The ties that bind us: examining relationship marketing orientation and its impact on firm performance in the information systems outsourcing services sector

The objective of this study is to analyze the adoption of a relationship marketing orientation (RMO) by firms in the information systems (IS) outsourcing service sector. The study frames RMO as a hierarchical, reflective construct which models seven dimensions including bonding, communication, empathy, harmonious conflict resolution, shared value, trust, and reciprocity. A sample of 114 senior executives from firms in the IS outsourcing industry in Hong Kong were obtained from a survey. Empirical analysis via structural equation modeling confirms the hierarchical, seven construct reflective structure of the RMO model, and the high levels of a firms’ RMO lead to a direct positive impact on firm performance outcomes. The findings provide valuable managerial insights for measuring and managing an RMO in the IS outsourcing sector, and professional services generally. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed along with future research directions of the study.     

Outsourcing: Think more expansively

Outsourcing refers to the practice of a firm entrusting to an external entity the performance of an activity that was performed erstwhile in-house. Although off-shoring and offshore outsourcing to suppliers have dominated much of the recent discussion and debate on outsourcing in scholarly journals and the business press, the nature and scope of outsourcing that does not transcend national boundaries, and outsourcing to entities other than to suppliers is quite substantial. Against this backdrop, a five sources outsourcing framework delineating a broad array of outsourcing avenues available to firms is proposed. For the most part, lowering costs as a motive underlying off-shoring and offshore outsourcing have dominated recent discussion. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the rapid growth in offshore outsourcing in the services sector, the technological forces underlying these developments have been extensively written about. Against this backdrop, the relevance of considerations other than cost in the outsourcing decisions of firms, and the role of technology in automating and thereby either making redundant an erstwhile outsourced activity or performing the activity in-house are discussed.     

Offshore Outsourcing

The offshore outsourcing of IT services has become increasingly important for the global IT industry and is creating new uncertainties for the IT workforce in the USA and Western Europe. It is easy to overestimate the benefits of offshore outsourcing, however, if only wage cost differentials are taken into account and the many hidden costs are ignored. The following article discusses the advantages and risks involved in the different phases of offshore projects and presents some conclusions with regard to prospects.

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*Senior Researcher, German Institute for Economic Research, Berlin, Germany.

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**Research Assistant, German Institute for Economic Research, Berlin, Germany.     

新技术下服务产品“虚拟化”探究

产品"虚拟化"的服务业可以有效地摆脱困扰服务业的鲍莫尔"成本病"的影响,实现生产率的快速增长。本文通过一个双头博弈模型,借助"自助服务外包给顾客"的形式说明了"虚拟服务"大大优于现在占据主体服务市场的实体"柜台"服务,"虚拟服务"将取代实体"柜台"服务,从而实现服务业"产业化"经营的目标。     

浅析我国中小企业会计服务外包

国际数据公司在一份研究报告中提出,2008年全球财务和会计外包市场规模已达到470多亿美元,可见,会计服务外包得到了迅猛的发展。而在我国,会计服务外包还处于初步发展阶段。为此,结合我国中小企业的特点,就会计服务外包对中小企业发展的必要性、中小企业会计服务外包存在的问题及对策等方面进行探析,并展望了会计服务外包未来在我国的前景。     

外包与生产率和就业:基于中国的实证

文章使用1997、2002和2007年的42部门投入产出表数据,计算了我国22个工业行业的外包比率,并以面板数据模型检验了外包对工业行业劳动力就业及外包对工业行业产出的影响。检验结果表明,材料品外包、服务外包的发展均有效地提升了我国工业行业生产率水平,但服务外包对工业行业生产率的促进效应要远远大于材料品外包,而外包对工业行业就业影响的分析结果是,服务外包对工业行业就业的影响为正效应并且影响显著,材料品外包对于工业行业就业的效应则效果不明显。     

金融服务外包研究综述

近几年来服务外包是一个热门话题,国内外学者从不同视角进行研究,但对金融服务外包的研究较少。本文回顾了国内外关于金融服务外包方面的研究成果,系统阐述了金融服务外包研究的主要观点和研究方向;并对研究成果从研究主题、研究视角和研究方法等方面进行评价;最后对研究前景进行展望。     

Barriers to outsourcing household services to small business

It is popularly assumed that the main barrier that prevents household services from being outsourced to the small business sector is household disposable income. This paper evaluates critically whether this is the case. Reporting survey results from 418 households in the UK city of Sheffield, the finding is that cost is the main barrier in just 38% of instances. Nearly two‐thirds of household services are undertaken in other ways either out of choice or due to the poor availability, quality and reliability of provision by small businesses. How these barriers to outsourcing household services might be tackled is then addressed.     

反向服务外包如何影响中国的就业结构——以中国作为发包国的视角分析

本文利用2002年和2007年中国投入产出数据以及2004-2009年行业数据,定量分析了反向服务外包对中国就业结构的影响。本文的结论是:一方面,反向服务外包通过影响劳动需求,降低就业总人数;另一方面,从就业结构来看,反向服务外包将增加一个部门密集从事活动的劳动需求,例如,对于熟练劳动力密集的部门来说,反向服务外包将增加该部门对熟练劳动力的需求,这一结论与Feen-stra和Hanson(1996)理论模型的结论一致,但作用机制不同。     

国际外包率的测量及行业差异——基于中国工业行业的实证研究

本文利用Feenstra和Hanson计算外包率的方法和中国投入产出表数据,对中国1997-2006年34个工业行业的总体外包率、物质外包率和服务外包率分别进行了测量,然后按照要素密集度、技术水平和对外开放度对工业行业外包率进行了分组计算,最后测算了工业行业中不同类型的服务外包率。实证结果显示:中国工业行业的外包率稳步提升;资本及技术密集型行业外包率增长较快,高技术水平以及高开放度行业外包率明显高于低技术水平和低开放度行业;服务外包率普遍偏低,生产性和分配性服务业外包率高于消费性和社会性服务业外包率。本文在实证分析的基础上,进一步提出了提升我国工业行业外包率的对策和措施。     

Verbund von Industrie und Dienstleistungen wird enger

Structural change in highly developed countries is characterized by the increasing importance of the tertiary sector — especially production oriented services — at the expense of the secondary sector. The present paper analyzes the kinds of linkages between service industries and manufacturing branches using the results of a survey of firms carried out in parts of the German Rhineland. The results show that knowledge intensive services in particular help to strengthen the regions’ export bases. Furthermore, service industries and manufacturing industries are closely and increasingly linked to each other. In this process manufacturing industries demand highly specialized services while service industries give innovative impulses, helping to increase industrial firms’ competitive capability. Thus the importance of the manufacturing industry in this network is higher than statistical analysis is able to show. Regions are well advised, therefore, not to neglect the locational requirements of manufacturing industries.     

天津发展服务外包的比较优势及路径选择

本文从国内服务外包发展的现状和趋势分析入手，指出了当前服务外包主要承接国——印度服务外包发展模式存在的优势和劣势。同时结合天津市在发展服务外包方面存在的比较优势，提出了天津市发展服务外包的基本战略路线，并具体提出了一条适合天津市服务外包产业发展的最佳路径，为天津市的服务外包发展规划提供参考。     

承接跨国服务外包与我国经济增长的相互作用研究——与制造外包的比较分析

跨国服务外包成为我国经济新的增长点。本文对我国服务外包与工业、服务业增长的关系进行协整检验和格兰杰因果检验,并将其对比于制造外包与GDP的关系,结果表明:服务外包对经济增长的促进作用大于制造外包,并且服务外包对工业的促进作用大于对服务业的促进作用;而经济增长对服务外包的推动作用不明显。因此,我国大力发展服务外包具有一定的现实意义。     

武汉市吸引服务外包的竞争力分析

武汉市承接服务外包既面临着国外服务外包城市的竞争,也面临着国内其他基地城市的激烈竞争。通过采用描述性统计方法和因子分析方法将武汉与10个服务外包基地城市吸引服务外包的竞争力进行横向比较,武汉在吸引服务外包的商业环境以及人才储备方面具有一定的竞争优势,但服务外包产业竞争力与其它基地城市存在很大差距,在吸引服务外包的综合竞争力方面在全国处于相对弱势。应重点发展本土优势领域的软件服务,改善投资环境,提升武汉市服务外包的核心竞争力。     

公共部门服务外包的动因、对象及运作模式探析

近年来,由于面临预算减少、开支增大等财政危机以及随之带来的信任危机和管理危机等问题,公共部门开始对服务外包青睐有加,希望利用服务外包能够减少开支、缩小规模以及应对危机等优势,来缓解上述压力。文章通过分析公共部门服务外包的动因、对象、执行程序以及运作模式,以期对公共部门的服务外包行为进行较为全面地阐释和研究。     

Does Outsourcing to Central and Eastern Europe Really Threaten Manual Workers’ Jobs in Germany?

Starting from the observation of significant within‐industry skill‐upgrading, this paper analyses how international outsourcing has affected the relative demand for manual workers in German manufacturing during the 1990s. We combine trade and input‐output data to disentangle international outsourcing and trade in final goods and differentiate between the effects of narrowly and broadly defined outsourcing towards Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC), the European Union (EU15) and the rest of the world. Accounting for the endogeneity of international outsourcing by applying instrumental variable techniques, the empirical analysis showed that international outsourcing is indeed an important explanatory factor for the observed decline in relative demand for manual workers in German manufacturing. Particularly, outsourcing towards CEEC plays a major role, irrespective of whether a narrow or wide measure of outsourcing is applied. Using a narrow outsourcing measure and controlling for the adverse demand effects of skill‐biased technological change, time‐changing industry characteristics, wages as well as industry unobserved characteristics, international outsourcing towards CEEC is found to have lowered the manual workers’ wage bill share by 2.7 per‐centage points between 1991 and 2000. In its magnitude this effect is comparable to the skill‐biased effect of technological progress, as captured by our controls. Outsourcing towards countries outside CEEC and outside the EU15 is found to have small negative effects on the relative demand for manual workers, but only if one follows the broad definition of international outsourcing. Outsourcing towards the EU15 is, however, always found to be insignificant.     

内部审计外包与审计独立性

近年来,同一家会计师事务所提供审计服务和内部审计外包服务,其独立性备受各界争议。本文以2007-2009年发生内部审计外包服务且披露非审计费用的A股上市公司为研究对象,以操控性应计利润作为审计独立性的替代变量,旨在验证内部审计外包对独立性的影响情况。     

The performance implications of outsourcing customer support to service providers in emerging versus established economies

Recent discussions in the business press query the contribution of customer-support outsourcing to firm performance. Despite the controversy surrounding its performance implications, customer-support outsourcing is still on the rise, especially to emerging markets. Against this backdrop, we study under which conditions customer-support outsourcing to providers from emerging versus established economies is more versus less successful. Our performance measure is the stock-market reaction around the outsourcing announcement date. While the stock market reacts, on average, more favorably when customer-support is outsourced to providers located in emerging markets as opposed to established economies, approximately 50% of the outsourcing firms in our sample experience negative abnormal returns. We find that the shareholder-value implications of customer-support outsourcing to emerging versus established economies are contingent on the nature of the customer support that is being outsourced and on the nature of the outsourcing firm. Customer-support outsourcing to emerging markets is less beneficial for services that are characterized by personal customer contact and high knowledge embeddedness than for customer-support services that involve impersonal customer contact and are low on knowledge embeddedness. Firms higher in marketing resource intensity and larger firms benefit more from outsourcing customer-support services to emerging markets than firms lower in marketing resource intensity and smaller firms.     

The management perception of the strategic outsourcing of services: An empirical examination in the hotel sector

This work will analyse the strategy of outsourcing, or the predisposition on the part of a firm to entrust some of its services to a third party. The research will focus on discovering empirically the role that this strategy plays in hotels, and in order to do this we will carry out an analysis of hotel managers' perceptions regarding outsourcing based on the main advantages as well as the drawbacks and barriers which using the strategy can involve, with a view to determining which of these are related to a predisposition to outsource. The results of the research suggest that the main reasons which determine outsourcing are of a strategic rather that cost-reducing nature. Despite the fact that although current outsourcing is conditioned by the cost factor alone, any future increase in the use of the strategy will be determined exclusively by factors of a strategic nature. With respect to the disadvantages of outsourcing which tend to limit the use of the strategy, we will see that these are related to loss of control and autonomy together with a distrust of external suppliers. This work will enable us to assess the extent of the existing demand for outsourcing main services as well as those factors which determine and limit the outsourcing strategy and which have prevented a large number of services where outsourcing would be applicable from being outsourced to the present date. Finally we will present our main conclusions and recommendations.     

黑龙江省资源型城市发展服务外包的路径选择及对策——以产业转型为视角

当前,服务业已逐渐成为引领区域经济增长和社会发展的重要驱动力量,把服务外包作为资源型城市产业结构转型的出发点和落脚点,对于资源型城市健康稳定发展意义重大。黑龙江省应当立足自身资源优势,鼓励资源型企业主动参与服务外包,营造良好的服务外包公共服务环境,树立资源型城市服务外包企业的品牌形象,提高影响力,提高外包人才培养针对性,鼓励校企合作,将服务外包培养成黑龙江省资源型城市发展的接续产业。