Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Business
Human Capital Is Not Enough: How Offshore Bpo Professionals Use Social Support To Deal With Strenuous Work Conditions, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Violet Ho, Sunil Mithas, Dongwon Lee
Human Capital Is Not Enough: How Offshore Bpo Professionals Use Social Support To Deal With Strenuous Work Conditions, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Violet Ho, Sunil Mithas, Dongwon Lee
Management Faculty Publications
The past decade has witnessed explosive growth in the segment of information technology (IT) professionals who work in the offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. BPO positions are highly regimented and standardized with coercive and normative controls to deter employees from deviating from prescribed work procedures and exercising independent judgment. Coping with these challenges requires a different set of skills than human capital and technical competencies that are discussed in most prior information systems (IS) research. This paper develops theory on the role of social support in employee compensation, and tests the theory using a unique data set of 8,000+ …
Industry-Specific Human Capital And Wages: Evidence From The Business Process Outsourcing Industry, Keongtae Kim, Sunil Mithas, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Prasanto K. Roy
Industry-Specific Human Capital And Wages: Evidence From The Business Process Outsourcing Industry, Keongtae Kim, Sunil Mithas, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Prasanto K. Roy
Management Faculty Publications
Human capital is becoming more critical as the global economy becomes more information intensive and service intensive. While IS researchers have studied some dimensions of human capital, the role of industry-specific human capital has remained understudied. The IT-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) industry provides an ideal setting to study returns to human capital, because jobs in this industry are standardized and many professionals in this new industry have come from other industries. We build on IS and Economics literature to theorize returns to human capital in the BPO industry, and we test the theory using data for over 2,500 BPO …
Offshoring, Outsourcing, And Strategy In The Global Firm, Stephen Tallman
Offshoring, Outsourcing, And Strategy In The Global Firm, Stephen Tallman
Management Faculty Publications
Offshore outsourcing of many of the activities of the firm has become a major issue of concern in welfare economics, politics, business management, and international business scholarship. From both practical and scholarly perspectives, though, we must recognize that this is not a new phenomenon, and that neither outsourcing nor offshoring is necessarily the problem that has been represented in the popular and scholarly press (Contractor et al., 2010: Engardio, 2006). The production of goods in locations other than those in which they are sold has been an established strategy of multinational firms for decades--as has the subset of situations in …
Organizational Learning And Capabilities For Onshore And Offshore Business Process Outsourcing, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Sunil Mithas, M. S. Krishnan
Organizational Learning And Capabilities For Onshore And Offshore Business Process Outsourcing, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Sunil Mithas, M. S. Krishnan
Management Faculty Publications
This paper identifies and analyzes firm-level characteristics that facilitate onshore and offshore business process outsourcing (BPO). We use organizational learning and capabilities to develop a conceptual model. We test the conceptual model with archival data on a broad cross section of U. S. firms. Our empirical findings indicate that firms with experience in onshore information technology (IT) outsourcing and capabilities related to IT coordination applications and process codification are more likely to engage in BPO, and firms with experience in internationalization are more likely to engage in offshore BPO. We also find that IT coordination applications have a greater impact …
Information Technology, Production Process Outsourcing, And Manufacturing Plant Performance, Indranil Bardhan, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Sunil Mithas
Information Technology, Production Process Outsourcing, And Manufacturing Plant Performance, Indranil Bardhan, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Sunil Mithas
Management Faculty Publications
What is the role of information technology (IT) in enabling the outsourcing of manufacturing plant production processes? Do plant strategies influence production outsourcing? Does production process outsourcing influence plant performance? This research addresses these questions by investigating the role of IT and plant strategies as antecedents of production outsourcing, and evaluating the impact of production outsourcing and IT investments on plant cost and quality. We develop a theoretical framework for the antecedents and performance outcomes of production outsourcing at the plant level. We validate this theoretical framework using cross-sectional survey data from U.S. manufacturing plants. Our analysis suggests that plants …