This paper reports on data pertaining to outsourcing collected from a survey administered in 2002 in Australia. The underlying assumption was that outsourcing is becoming popular for sound business reasons such as economies of scale and enabling executives to concentrate on core business activities. This paper explores the outsourcing decision (to outsource, not to outsource, or to discontinue outsourcing), especially reasons for (not) outsourcing. Most of the reasons have been anticipated in the literature. The strongest group of reasons (termed “Operational”) pertained to cost savings and improving performance, but outsourcing is also used to access skills and resources not available in‐house. The most important impediment to outsourcing was ascertaining relevant costs, and formulating and quantifying requirements. We describe the methodology, report findings and allude to future research.

This paper uses regression analysis of factors obtained from measured variables to find statistical relationships between investment in advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), the planning effort associated with that investment and operational performance of manufacturing firms operating in Australia and Canada. We used this data to test the proposition that foreign firms manage the implementation of AMT better than their domestic counterparts. Several reasons have been advanced for this largely untested proposition. Three hypotheses derived from it were supported by statistical analysis even when the effect of different organisational sizes is taken into account; lending some support to the persistent idea that Australian managers are not as effective as their overseas counterparts.

The authors would like to thank Richard Schroder for organizing the survey's mechanics and applying statistical tests. Comparing quality management 815Studies showing positive results of quality programmes include those by Tanner et al.;. Some studies which describe and/or attempt to explain the failure of quality programmes are those of Eskildson, Holoviak, Cordeiro and Turner, Powell,. Past work on QMPQuality gurus such as Juran, Deming and Crosby[9-12] have advocated various methodologies for business success and single out some quality practices such as the engagement of top management and use of statistical techniques.Hammond [13], although not defining QMP explicitly, designed a survey applied to service and manufacturing organizations in several countries which investigated business organization and culture, product and service development, delivery processes and customer satisfaction and quality and strategic planning. One objective was to determine what quality practices were specific to particular industrial groups or sectors and which were universal.Badri et al. [14] conducted a thorough study of 120 hypothesized components of QMP. They used factor analysis on the 424 responses to a survey of United Arab Emirate firms, to show that QMP could be reduced to eight factors which they labelled as:(1) top management leadership;(2) role of quality department;(3) training;(4) product design;(5) supplier quality management; (6) process management;(7) quality data reporting; (8) employee relations. They note [14, p. 49] that manufacturers are much more inclined than service providers to use QMP.The analysis of Sohal and Lu[15] reflects the authors' conversations with business executives. The elements of QMP reflected in this article are:• The primacy of the customers' perception of quality.• Continuous improvement.• Vendor partnership.• The use of statistics to measure performance.• Employee involvement (comprising goal setting, measurement, empowerment and recognition of performance). Mraz [16] reports on a study undertaken by the American Quality Foundation and Ernst & Young. The thrust of this article is that some QM practices are not

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