A study of the outsourcing decision

Ketler, Karen; Willems, John R.

doi:10.1145/299513.299663

Cited by 21 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…A survey of more than 900 firms conducted by Ketler and Willems (1999) to determine the factors affecting the outsourcing decision resulted in identifying three crucial factors. These factors are cost savings associated with outsourcing, access to increased knowledge and expertise associated with specialty contractors and availability and quality of vendors.…”

Section: Review Of Literature On the Outsourcing Of Maintenance Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The risks include loss of control over quality and operation of services, loss of competitive advantage, loss of flexibility, and loss of security (Ketler and Willems, 1999). When organizations outsource some services to share risk, benefits are made by a service provider who is better able to estimate alternatives (Corbett, 1998).…”

Section: Factors Affecting Outsourcing Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Factors affecting outsourcing decisions of maintenance services in Saudi Arabian universities

Assaf

Hassanain

Al‐Hammad

et al. 2011

Property Management

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PurposeThe objectives of this paper are to identify the critical factors that influence the decision to outsource maintenance services in public Saudi Arabian universities, and to investigate the relative importance of each of the identified factors based on the expressed opinions of the in‐house maintenance managers in the concerned maintenance departments in these universities.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a comprehensive review of the literature in the fields of maintenance management and outsourcing practices to achieve a thorough understanding of the issues involved, and identifying the crucial factors affecting the outsourcing decision of maintenance services. A questionnaire survey was developed to assess each factor influencing the decision to outsource maintenance services in the public Saudi Arabian universities. The survey included 38 factors grouped in six major groups. The respondents who have opted to outsource several of their maintenance services to specialty contractors were asked to indicate their perceived level of importance for each of the identified factors. The level of importance of the factors and the groups were measured. The factor groups were ranked according to the obtained mean rating values.FindingsThe findings show that Saudi universities generally value the importance of the quality, management and strategic factors when making outsourcing decisions. The most important three factors influencing the decision to outsource maintenance services in the public Saudi Arabia universities were identified as “increase the speed of implementation”, “improve quality requirements” and “risk sharing with contractors”.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study provide practical value for facilities maintenance managers in institutions of higher education confronted with the decision of whether to outsource maintenance services in their campuses.Originality/valueThe paper is original in the sense that it identifies how in‐house maintenance managers rate the importance of the factors influencing outsourcing decisions.

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Section: Review Of Literature On the Outsourcing Of Maintenance Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Factors Affecting Outsourcing Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors affecting outsourcing decisions of maintenance services in Saudi Arabian universities

Assaf

Hassanain

Al‐Hammad

et al. 2011

Property Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…With respect to labor issues, employing outsourced workers can also lead to negative effects, due to a high level of individualism and a low level of interaction with insourced workers [39]. In addition, system outsourcing includes many disadvantages for system maintenance and management, including loss of control, failure to develop in-house expertise, and diminished data security [17,30]. IS outsourcing also often leads to problems of service degradation a few years after an initial contract is established, and that in turn increases service costs [12,34].…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of IS sourcing type on service quality and maintenance efforts

Park

Kim

2005

Information & Management

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“…For example, Sharma and Subramaniam (2005) and Carey, Subramaniam, and Ching (2006) showed that technical competence of the external service provider plays a significant role in deciding whether companies should either outsource or in-house their internal audit function. In the same vein, (Ketler & Willems, 1999) in their study in found that availability and quality of service providers and access to increased knowledge and expertise were positively associated with outsourcing of internal audit function. Barac and Motubatse (2009), investigated the extent of internal audit outsourcing practices within large listed South African companies, with a view of understanding the factors that determine internal audit outsourcing decisions.…”

Section: Technical Competence and Internal Audit Outsourcingmentioning

confidence: 84%