文档介绍：Outsourcing in a Global Economy: Traditional
Information Technology Outsourcing, Offshore
Outsourcing, and Business Process Outsourcing
Rudy Hirschheim and Jens Dibbern
1 Introduction
The notion of outsourcing – making arrangements with an external entity for the
provision of goods or services to supplement or replace internal efforts – has been
around for centuries. Kakabadse and Kakabadse (2002) track one of the earliest
occurrences of outsourcing to the ancient Roman Empire, where tax collection was
outsourced. In the early years of American history, the production of wagon covers
was outsourced to Scotland, where they used raw material imported from India in the
production process (Kelly 2002). Outsourcing remained popular in the manufacturing
sector, with part of the assembling in many industries being sub-contracted to other
organizations and locations where the work could be done more efficiently and
cheaply (Vaze, 2005). Commenting on this unstoppable trend, Pastin and Harrison
(1974) wrote that such outsourcing of manufacturing functions was creating a new
form anization which they termed the “hollow corporation”(., aniza-
tion that designs and distributes, but does not produce anything). They note that such
anizational form would require considerable changes in the anizations
were managed. While they limited their research to the role of management in the
hollow corporation, ment on the substantial (and unpleasant) social and
economic changes that the outsourcing of manufacturing was causing.
It was not long before the idea of outsourcing was applied to the procurement of
information technology (IT) services also. While the current wave of IT outsourc-
ing can be traced back to EDS’ deal with Blue Cross in the early sixties, it was the
landmark Kodak deal in 1989 that won acceptance for IT outsourcing as a strategic
tool. Many large and small outsourcing deals were inked in the years that followed.
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