影響離岸外包的因素

外包這一術語在不同的環境中有不同的定義。它可以被解釋為與某一個企業或個人有合同協議的規定性的功能（高迪奧，麥倫，1996）。舉個例子來說，比如有一家保險公司可能會外包他的園林綠化和保安工作給那些在這些方面比較轉別的公司，因為這些種類的工作與保險行業或戰略沒有什么關聯。一個企業轉移他一個業務的所有權給一個指定的供應者（因加迪奧，埃因霍恩，2005）。被選擇進行這種外包服務的公司被我們稱為是第三方供應商或服務供應商。

外包通常都是基于被代理人沒有能夠用其他公司那樣的效率來執行指定的商業活動的最佳方案，所以不得不承擔大量的商務活動或流程來達到企業的既定目標。每一項的業務流程都耗盡了一定的資源，而那些消耗更多資源的將會降低最終的盈利率。對于一個企業來說，為了降低資源的消耗，他們會叫停一些與其消耗的資源相比并不會產生令人滿意的成績的活動（瓦拉拉亞，2008）。在這種情況下，企業同意與另一家能夠在特定的活動上發揮較為優秀的公司簽訂合同，這家公司也將以合作方的名義來繼續的推進特定的活動。

Factors That Influence Offshore Outsourcing

The term outsourcing seems to have different definitions depending on which area it is used. It can be defined as having a contract with another organization or individual to do a specified function (Gaudio & Myron, 1996). For instance an insurance company might outsource its landscaping and janitorial operations to those companies that specialize in that kind of work since they are not connected to insurance or strategic to the business. Outsourcing takes place when a company transfers the ownership of a business process to a specified supplier (Engardio & Einhorn, 2005). Those firms chosen to provide the outsourcing services are known as third-party providers or service providers.

Outsourcing is generally founded on the principal that no company can perform all of its assigned activities optimally and with similar efficiency as others and therefore has to undertake a number of business activities or processes so as to achieve its targeted objectives (Harbhajan & Varinder, 2006). Each business process uses up certain resources of the business and a business process that uses up more resources will in the end reduce the overall profitability. For an organization to reduce the resource consumption, business organization halts the performance of the activity that does not produce satisfactory output as compared to its resource consumption (Varadarajan, 2008). Here the organization undertakes contracting with another company that is better at performing the particular activity and would in the end carry forward the same on behalf of the business company.

Outsourcing may also occur through non-participation and need not to be limited to activities which only are shifted to external suppliers (Elmuti, 2003). On the contrary, it may arise when a company buys goods or services from outside companies despite the goods or services having not been previously completed in-house. In this case, organizations have no choice but to obtain a particular good or service from an external source due to lack of expertise or capital (Gaudio & Myron, 2006). Whether network companies are said to be outsourcing must be determined on a firm by firm or activity by activity basis.

RESEARCH DISCUSSION

Outsourcing strategies differ greatly in their breadth for instance majority of companies choose to maintain internalization of most of their jobs therefore having narrow outsourcing strategies (Elmuti, 2003). These kinds of organizations may decide to outsource just a few of their activities while in the process maintaining firm control over most of their other activities. Other companies however may choose to take a much broader approach as concerns their outsourcing strategies by farming out majority of the nonessential activities as well as those activities much closer to their interior capabilities.

Depth is yet another dimension of outsourcing strategies whereby organizations outsourcing some part of various activities are perceived to have higher levels of breadth while those farming out large portions of the value of each outsourced activity are viewed to have deeper outsourcing strategies (Gorg & Hanley, 2004). For instance, that company farming out an average of approximately 80% of each outsourced activity is said to have a deeper outsourcing strategy as compared to a similar organization farming out an average of only 10% of each outsourced activity.

There are various advantages and disadvantages associated with outsourcing and those companies. One of the advantages is that those firms which outsource often attain cost advantages relative to vertically integrated. By outsourcing, costs incurred during manufacturing as well as investment in equipment and plant is drastically reduced (Engardio & Einhorn, 2005). In the process fixed costs are also reduced and results to a lower break-even point and the short run cost improvement thus reinforces the outsourcing decision. Outsourcing may prove to be an attractive method of improving a company's financial performance, especially in the short run (Johan, 2006). Another advantage is that outsourcing contributes to in-house production which increases organizational commitment to a given form of technology and may restrict flexibility in the long run. It enables quick response to changes in the business environment in manners that do not add to the costs related to bureaucracy and therefore organizations that outsource are in a position to achieving long-run advantages as compared to those relying solely on internal production (Gaudio & Myron, 1996).

Increased focus on a company's core competencies is an important benefit related with outsourcing that is, outsourcing non-core activities enables the company to increase managerial attention as well as resource allocation to those activities that it performs best (Johann, 2006). It also allows the company to rely on management teams in other companies in order to oversee tasks at which the outsourcing company is at a relative disadvantage.

Defining and developing the interior competencies of the company has achieved great popularity among management researchers as well as practitioners and has increasingly resulted to a move away from market founded definitions of businesses towards more competence based definitions (Varadarajan, 2008). For instance Honda's interior capability is in small engine manufacturing and thus its domain can be viewed as any business in which this core capability finds an application. On the other hand, Nike's core capabilities are in the marketing and design of shoes rather than in their manufacture making the company's focus to be on the aspects of the athletic shoe industry relying on outside firms for all manufacturing activities (Gaudio & Myron, 1996).

In addition, outsourcing tends to promote competition among outside suppliers and in the process ensuring availability of higher and better quality goods and services in the future. Outsourcers may also realize quality improvements since they can in most cases choose suppliers whose goods or services are perceived to be among the best globally (Johann, 2006). Outsourcing is also advantageous in that it assists in spreading risk for instance by using outside suppliers for goods or services, an outsourcer is in a position to take advantage of technology that is coming up without having to invest significant amounts of capital in that particular technology. As a result, the outsourcer is able to change suppliers when market conditions demand (Gorg & Hanley, 2004).

Outsourcing develops internal staff in cases where large projects need to be undertaken that require skills which company staff do not possess. Outsourcing the project brings individuals with the required skills into the company and the company staff being able to work alongside them to learn as well as acquire the new skill set (Engardio & Einhorn, 2005). For instance a company needs to venture into a replacement or upgrade project on a number of custom built equipments and the company engineers do not possess the skills required to design new and upgraded equipment. Outsourcing proves helpful in this case since it allows the engineers to acquire new skill set and to learn from the outsourced workforce (Elmuti, 2003).

However, there are also some disadvantages associated with outsourcing. Some individuals argue that being dependent on outside suppliers might most likely lead to a loss of overall market performance as one of the most serious threats from such dependence is reduction in innovation by the outsourcer (Johann, 2006). This may occur when outsourcing leads to loss of long run research and development competitiveness due to its use as a substitute for innovation. In the end, organizations that outsource are more likely to lose touch with upcoming technological breakthrough which is meant to offer opportunities for product and process innovations (Harbhajan & Varinder, 2006). There is also the risk of suppliers acquiring knowledge of the product being manufactured and use that knowledge to start marketing the product on their own for instance majority of Asian firms have made their first entrance into the United States by penetrating supplier agreements with the nation's manufacturers and subsequently marketing their own products aggressively. Thus majority of Asian companies have attained market dominance (Johann, 2006).

The cost savings connected with outsourcing is yet another disadvantage of outsourcing that may not be as great as it appears especially with respect to outside suppliers. The transaction costs related with repeated market founded transaction can be significant and as long as foreign wages appear relatively low and the dollar remaining relatively strong, offshore outsourcing is attractive (Elmuti, 2003). Outsourcing requires a shift in the overhead allotment to those goods or services that remain in-house and this degrades the perceptible financial performance of the remaining goods or services thus raising their vulnerability to subsequent outsourcing, even at times resulting to an outsourcing spiral. In the process those remaining goods that performed satisfactorily before the inception of outsourcing might erroneously become targets for future outsourcing. Also, longer lead times that result from spatial dispersion cause a number of problems for instance communication and coordination difficulties, larger inventories, unexpected transportation and expediting costs as well as lower demand fulfillment (Gorg & Hanley, 2004). Tariffs are another disadvantage which may be connected to outsourcing as these increases in the difficulty of restoring into the company activities that may now add value due to market shifts.

A number of researchers and individuals have often questioned as to whether outsourcing raises profitability. Outsourcing can be used as a way of economizing production cost especially labor cost by in-house production substitution (Gaudio & Myron, 1996). The overall cost of outsourcing is not only determined by the cost of the purchased components but also by costs of transaction resulting from transportation and incomplete contracting costs as well as the implications likely to occur of asset specificity for the supplier and/or customer. Research has revealed that the viability of outsourcing is normally determined by the distribution of bargaining power between two or more participating companies, the number of potential partners in the market and the level of competition present in the market (Ibid, 1996). Large companies are perceived to be in a better position in attaining high bargaining power with their suppliers thus is better able to benefit from outsourcing.

Looking at industry characteristics, if there is presence of potential subcontractors in the industry and if the bargaining power is inclined towards the final manufacturer, or even if the level of competition among the subcontractors is high, final manufacturers are more likely to find outsourcing a viable approach (Varadarajan, 2008). The relationship between outsourcing and profitability is determined by the characteristic of the company or industry, especially its size. Therefore profits are highest for those companies or organizations that do not participate in any form of subcontracting be it as a supplier or as an outsourcer. Outsourcing often removes the process of direct communication between a company and its clients thus proving to be a disadvantage (Engardio & Einhorn, 2005).

This normally hinders the company from forming solid relationships with its customers often resulting to dissatisfaction on one or both sides. Another danger brought out is that of not being able to control some part of the company as outsourcing might lead to delayed communication as well as project implementation (Varadarajan, 2008). Any sensitive information or data is perceived vulnerable and a company may become too dependent upon its outsource providers leading to problems should the provider suddenly and unexpectedly call it off on their contract.

Offshore outsourcing on the other hand may be defined as outsourcing an organization's activity to one who is not on its shore or one who is beyond its shore (Gaudio & Myron, 1996). It is a concept in which the purchaser of the service or good is located in another country than the provider of the good or service. Many organizations are tempted to invest in offshore outsourcing resources since certain countries have easily accessible and vast resource as compared to their own countries that can be exploited to gain competitive advantage (Elmuti, 2003). Those countries which are currently developing are attracting many business companies from developed countries because they are providing quality services at economically cheap and affordable price as compared to developed countries. Factors such as manpower quality, manpower cost as well as infrastructure facilities in a country determine the attractiveness of that nation as an offshore outsourcing resource location (Harbhajan & Varinder, 2006). Legal and business environment in the service provider's nation also plays a key role in determining the development of offshore outsourcing.

It was not until 1970s that outsourcing began to efficiently be utilized within the production industry. In addressing the need for companies to increase into new markets without having to take on more expenses of hiring new personnel as well as creation of new departments, company managers began implementation of the strategy of contracting out some of its business activities to companies overseas (Harbhajan, & Varinder, 2006). This enabled the companies to continue growing and potentially increase into other markets while at the same time cutting back on costs. Increase in globalization has enabled organizations to gain access to specialized services in a number of fields for instance human resources, information technology and customer support. In addition, integration of global markets has added to the opportunities for companies to contract out their business activities to a highly affordable and skilled workforce in developing nations such as Philippines, China and India (Engardio & Einhorn, 2005). India is the world's largest export of outsourcing having revenues exceeding $7 billion and outsourcing information technology work to the country can result in saving off 50% or more.

Offshore outsourcing has transformed industry sectors and is also assisting majority of industries in manufacturing segments to increase competitiveness, information technology being in the lead (Elmuti, 2003). Offshore outsourcing is generally perceived as a key tool in reducing costs and the basic advantages of this type of outsourcing is that there is reduction in project timelines as well as savings on account of lower labor costs (Gorg & Hanley, 2004). When undertaking offshore outsourcing there are a number of new challenges related with it that an organization faces for instance legal costs, additional costs on vendor selection and transition costs which are certain to be incurred. Before an organization reaches the decision of outsourcing any part of their activities, it has to conduct a thorough analysis of its strategy, vision and goals (Johann, 2006).

Organizations as well as companies generally look to offshore outsourcing as a way to compete in a highly competitive global business environment and in the process to try improving the performance of their organization or company (Gorg & Hanley, 2004). They not only look to offshore outsourcing as means of cutting cost but also as a way of increasing efficiency, flexibility, innovation and productivity. For instance, Microsoft outsources its support work which mainly handles emails as well as phone queries on Microsoft software to India (Johann, 2006). The country has been chosen as an outsourcing location by many companies due to its ability to offer cost effective around the clock customer services as well as possession of high end technology. There has been a constant increase in the number of organizations looking to offshore outsourcing as a strategic means of improving financial performance of the organization and in the process increasing profitability. A recent study conducted revealed that 68% of firms outsource at least a few services with the key motivation being cost reduction. It also revealed that IT is the leading outsourced type of job activity closely followed by sales and human resource (Gaudio & Myron, 1996). Over 4 million jobs have been relocated from western countries to developing nations because of outsourcing.#p#分頁標題#e#

There are a number of key driving factors that influence offshore outsourcing decision by a company. One of the factors include high risk factor where those organizations involved in high risk industries opt to insure their risk by handing over the job to an offshore dealer who possesses advanced expertise on the matter (Engardio & Einhorn, 2005). On the other hand, it does not make sense for a company to shift all of its responsibilities to the outsourcing partner since it takes away the ownership of the activity from the company senior staff. Absence of experts or specialist is yet another factor influencing offshore outsourcing decisions.

Intricate process oriented projects usually demand expertise that may not be readily available in a company and the requirement may also not be full time. In this case, the only solution is to get the job or activity outsourced. Emphasis on perfect process should be considered when making offshore outsourcing decision since the main strength of the dealers who take up the outsourcing projects is their ability to regulate their internal processes (Elmuti, 2003). The progression of ad hoc and chaotic processes to reliable and mature software is a good example of this perfection of management process.

Company managers should consider savings in management time since time is literally money when one considers the management's involvement in secondary and routine work in a company. Company managers can concentrate on their main focus areas which tend to demand path breaking thoughts that are intelligent and give their attention to first priority processes by outsourcing the ordinary, repetitive activity to outside dealers (Gorg & Hanley, 2004). The possibility of irregular demand for personnel is yet another factor. Enormous projects consist of various small parts requiring specialist intervention but this need is sporadic making the company not to perceive the value in hiring a full time specialist. For instance a project that will be completed within a year or two does not urgently require a full time specialist on the rolls of the company thus it is wiser to outsource that part of the project to an offshore dealer and increase profits to the company through saving of the permanent cost on an employee (Harbhajan & Varinder, 2006).

As earlier indicated, there are various factors that can contribute to the success or failure of an offshore outsourcing project and even though all the factors must be considered before making the decision to outsource, there are four main factors that are important to a successful outsourcing project. They include cultural differences, cost savings, domestic conditions and project management. The main reason of outsourcing a project may be to reduce the costs due to the basic difference in currency between the two countries for instance in the case of outsourcing to India which is one of the most well recognized destinations offering external service (Varadarajan, 2008). Company managers however should possess complete understanding of farming out the work before embarking on offshore outsourcing. Another factor to keep in mind before going into any offshore outsourcing project is cultural differences. The organization should research on and have a better understanding of the culture of the country to outsource from. They need to have an understanding of the temperament of the kind of individuals they are going to do business with thus it is necessary to recognize their working strategies as well as the time frame they normally work in (Ibid, 2008). For instance employing a team of experts in India for a company's work requires one to blend with the nature of the Indian citizens. Performing a basic research on the culture of the nation will become useful in forming a long lasting relationship with them. Domestic conditions comprise of political and economic status of the country with which a company is planning on embarking outsourcing with.

Companies, organizations or industries mainly consider embarking in offshore outsourcing for the purposes of improving customer service delivery processes. They also purpose to achieve economies of production and focus on and improve core capability areas of the organization (Engardio & Einhorn, 2005). Development of the technological advances and production processes are also reasons for outsourcing. Outsourcing by a company may also be considered due to lack of professional expertise and manpower which is both qualified and well trained. Company managers ought to realize that outsourcing is not the solution to the company's problems and presence of any internal problem has to be carefully analyzed with utmost concern (Elmuti, 2003).

CONCLUSION

It is vital that company managers have a firm understanding of the influence each of the above mentioned factors has on the success of an outsourcing project. It is also important for them to list out all considerations for the decision to outsource and rank them in order of importance. If this is not implemented, it might result in selection of the wrong vendors or outsourcing of wrong processes leading to loss of valuable time as well as money for the organization.

Outsourcing is meant to allow organizations to focus on other business activities while having the details taken care of by outside professionals. In this way, large amount of resources as well as attention which might fall on the shoulders of company management professionals can be used for more broader and important matters within the organization.