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To identify key lessons, trends and enduring challenges with global outsourcing of back office services.

The authors extract lessons, project trends, and discuss enduring challenges from a 20 year research program conducted by these authors and their extended network of co‐authors and colleagues.

The authors identify seven important lessons for successfully exploiting the maturing Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) markets. The lessons require back office executives to build significant internal capabilities and processes to manage global outsourcing. The authors predict 13 trends about the size and growth of ITO and BPO markets, about suppliers located around the world, and about particular sourcing models including application service provision, insourcing, nearshoring, rural sourcing, knowledge process outsourcing, freelance outsourcing, and captive centers. The authors identify five persistent, prickly issues on global outsourcing pertaining to back office alignment, client and supplier incentives, knowledge transfer, knowledge retention, and sustainability of outsourcing relationships.

The authors present some experimental innovations to address these issues.

While strategic outsourcing decisions are crafted by senior executives, they are executed by middle managers and staff who may not share the vision or enthusiasm of their senior leadership team. The purpose of this paper is to provide a deep understanding of the effects of outsourcing on one of those stakeholder groups – the client project managers – responsible for the implementation of outsourcing strategies, and to identify practices to better empower and enable them.

Interviews with 67 client project managers in 25 organizations responsible for integrating suppliers into project teams.

Client project managers report 27 effects of outsourcing on their roles, including six positive effects and 21 negative effects.

Senior executives who implemented the following practices had more success with their outsourcing decisions: provide enough resources to implement the sourcing strategy, be willing to change internal work practices, build social capital with key supplier executives and seek independent assessment of sourcing strategy effectiveness.

The paper presents an original framework to categorize the effects of outsourcing on client project managers. The framework addresses six areas of concern: organizational support, project planning, knowledge transfer, process standards, managing work and managing people. The paper identifies four practices senior executives use to align and empower their employees to deliver the expected business benefits from strategic outsourcing decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to review recent trends and issues in global IT sourcing and to introduce papers in the special issue: “Social, managerial and knowledge aspects in global IT sourcing”.

The paper examines trends by regions including Brazil, Russia, India and China and also trends in Captive Centres and their strategies.

There will be a continuing rise in outsourcing revenues for global outsourcing, with BPO overtaking ITO within five years. Multi‐sourcing will continue to be the dominant trend. India will continue to dominate but its role will change. China heralds promise but will still struggle to achieve scale in Western European and North American markets. Emerging country competition will intensify. Software as a service will be a “slow burner” but will gain momentum in the second half of the next decade. Near‐shoring will be a strong trend. Outsourcing, by offering a potential alternative, will help discipline in‐house capabilities and service. Knowledge process outsourcing will increase as the BRIC and emerging countries move up the value chain. Captive activity – both buying and selling – will increase (see below). Outsourcing successes and disappointments will continue as both clients and suppliers struggle to deal with a highly dynamic set of possibilities

The paper is of value to both academics and practitioners working in the field of IT sourcing. The study of captive centres is in its early stages and the paper introduces further work in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to provide industry insights on the business models, practices, and capabilities that suppliers need to deliver cost‐effective information technology (IT) outsourcing services from rural locations within the USA. As rural outsourcing has not yet been studied by academics, many questions have not yet been answered. How can suppliers attract enough talent to rural areas to make rural outsourcing viable? How can suppliers scale operations? Will the value proposition attract serious clients? An ongoing research project was launched to answer these and other questions about rural outsourcing. This paper aims to report on the first set of findings based on four case studies.

This paper reports on the results from four case studies of rural outsourcing suppliers. In total, 35 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with founders, executives, delivery center managers, and delivery team members and a visit was made to a rural delivery center owned and operated by each of the four suppliers.

After comparing and contrasting the value propositions, location strategies, human capital development, and scalability of operations across the cases, in general, it was found that rural outsourcing suppliers position their value proposition as lower in price than urban outsourcing but higher in value than offshore outsourcing. Rural outsourcing suppliers achieve this value proposition by locating delivery centers in low‐cost areas and by recruiting, developing, and retaining a high‐performing workforce. Rural suppliers scale operations either by building multiple, small‐sized delivery centers or by building one large delivery center.

There are still many aspects of this phenomenon that warrant additional study. The paper identifies areas of future research pertaining to client experiences, competition from large suppliers, government support, and rural outsourcing in countries outside the USA.

The paper identifies five lessons for practice: rural outsourcing works best when clients engage a team to deliver a service; rural outsourcing is not freelance outsourcing or staff augmentation; rural outsourcing addresses an unfilled gap in a client's sourcing portfolio; rural outsourcing suppliers will continue to move up the value chain; and most rural outsourcing suppliers operate best on a sell‐build sequence, so clients should plan ahead.

This paper reports on industry insights from one of the first known, ongoing academic studies of rural outsourcing.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how and why the intangible critical success factors (CSFs) determine the outcomes of public-private partnerships (PPP) projects in e-governance.

Drawing from the literature, PPP was conceptualized as an organization which facilitates the creation of social capital. It is argued that the intangible CSFs correspond to the key dimensions of the social capital that drives the development of intellectual capital in the course of addressing the challenges faced during the execution of an e-governance project. These efforts determine the accomplishment of the desired project objectives. The emergent framework was applied to an e-governance PPP project to anecdotally exemplify how the deficiency of organizational characteristics impedes the formation of social capital, resulting in project failure.

A theoretical framework was developed to illuminate the mechanisms and the attendant propositions that explain how and why the intangible factors influence the PPP outcomes.

This study fills a critical gap in the literature on PPP projects in general, and on e-governance projects in particular. It also extends the application of the social capital framework from an intra-organizational to an inter-organizational context.

The results of this study foster a better understanding of the drivers of success in managing a PPP model in e-governance initiatives.

This research work would help in improving the formulation and management of PPPs in the emerging economies, which could potentially enhance the societal outcomes.

The explanatory framework of this research serves as a useful perspective to address policy and program implementation issues of PPP initiatives in e-governance.

There are over fifty Faculty, Departmental, and Special Libraries in the University of Cambridge and, as may be imagined, the functions of these libraries vary greatly. There are roughly speaking three main types. The main purpose of the first group is to make books available to undergraduates who are reading for Tripos and other examinations, while that of the second group is to supply the needs of the teaching staff and of research. The third group of libraries caters for the needs of the teaching staff, of research students, and of examination students. It must be borne in mind that this grouping is purely arbitrary, and the reader will find that scientific libraries are in many cases seeking to cater for undergraduates as well as for those engaged in research.

The purpose of this study is twofold: identifying important determinants for effective adoption of internet technologies in an organizational supply chain context and examining and classifying benefits yielded from internet adoption in supply chain.

A structured Web-based questionnaire was designed and administered to respondents to collect the primary data. With two reminders, this study managed to obtain 236 respondents from different industries in Malaysia. Structural equation modelling was applied to test the seven hypotheses.

Four of five factors were significant for successful implementation of internet technologies in organizations. In addition, results suggested that internet technologies contribute more to operational activities rather than strategic initiatives, which would be one of the main contributions of this study.

This study is limited by its being based on organizational perception rather than absolute value for measuring the benefits of internet adoption. Moreover, this study applied the cross-sectional technique which may limit generalizability of the findings.

This study provides in-depth knowledge about internet adoption and benefits for the organization by combining both theoretical and empirical knowledge. It helps managers to understand the importance and process of internet adoption.

Organizations who are interested in adopting the internet in their supply chain may feel that these results will guide them in making their final decision.

As artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly popular and accessible, most companies have recognized its far-reaching potential. However, despite numerous research papers on organizational adoption of new technologies including AI, little is known about individual employees’ intentions to use them. Given that organizational innovations are of limited value if they are not adopted by employees, the purpose of this study is to understand the underlying factors that push employees to make use of these new technologies in the workplace.

This study builds on previously developed technology acceptance models to provide a new theoretical model. The model is then tested using data collected from a survey of 203 employees and analyzed through structural equation modeling.

Findings show that five factors affect employees’ intention to use AI either directly or as mediators. Organizational culture and habit exert a positive impact on employees’ intention to use AI, whereas job insecurity has a negative impact. Perceived self-image and perceived usefulness fully mediate the relation between job insecurity and intention to use. Moreover, perceived self-image and perceived usefulness partially mediate the relationship between habit and intention to use.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to determine the factors that influence employees’ intention to use AI in general and more particularly chatbots within the workplace.

This paper aims to understand how a sustainable entrepreneur through his/her sustainable innovation can implement the three pillars of sustainable development, i.e. economic, social and environmental pillars, and how an entrepreneurial opportunity can be sought in environmental problems to develop a new product.

A qualitative research approach using a single-case study design has been adopted. It discusses the case of an Indian sustainable entrepreneur working for the cause of reducing plastic pollution in India and providing employment to rural women from economically weaker backgrounds. Data was primarily collected through semi-structured interviews, which were analyzed through thematic analysis.

The paper shows how an entrepreneur through entrepreneurial opportunity discovery and sustainable innovation contributes toward sustainable development.

This study highlights the need for institutional support by governments for a wide spectrum of sustainable enterprises as they can help the governments in achieving sustainable development goals at local levels. It will also act as a representative example for the entrepreneurs about how one can covert an environmental problem into an opportunity, through sustainable innovation.

The originality of the study lies in the presentation of an innovative idea developed by the entrepreneur for addressing the problem of plastic waste. The case used here demonstrates that sustainable entrepreneurship, through sustainable innovation, can deal with multiple economic, social and environmental issues.

Development of thin film sensors with pH function for noninvasive real-time monitoring of spoilage of packed seafood such as fish, crab and shrimp are described in this study. It is also the purpose of this study to enhance the leaching resistance of the sensors by using a suitable strategy and to quantitatively correlate the sensor’s halochromism with the total volatile amine.

To prepare halochromic sensors with better leaching resistance, biocompatible materials such as starch, agar, polyvinyl alcohol and cellulose acetate along with a halochromic dye were used to prepare the thin film sensors. These thin films were evaluated for monitoring the spoilage of packed seafood at room temperature, 4°C and −2°C up to 30 days. The halochromic sensors were characterized using UV-visible and FT-IR spectroscopy.

CIELab analyses of the halochromism of the thin film sensors revealed that the color changes exhibited by the sensors in response to the spoilage of seafood are visually distinguishable. Further, the halochromic response of the thin films was directly proportional to the amount of total volatile base nitrogen that evolved from the packed seafood. Excellent leaching resistance was observed for the developed thin film sensors. The halochromic property of the sensors is reversible and thus the sensors are recyclable. Besides, the thin film sensors exhibited significant biodegradability.

This study provides insights for use of different biocompatible polymers for obtaining enhanced leaching resistance in halochromic sensors. Further, the color changes exhibited by the sensors are in line with the total volatile amines evolved from the packed seafood. These results highlight the importance of the developed halochromic thin film sensors for real-time monitoring of the spoilage of packed seafood.