Strategic outsourcing practices of multi‐national corporations (MNCs) in China

An integrated framework for prioritizing the outsourcing performance outcomes

Purpose

Outsourcing is a crucial tool for an organization to focus on its core business operations. The purpose of this study is to find critical success factors (CSFs) of outsourcing and to prioritize the performance outcomes of outsourcing because of the adoption of its CSFs.

Design/methodology/approach

This research proposes the hybrid framework of fuzzy Delphi, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (F-AHP) and fuzzy additive ratio assessment (F-ARAS) to fulfill the research objectives. Fuzzy Delphi is used to finalize the CSFs of outsourcing and F-AHP provides the relative weights to it. F-ARAS is used to prioritize the outsourcing performance indicators with respect to CSFs. The empirical case investigation of three Indian large-scale public sector process industries is conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework.

Findings

The result shows that increased dominance in core activity, ability to increase or decrease capacity, improved financial performance, optimized resource utilization and increased market share are the top five performance outcomes because of the adoption of outsourcing CSFs.

Research limitations/implications

Factors such as cultural, political, environmental and size of the organization may have a significant implication on the research results.

Originality/value

This is a novel approach towards the prioritization of performance outcomes of outsourcing. Moreover, the present research is a helpful tool to manage outsourcing and choosing which performance outcome of outsourcing ought to be used to measure implementation. This will help to recognize potential opportunities and preparing strategic planning for both short-term and long-term goals.