Determinants of the outcomes of services outsourcing: an empirical study of transport services.

Abstract

The purpose of our study is to examine whether the design and management of the interfaces and interaction processes between customer and provider in services outsourcing are determinants of the results achieved by the outsourcing company. Following the conceptual framework initiated in the study by Wynstra et al. [11], this study focuses on transport services and hypothesized relationships are tested using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) statistical technique. The primary data used was obtained from a survey in three different countries (Germany, Japan and Spain), and from manufacturing companies in the electronics, automotive and machinery sectors. Among other things, the results show that both the structural dimensions of interaction (the organization's resources that it must commit) and the process dimensions of interaction (that consider the dynamic nature of the relationships), are important for obtaining adequate performance from transport services outsourcing.