data and a shift-and-share analysis are used to explain the results.ICT

THE "NEW ECONOMY" AND THE ENTREPRENEUR: REASSESSMENT AND PERSPECTIVES IN THE CONTEXT OF XXI CENTURY

Industrial revolutions, the progress in IT industry, the growth rate of developing new technologies, global competition, liberalization of markets, continue to demand change, globalization of market, economic and financial crisis are just some of the causes that have contributed to the restoration of a new global economic with direct impact on business entrepreneur. Changes socio-economic level paradigm is reflected both in changes to management and organization paradigms enterprise activity in the product market, at work, at the performance that follows the entrepreneur. In this article we tried a summary of mutations in these paradigms, mutations that will rearrange and reposition the business entrepreneur in the current context of a sustainable economy, based on knowledge, so-called \"new economy\"."new economy", sustainable development, entreprise, paradigms, changes, global performance

”In a perfect world we don’t need them or want them – but the world isn’t perfect” : the United Nations and the private arms

Tutkielma on temaattisesti kiinnostunut erityisesti 1990-luvulla räjähdysmäisesti kasvaneista yksityisistä sotilas –ja turvallisuusalan yrityksistä. Työn tarkoituksena on avata näiden yritysten sekä Yhdistyneiden kansakuntien (YK) välistä yhteyttä sekä tutkia, millaista toimijuutta YK yrityksistä tuottaa. Tutkielman lähtökohtana on asetelma, jossa YK on itse perinteisestä normatiivisesta suhtautumisestaan huolimatta toimialan merkittävä asiakas, sekä lukuisista eri tekijöistä sekä kehityssuunnista johtuen kasvavasti kiinnostunut yritysten tuottamista palveluista. Työ lähestyy tutkimusaineistoa vahvan teoreettisesta näkökulmasta. Teoria koostuu Sarah Percyn teoksessa Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations (2007) esitetystä kieltävän normin käsitteestä. Teorian ydinajatuksena on kansainvälisissä suhteissa läpi historian vaikuttanut kieltävä normi, joka esittää palkkasoturit moraalisesti ongelmallisina, sillä he ovat yksinomaan motivoituneet rahasta – ja he eivät näin ollen toimi aatteesta – ja toisekseen, toimivat legitiimiksi koetun kontrollin ulkopuolella. Analyysin tehtävänä on peilata tätä kieltävää normia tutkimusaineistoon ja tutkia, kuinka voimakkaasti normi on aineistossa havaittavissa. Kysymys on kiinnostava ottaen huomioon toisaalta YK:n aiemman, vahvasti normatiivisen diskurssin sekä toisaalta sen oman, edelleen kasvavan riippuvuussuhteen yksityisistä sotilas –ja turvallisuusalan yrityksistä. Analyysi osoittaa, että kieltävä normi vaikuttaa edelleen YK:n tuottamassa puheessa. Yksityiset sotilas –ja turvallisuusalan yritykset nähdään melko verrannollisina palkkasotureihin, joskin tämä diskurssi vaimenee mitä myöhäisemmästä aineistosta on kyse. Tämä näkyy muun muassa siinä, että yritysten sekä niiden työntekijöiden nähdään omaavan yksinomaan rahallisia intressejä. Yhtä lailla, yritysten toiminta nähdään uhkana valtion harjoittamalle väkivallan monopolille. Tästä huolimatta yritykset nähdään myös YK:lle tarpeellisina, sekä niiden läsnäolon lopullisuus YK:n kontekstissa tunnustetaan

Globalisation, Employment, and Wage Rate: What Does Literature Tell Us?

This paper provides a literature review on the labor market outcome of international trade and outsourcing trends in developed countries, focusing on employment, wage rates, and wage dispersions. However, the literature offers ambiguous answers. International trade and outsourcing are examined not to be the determinant force of labour market movements. It tends to add to rising inequality and lowering the demand for low-skilled workers in Anglo-Saxon economies, while there is no clear-cut result for continental Europe. It induces skill-biased wage differentials and cross-sector change. Causality of globalisation effects on labour market and the inter-sectoral spill-over effects are underappreciated.globalisation, trade, offshore outsourcing, employment, wage rates, skill bias

Home country effects of offshoring. A critical survey on empirical literature.

The International fragmentation of production processes is of rising importance. One part of this fragmentation involves the relocation of a production process from a home- to a new host country. This literature survey deals with the effects of such relocations on the home country. First of all, we try to conceptualize the terms and definitions most frequently used in this context which are "outsourcing", "offshore outsourcing" and "offshoring". Despite the fact that there is little textual documentation dealing directly with the phenomena of offshoring and offshore outsourcing we try to give an overview of possible empirical literature to which one can regard to. Including FDI literature we try to cover empirical literature which can provide helpful insight on the effects of a relocation to foreign countries on the home country in connection with wages, skill upgrading, prices, profits, taxes and unions. (author's abstract)Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordinatio

Outsourcing and financial performance: A negative curvilinear effect

This study asks how a firm's degree of outsourcing across all activities influences financial performance. We argue there is an optimal degree of outsourcing, where firms outsource some activities yet integrate others, and that deviations lower performance in a negatively curvilinear fashion. We find empirical support, using 1995 and 1998 data on a sample of manufacturing businesses in the Netherlands, and show that the steepness of the curve increases under conditions of high uncertainty. We show the magnitude of the uncertainty effect on performance outcomes through a post hoc scenario analysis. Thus we provide a specific, theoretically and empirically grounded prediction of how outsourcing affects performance with implications for theory and practice

The Muddles over Outsourcing

Critics have muddled the public debate over offshore outsourcing by using the term interchangeably to refer to altogether different phenomena such as on-line purchase of services, direct foreign investment and, sometimes, all imports. We argue that clarity requires distinguishing among these various phenomena and define outsourcing explicitly as the services trade at arm's length that does not require geographical proximity of the buyer and the seller—the so-called Mode 1 services in the WTO terminology—conducted principally via the electronic mediums such as the telephone, fax and Internet. The definition is appropriate because this is the phenomenon that is relatively new and scary in public consciousness and has fueled the recent “outsourcing” debate. Under this definition, the total number of the U.S. jobs outsourced annually is minuscule and is expected to remain so over the next decade, even on a gross basis (i.e., without adjusting for the jobs in-sourced from the U.S.). The fears that offshore outsourcing will lead to high-value jobs being replaced by low-value jobs down the road are also argued here to be implausible in view of several qualitative arguments to the contrary. We also demonstrate that offshore outsourcing of Mode 1 services raises no new analytical issues, contrary to what many fear. Thus, it leads to gains from trade (with the standard caveats applicable to conventional trade in goods) and, in specific cases, to income-distribution effects.Outsourcing,WTO, Services