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The Chief Information Officer of the Standard Bank Group, Brenda Niehaus, was contemplating her next steps. It is 2014 and she has just been appointed in her role and was burdened with a considerable set of challenges. Standard Bank Group's IT costs were far above industry benchmarks, delivery was slow, staff was unhappy and there were a couple of large signature projects that were over time and budget by orders of magnitudes. Her predecessor has embarked on a large whole scale outsourcing journey and a decision needs to be made if that will continue. Dawie Olivier, her Head of Build, advocates something different: Agile and DevOps. The dream in this approach is to have many small cross-functional two-pizza teams that work together in close proximity and build software. The code created on a developer's laptop will then seamlessly deploy to production automatically without the interference of pesky change control boards or some manual intervention. Should she continue with outsourcing or insource and focus on Agile? What she didn't realise was that her successors will all face a similar situation and that answers will not be ready at hand. Many organisations face a similar dilemma of balancing outsourcing, Agile, DevOps and general constraints around skilled resources. We provide a rich narrative of the choices CIOs face in developing countries around these themes to help students understand the risks and opportunities these different approaches bring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Considering the significance of care delegation in enhancing the quality of nursing care and ensuring patient safety, it is imperative to explore nurses’ experiences in this domain. As such, this study aimed to explore the experiences of Iranian nurses regarding the delegation of care. Methods This qualitative study was conducted between 2022 and 2023, employing the content analysis method with a conventional approach. The study utilized purposeful sampling method to select qualified participants. Data collection was carried out through in-depth and semi-structured interviews utilizing open-ended questions. The data analysis process followed the steps proposed by Graneheim and Lundman (2004) and involved the use of MAXQDA version 12 software. To ensure the trustworthiness of the data, the study employed the four rigor indices outlined by Lincoln and Guba (1985). Results In the present study, a total of 15 interviews were conducted with 12 participants, the majority of whom were women. The age range of the participants fell between 25 and 40 years. Through qualitative data analysis, eight subcategories and three main categories of “insourcing of care”, “outsourcing of care” and “delegating of care to non-professionals” were identified. Additionally, the overarching theme that emerged from the analysis was “delegation of care, a double-edged sword”. Conclusions The results of the study revealed that the delegation of care occurred through three distinct avenues: to colleagues within the same unit, to colleagues in other units, and to non-professionals. Delegating care was found to have potential benefits, such as reducing the nursing workload and fostering teamwork. However, it was also observed that in certain instances, delegation was not only unhelpful but also led to missed nursing care. Therefore, it is crucial to adhere to standardized principles when delegating care to ensure the maintenance of high-quality nursing care.

Since the auto industry's 2008 crisis, the decades-long trend toward outsourcing by the Detroit Three automakers has stalled. During and after the crisis, original equipment manufacturers moved work inside their corporate boundaries, including the purchase of eight previously spun-off parts plants. Why has this happened? Drawing on 77 interviews in the United States and Canada and 27 insourcing cases, the authors explore how and why insourcing has taken place. Past literature has considered the costs and benefits of creating the vertically integrated corporation, the managerial politics behind vertical disintegration, and the labor–management relations that shape both. While much industrial relations scholarship points to decentralized plant-level partnerships as a union strategy to win investment, the authors find that local unionists are intervening in the politics of the corporation above the plant level to influence the purchasing, manufacturing, and engineering functions that determine the sourcing decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: An increase in outsourcing of consultancy services has been observed during procurement and delivery of public-sector infrastructure projects. However, the incidence of project failure has continued unabated despite this shift by public-sector entities. Also, there appears to be limited literature focussed on seeking to provide the rationale governing the decision to outsource or insource consultancy services by public-sector organisations. The purpose of this study was to appraise the performance of public-sector projects in which consultancy services have been outsourced or insourced. These are the gaps which this study was undertaken to fill. Design/methodology/approach: A grounded theory methodology (GTM) research design was adopted based on the nature of evidence sought and gathered from a Provincial Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (PDPWI) in South Africa. Data was obtained from a mixture of semi-structured interviews and project-specific documents spanning a five-year period and was analysed according to the procedures associated with GTM. Accordingly, open coding, axial coding and pattern matching were carried out at several intervals to develop categories and themes. Findings: The findings of the study showed the absence of a structured approach within the PDPWI for facilitating decisions pertaining to outsourcing or insourcing consultancy services within construction projects. Furthermore, the study established that both approaches yielded similar results across all performance facets of cost, time and quality. In addition, a detailed insight into the steps required for the successful application of GTM in built environment research has been provided in the study. Originality/value: Limited studies have been undertaken to compare the impact of either outsourced or insourced services on the organisational and project performance. This was the gap to which the study reported in this paper was undertaken to contribute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw on the literature to categorise the supply chain disturbances (risks and uncertainties) that affect high-value manufacturing (HVM) firms when adopting the following two sourcing strategies: (a) insourcing/nearshore outsourcing, and (b) outsourcing/offshoring. We build a hierarchy structure of disturbances, which was tested in a case study of a European HVM operating in the aerospace industry. A novelty of this study is the quantitative prioritisation and comparison, using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, of the disturbances reported by two groups of managers: three product managers (internally facing) and four supply chain managers (externally facing). Our findings show that managers' perceptions of firm-related, network-related and location-related disturbances can be prejudiced by their functional boundaries. We show that both product and supply chain managers prefer the insource/nearshore outsource strategy, as they feel that the disturbances while outsourcing/offshoring are significantly greater and offset the benefits of low-cost production – a counterintuitive finding. Through in-depth interviews with both groups of managers, we found the mitigation strategies are reshoring, full consideration to the total cost of acquisition (including hidden costs of distant operations) and building clusters in emerging markets to support the firm's regional hub by partnering with its existing suppliers from developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The relevance of the paper is determined by IT expansion; striving the management of these enterprises for expenditure minimization connected with organization and management; positive changes in legislation, which contribute to the development of IT-enterprises. The article aims at disclosing the forms of accounting organization, taking into account the possibilities of their use at the IT-enterprises. The set goal is reached through using the methods of observation, comparison, analysis, synthesis, and generalization. The author generalizes the factors, which influence the choice of the accounting organization form at the IT-enterprise (requests from investors, IT-enterprise size, the duration of operating on the market, the general scheme of functioning the IT-enterprise), and determines the most acceptable options among each of them, The research of the requests brought out by employers to the bookkeepers for the IT-enterprises, confirms the necessity in the deep knowledge of the field peculiarity. The lack of experience in working in the IT field results in bookkeepers’ making a number of mistakes, the most important of which are generalized in the article (incorrect classification of operations, the availability of inaccuracy in accounting representation, the overstatement of tax base), and those, which require special attention from the management when checking the bookkeeper’s level of proficiency. The author proposes to choose the outsourcing or insourcing forms of accounting organization for IT-enterprise, taking into account the peculiarities of its activity. The results of the current study contribute to the rational organization of accounting at the IT-enterprise by choosing the optimal entity for its doing.

The article is aimed at researching the status of the Ukrainian accounting services market; allocating the features, advantages and disadvantages of the existing models of organization of providing accounting services with use of crowd technologies, as well as exploring the prospects for their introduction into activities of national enterprises. The most common models of providing accounting services with use of crowd technologies are analyzed: outsourcing, cosoursing, offshoring, insourcing, outstaffing. It is determined that accounting models, along with significant advantages, have a number of drawbacks. It is noted that the choice of a certain model, the ability and necessity of its use depends on the volumes and types of activities and is left to the owners of the enterprise, taking into account the advantages and presence of an economic effect. It is defined that Ukrainian market of accounting services is represented by a large number of enterprises and individual entrepreneurs, who are increasing the volume of services sold and are in the greatest demand among businesses and institutions in comparison with the ordinary population and other categories of consumers. It is substantiated that, provided the use of services of outsourcers by business owners, it is advisable to focus on the compliance of those who provide services to certain criteria, the main ones among them: professionalism and competence in the specifics and strategies of the customer’s activity; responsibility for result and quality; privacy; cost of accounting services. It is defined that the use of crowd technologies by enterprises in the organization of the accounting process will contribute to its optimization, obtainment of significant benefits from the use of additional resources, and increase in the ability to adapt them to modern economic realities.

A growing trend to simultaneously insource and outsource the same information technology (IT) activities (“concurrent IT sourcing”) has not yet received research attention. Although it is widespread and recent empirical studies have detected that in-house IT can complement IT outsourcing,whenandhowconcurrent IT sourcing pays off is not yet understood. This study introduces the notion of concurrent IT sourcing. It then develops two interrelated ideas: concurrent IT sourcing simultaneously enhances in-house and outsourced IT performance: (a) via distinctive mechanisms, but (b) only when vendors’ IT capabilities complement the client’s. Econometric tests using survey data from 233 firms support these ideas. Our novel contribution is to explain when and how concurrent IT sourcing enhances a client firm’s inhouse and outsourced IT performance. The explanatory mechanisms for outsourced IT performance are socialization and modeling of clients’ in-house IT practices by vendors; for in-house IT performance they are knowledge spillovers and ratcheting. For practice, our study shows that when a firm’s in-house capabilities complement its IT vendors’ capabilities, firms can simultaneously outsourceandinsource the same IT activities to enhance both in-house and outsourced IT performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Local governments are bringing previously outsourced services back in‐house. Research into explanations for sourcing decisions in the public sector is growing, however, few researchers have investigated drivers of both outsourcing and backsourcing in local public‐governance organizations. In this study we utilize transaction cost economic theory (TCE) and political ideology to investigate underlying motives of sourcing in local public governance organizations. Based on a 2018 survey of chief financial officers (CEO) in all of Sweden's 290 municipalities, this study shows that backsourcing is strongly associated with outsourcing and that outsourcing and backsourcing should not be understood as opposite phenomena, rather as interdependent phenomena in a dynamic sourcing strategy. Outsourcing and backsourcing are driven in part by different factors: Outsourcing by political ambitions and economic factors relating to TCE, while managerial and pragmatic concerns are foregrounded for backsourcing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations are increasingly dependent on their Information technology (IT) infrastructure to drive internal operational efficiencies and deliver enhanced customer experience externally. In todays' world, information technology acts as a backbone for most of the business organization, both in domestic and multinational corporations. IT components include hardware, software, data, processes and people. People are integral part of information technology management and are typically involved in the operations and management of IT components. Sourcing decision of an organization deals can with staffing and/or procurement of raw materials. Sourcing strategy can be global or domestic within the country of the organization. Our article is aimed at studying various human resources sourcing strategies in organizations such as outsourcing, offshoring, near shoring, reshoring, insourcing and how it is increasingly becoming more strategic decision in nature with its impact on organizational performance of meeting their strategic objectives. We adopted a narrative literature review method to research on existing literature on the topic and develop a conceptual base for future research. We find that sourcing decision is integral to an organization achieving its strategic objectives, thereby considered one of the strategic decisions in today's competitive and dynamic operating environment of organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The organizational structure of an enterprise should provide a system of effective management of operational processes, which can not function without optimal organization of accounting, which is a set of interacting units aimed at the holistic activity and development of the entity. The urgent issue is to study the qualitative and effective organization of accounting at the enterprise, to find alternative models of accounting organization through the use of services of external providers, to identify the relationship between them and differences in their application. The article focuses on such models of accounting organization as the organization of accounting by internal units and on a contractual basis by an external provider, i.e. the transfer of the maximum possible number of accounting processes and procedures to crowd technology (outsourcing, intsourcing, co-sourcing) in terms of accounting transactions’ organization. The essence of the concepts of outsourcing, offshoring, insourcing, outstaffing, co-sourcing is defined. A comparative analysis of these crowd technologies is conducted and their advantages and disadvantages for the purposes of qualitative organization of accounting transactions in the structure of the enterprise are determined. It is emphasized that the choice of any model of organization of accounting processes (outsourcing, insourcing, co-sourcing) is a strategic decision for the enterprise, since this decision is directly related to all aspects of enterprise management. In terms of digital economy formation, by means of information technologies and platforms, business models are dramatically changing. The use of an outsourcing/insourcing/co-sourcing strategy enables the company not only to reduce costs and increase the company’s capitalization, but to grow and develop at a faster rate.

The relevance of the paper is determined by IT expansion; striving the management of these enterprises for expenditure minimization connected with organization and management; positive changes in legislation, which contribute to the development of IT-enterprises. The article aims at disclosing the forms of accounting organization, taking into account the possibilities of their use at the IT-enterprises. The set goal is reached through using the methods of observation, comparison, analysis, synthesis, and generalization. The author generalizes the factors, which influence the choice of the accounting organization form at the IT-enterprise (requests from investors, IT-enterprise size, the duration of operating on the market, the general scheme of functioning the IT-enterprise), and determines the most acceptable options among each of them, The research of the requests brought out by employers to the bookkeepers for the IT-enterprises, confirms the necessity in the deep knowledge of the field peculiarity. The lack of experience in working in the IT field results in bookkeepers’ making a number of mistakes, the most important of which are generalized in the article (incorrect classification of operations, the availability of inaccuracy in accounting representation, the overstatement of tax base), and those, which require special attention from the management when checking the bookkeeper’s level of proficiency. The author proposes to choose the outsourcing or insourcing forms of accounting organization for IT-enterprise, taking into account the peculiarities of its activity. The results of the current study contribute to the rational organization of accounting at the IT-enterprise by choosing the optimal entity for its doing.

This paper presents the Experiment in a Box (XB) framework to support interactive technology design for building health skills. The XB provides a suite of experiments—time-limited, loosely structured evaluations of health heuristics for a user-as-experimenter to select from and then test in order to determine that heuristic’s efficacy, and to explore how it might be incorporated into the person’s life and when necessary, to support their health and wellbeing. The approach leverages self-determination theory to support user autonomy and competence to build actionable, personal health knowledge skills and practice (KSP). In the three studies of XB presented, we show that with even the short engagement of an XB experiment, participants develop health practices from the interventions that are still in use long after the intervention is finished. To situate the XB approach relative to other work around health practices in HCI in particular, we contribute two design continua for this design space: insourcing to outsourcing and habits to heuristics. From this analysis, we demonstrate that XB is situated in a largely under-explored area for interactive health interventions: the insourcing and heuristic oriented area of the design space. Overall, the work offers a new scaffolding, the XB Framework, to instantiate time-limited interactive technology interventions to support building KSP that can thrive in that person, significantly both post-interventions, and independent of that technology.

This paper presents research on the need for boundary spanners in organizations that has an offshore insourcing strategy for the IT-function. The research question addressed was: How does an offshore insourcing strategy influence the need for having boundary spanners? Empirical data was collected using a case study in three phases, including semi-structured and structured interview in a multinational company. Boundary spanners is often presented as being of great importance when the IT-function is outsourced. The main conclusion is that boundary spanners that has the capability to communicate over the borders in this kind of organizations is also of high importance. This capability is likewise important in an offshore insourcing case as in the offshore outsourcing case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision to outsource organizational activities is studied widely, but research on the insourcing of outsourced activities is scarce. We study the outsourcing decision as a process, and investigate the influences of organizational mechanisms on its sustainability. We argue that organizational learning from the outsourcing decision process could over time result in competencies that enhance the sustainability of outsourcing decisions. We examine outsourcing and insourcing processes longitudinally. The results indicate that the outsourcing process mechanisms, especially the mechanisms associated with implementing the outsourcing decision, predict insourcing. We discuss the implications for future research on outsourcing and insourcing of public services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the mainstream of globalisation and a new trend of slowbalisation, we review the existing literature including both empirical and analytical papers on the sourcing and location decisions in Supply Chains. After defining the different sourcing strategies, e.g., insourcing, outsourcing, offshoring and reshoring, we present the drivers for each strategy and how they can be incorporated in the analytical models in order to help to optimize the taken decisions. We also discuss the research perspectives in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is aimed at determining the optimal organizational structure of accounting service in connection with the emergence of modern forms of accountance – outsourcing and insourcing. The approaches to interpretation of the organizational structure of the accounting service have been defined, as well as the main factors influencing its building in the current conditions have been identified. The basic criteria for the enterprise’s selection of outsourcing or insourcing in the course of construction of an accounting service structure have been provided. The peculiarities of organization of work at the enterprise-outsourcer depending on its territorial placement have been determined, that defines the model of accounting and the way of organization of information infrastructure. Prospect of further research is substantiation of determining the economic feasibility of the enterprise’s transition to the accounting outsourcing.

Public pension funds are engulfed in a severe funding crisis. At stake is the financial stability of state and local governments as well as the welfare of over thirty million public-sector employees. Although cutting back on external asset management expenses could help save billions in taxpayers' money and improve public pension funding, recent research suggests that public pensions remain predominantly outsourced and keep paying high fees to private-sector asset managers. This article examines why public pension funds outsource their asset management functions. It relies on mixed methods, juxtaposing positivist and reflexive approaches. The study relies on an econometric analysis of a unique panel data set of twenty-one state pension plans. The model tests specific relationships between levels of outsourcing and the organizational, economic, and political context in which these plans are embedded. The results indicate that outsourcing is linked to plans' (1) investment return targets, (2) allocation to nondomestic and private market investments, (3) local financial sector vibrancy, and (4) proximity to a leading financial center. These quantitative results are enriched with insights from thirty-seven semistructured interviews with investment professionals employed by a top-performing state pension plan. The interviews help shed further light on how distance, politics, and governance affect pension plans' outsourcing strategies. This article contributes new insights on context to economic geographic literature on pension decision-making as well as new perspectives to financial geography literature on the role of place and distance in institutional asset management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the difficult decisions that a Chief of Information Manager takes is whether to use organisational resources or to contract suppliers, in order to perform information technology (IT) projects. Over the last decade, managers in Israel have moved from insourcing to outsourcing due to different reasons, mainly to reduce costs and focus on their core business. In the last two years, they started to return IT projects, services, and activities back, using new source models. This study examines the tendency of the Israeli IT managers in sourcing decisions in order to understand the problems, application and suitability of various kinds of models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

В статье рассматривается вопрос развития аутсорсинга как явления и формы взаимодействия компаний. Рассматривается понятие аутсорсинга, сферы его применения, развитие применения в историческом аспекте. Рассматривается и анализируется международный и отечественный опыт по применению аутсорсинга как формы взаимодействия. Рассматривается понятие и особенности ИТ-аутсорсинга, выделение ИТ-аутсорсинга как отдельной категории, а рынка ИТ-аутсорсинга как отдельной сферы. Проведен анализ особенностей и основных проблем развития ИТ-аутсорсинга в России, проведен анализ влияния инсорсинга на рынок ИТ в России. Сделаны основные выводы относительно перспектив развития ИТ-аутсорсинга в России связанные с необходимостью делегирования полномочий и в то же время о необходимости, для развития рынка, опознавания участниками рынка ответственности за принятие решений, в том числе, в части передачи функций на аутсорсинг или переводу их на инсорсинг, о необходимости сохранения баланса полномочий и ответственности.

The 2008, market crisis made the national siderurgy industry reconsider its cost structure in order to maintain its competitiveness. Among the adopted strategies, insourcing was used in order to reduce costs and improve its productive capacity from its people and equipments resulting from declining sales. This research has been developed within this context and has as its objective to quantify the results of this choice. In order to achieve this objective, an insourcing case study of mechanical maintenance at ArcelorMittal Tubarão (AMT) was used. Among the main advantages of insourcing at AMT are: the reduction of 24, 41% in maintenance services costs; a reduction in the level of rework and the level of lost time injuries (LTI); increased productivity and the index for available time fulfillment on shutdown. The factors that most contributed for the services insourcing are: collective bargaining agreements of the contractors higher than those of contracting and the incidence of profit, management fees (rates administration) and taxes on the cost of labor and benefits to employees. This research also concludes that if the service prices of third parties were only adjusted based upon the inflation index (INPC) over the last ten years, the insourcing of services, if viewed from the costs standpoint, would have been unfeasible.

This paper extends a previous study that proposed an integrated model to test knowledge sharing (KS) motivation among information technology (IT) workers. While the previous study focussed on the differences in KS between internal and external IT workers, the perspective of the current paper is broader; it proposes additional hypotheses, and uses both inferential statistics and data mining techniques to detect further practical aspects of the integrated model findings. Because data mining techniques are useful in extracting patterns and gaining insights from data, they are implemented here alongside inferential statistics. The present study also looks into the employment-contract factor, to better capture the differences between internal and external IT workers. The study reveals that external workers score significantly lower than internal workers in almost every component of the integrated KS model. This gives rise to five practical implications of knowledge management (KM) and employment policies, including factors and practises that should be taken into consideration while employing external workers, to help motivate collaborative behaviour in IT departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Make-or-buy decisions on technology-intensive components represent a key task in the management of technologies. Against this background, this paper presents an analysis of a technology company which gave key insights into their make-or-buy decisions on the strategic and operative level. The results show two kinds of make-or-buy decisions, called type 1 and type 2. In contrast to type 1 make-or-buy decisions whose scope is mostly limited to the production and quality function, type 2 decisions are strongly linked to engineering and R&D activities. Moreover, two new decision matrices are introduced: a ‘product/subsystem aggregation’ scheme and a ‘make-or-buy controlling’ matrix. In an environment in which companies move towards greater use of outsourcing, the framework ensures that company strategy and core competencies are followed in the long run despite short-range deviations of make-or-buy analysis results. These findings might be helpful and suitable to other manufacturing companies that deal with technology-intensive components on a strategic and operative level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]