The Handbook of Global Outsourcing and Offshoring

Global sourcing is a complex area, and one that managers must get to grips with as business investment in outsourcing continues to climb. This book provides invaluable guidance for the reader, walking them through the fundamentals of global sourcing to very recent trends, including intelligent automation, cloud services and crowdsourcing. Replete with key examples and cases, it allows students and managers alike to relate academic theory to practice, acting as a roadmap to a rapidly evolving field.

For the last decade, the authors have studied the full spectrum of activities involved in global sourcing from both client, supplier and advisory viewpoints. Their research has shown that while more firms engage in global sourcing activities, many of them are still struggling to extract value from sourcing relationships. While past research has produced numerous practical frameworks regarding the management of global sourcing of services, little of this insight has been put into practice.

This book addresses such shortcomings by exploring the impact of theory on practice. It is important reading for any academic, student or practitioner concerned with global sourcing either from the client or supplier perspective.

• Outsourcing
• offshoring
• cloud computing
• innovation
• life cycle
• management
• reputation

“Written by outstanding academics well recognized for their expertise on the topic, this book is a ‘must-have’ to anybody embarking on the process of global sourcing or seeking to enhance their existing knowledge.”

— Professor Natalia Levina, NYU Stern School

 "This book is a must-read for industry practitioners wanting a practical, customer-centric view of how they should approach the market. The book is written in a succinct and jargon-free manner, making it easy for anyone to simply pick it up and get a good understanding of the topic at hand."

— Girish Ramachandran, President, Asia-Pacific,  Tata Consultancy Services

 “The Handbook of Global Outsourcing and Offshoring is outstanding. It is both insightful and practical. It is useful for companies that are considering outsourcing as a growth strategy as well as those that set out to provide high-quality outsourcing services to its clients globally.”

— John Peng, Executive Vice President, iSoftStone Information Service Corp

 “Opportunities and challenges of technology outsourcing and offshoring are rapidly changing, requiring stakeholders to consider new sourcing models and governance systems. This book offers the perspectives, frameworks and practices that any client and service provider needs to know about in order to ensure value creation from service sourcing“

— Heiner Himmelreich, Partner & Director, Global Technology Sourcing Practice, Boston Consulting Group

• University of Auckland Business School, Auckland, New Zealand

  Ilan Oshri, Julia Kotlarsky

• London, UK

  Leslie P. Willcocks

Ilan Oshri is the Director of the Centre of Digital Enterprise and a Professor of Information Systems at the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand. Ilan’s research interests revolve around sourcing, digital, work and innovation in business services. Ilan’s work was published in numerous journals including MIS Quarterly, Journal of MIS, Journal of the Association of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, The Wall Street Journal and others. Ilan has published 22 books and dozens of industry reports and teaching cases on global sourcing, digital transformations and emerging technologies.

He is the co-founder and President of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) Special Interest Group on Advances in Sourcing and the European and Chinese Global Sourcing Workshop. Ilan is currently serving as Senior Editor for the Journal of Information Technology.

Julia Kotlarsky is a Professor of Information Systems at the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand. She holds a PhD from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (Netherlands). Julia’s research interests revolve around technology sourcing and digital innovation in knowledge-intensive business services, digital sustainability and more recently, studying interface between artificial intelligence technologies and humans, focusing on data issues and digital transformation. Julia has published 17 books and has written extensively about these topics in both managerial and academic journals including MIS Quarterly, Journal of MIS, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology and Wall Street Journal. 

Julia is the co-founder of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) Special Interest Group on Advances in Sourcing and the European and Chinese Global Sourcing Workshop.  She serves as a Senior Editor for the Journal of Information Technology and Associate Editor for Journal of AIS and European Journal of Information Systems. 

Leslie P. Willcocks has a global reputation for his work in robotic process automation, AI, cognitive automation  and the future of work, digital innovation,  outsourcing, global management strategy, organizational change, IT management, and managing digital business. He is professor emeritus at the LSE, and associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford. He is co-author of 71 books on these subjects, and has published over 240 refereed papers in journals such as  Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Studies. His work appears in major media outlets such as Forbes magazine, HBR Online. He keynotes regularly at  international conferences, has delivered executive programmes globally for some 25 years and has been retained as adviser and expert witness by major  corporations and government institutions in the UK, USA, Europe   and Australia. Recent books include Becoming Strategic With Robotic Process Automation (2019), Global Business: Strategy in Context (2021) Global Business: Management (2021) (all available from www.sbpublishing.org).  Also Advancing  Information Systems Theories (2021, Palgrave Macmillan).