Prioritization of outsourcing risks from a systemic perspective

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this research is so that project managers can use a systemic approach to prioritizing the risks of outsourcing including an understanding of the external factors that could affect the prioritization.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was designed by the authors and distributed to 2,500 outsourcing professionals from different organizations and the hypotheses were tested using the data from these surveys. The logic for forming the hypothesis is discussed for each hypothesis and so are the demographics of the respondentsFindings – External factors such as the type of technology involved, type of market targeted, location of outsourcing and the amount of experience the outsourcing professional had, did affect the prioritization of the outsourcing risks. Furthermore, trends were identified among the ranking of the outsourcing risks.Research limitations/implications – One of the constraining factors of this research, as in the majority of empirical research initiatives, was the lim...