Abstract
This paper focuses on the discussion concerning the way how outsourcing decisions, regarding one or more of the companies' functions, can positively affect the internal value creation process and, thus, business performance, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Based on the existing literature about Outsourcing a theoretical model was conceptualized to analyze and evaluate the influence of outsourcing on industrial and business value creation. The investigation process involved the collection of data through a questionnaire, applied to a representative set of SME's from the Portuguese economic fabric – resorting. The main conclusions to be taken from this research are: (i) that outsourcing does present a verifiable set of statistically relevant direct and indirect effects upon the internal value creation process and, moreover, (ii) that outsourcing does generate a positive, and statistically relevant, indirect effect on business performance, through the internal value creation process.
Highlights
Today, outsourcing is considered by a wide range of business-people, managers and academics as a management tool that can give flexibility to the firm and its cost structure and as a way to access technology, competences and capital, among other benefits
The indirect effect caused by the system of motivations for outsourcing on business performance through the creating value process is significant which reveals its importance for the management of companies
Considering the results obtained in the confirmatory analysis, we can infer that today outsourcing is a widely accepted management instrument and/or tool and already implemented to some degree by a significant number of companies operating in the Portuguese market
Summary
Today, outsourcing is considered by a wide range of business-people, managers and academics as a management tool that can give flexibility to the firm and its cost structure and as a way to access technology, competences and capital, among other benefits. Strategic Outsourcing aims to orient and lead the firm towards specialized, differentiated production, helping it to focus on what is crucial and important for its continuity, its key competences, critical business processes and activities of value (acquiring in the market the competences to support internal processes) In this way is it possible for firms choosing outsourcing to satisfy completely all the critical success factors necessary for correct implementation of this type of practice, without jeopardizing investments and above all taking advantage of possible synergies of a strategic and operational nature [1,4,23,26]. Firms that focus on what is essential and able to produce value can discover good opportunities in outsourcing, as a means to reduce costs and as a means to improve service, the quality of processes and the business This category of reasons covers various aspects: concentrating on the activity, flexibility and risk-sharing, process improvement and organizational and functional change [6,9,11,22]. Political reasons are induced by control of management and conflict-solving [5,18,27,31]
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