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This chapter discusses the constitution of Shared Services and the value of a consensual agreement of a definition for academe and practice. It explores the operating principles and services, the concepts of internal customer and internal service, and their importance for the practitioner and research communities.

This chapter employed a broad review of the literature to examine Shared Services. The research team used NVivo as a tool to create a database of key articles and books to analyze the key concepts and topics.

There is a lack of consensus on the definition of Shared Services in the research and practitioner community. Additionally, the concept of internal customer requires greater exploration and understanding within the context of Shared Services. How Shared Services provides competitive advantage to organizations is also not well understood.

This discussion provides a challenge to the research community to focus on the contributions of shared services to business management theory. This requires a consensus that is currently nonexistent, to ensure the correct use of the terminology and model.

By establishing a clearer understanding of what is Shared Services, the academic and the practitioner community, in particular, will gain greater competencies on Shared Services to support change management programs during the implementation phases and minimize implementation costs by lowering organizational and people resistance. The variants in shared services terminology create confusion which is likely to result in ambiguity during implementation and have practical implications on governance, customers and service, benefits realization and performance.

This chapter addresses the lack of agreed definition of the term Shared Services and the role of the internal customer and consequent internal service delivery.

The purpose of this study is to describe and explain the relative water scarcity condition as one of the main problems encountered in Indonesia. It is caused by fierce competition between water users, water over consumption and high water price. The water conflict and increasing phenomena of relative water scarcity result in unequal access to water between the rich and the poor. This research is intended to contribute to a balanced water governance system that secures equal and fair access to water resources for all users.

A mixed method approach was used involving interviews with the owners of the established bottled water companies, the community leaders, guard for sluice gate, local NGOs and several government agencies.

Research results indicate that water policies and implementation are lacking coherency. It is also shown that the complex government structure with responsibilities divided over multiple agencies is responsible for this. The circular economy for water governance system used to find alternative solutions for reducing social conflicts so that the water will be made available to those who have no water access.

This research used only one location with a representative number of interviewees; hence, the findings are not possibly generalizable.

The combination of water legal framework and circular economy concept was used to reduce water scarcity

The last decade has seen a spectacular up‐swing in the use of various types of rigid thermoplastics for pipes and fittings used in the conveyance of fluids. These materials have a number of properties in common, by reason of which they have been chosen for these applications. This comprehensive article covers applications, standardisation and trends.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the capability map that addresses the potential of transactional Shared Service Centers (SSCs). The mapping approach represents a heuristic logic that provides means for analyzing SSC operation, connects SSCs capabilities with their value, and supports academics and practitioners in developing a transactional SSC that is of strategic importance.

This chapter reports on findings from a longitudinal case study within an organization that has implemented a transactional Human Resource (HR) SSC. Over a period of three years, several formal and informal meetings were attended, more than 20 interviews were conducted with SSC MT and customers, over 500 pages of project documentation and memos were studied, which allowed after integration for an in-depth analysis of how resources are bundled to build different types of capabilities.

We uncovered and mapped the operational and dynamic capabilities of a transactional SSC, their role in value creation, and their interdependencies. While the operational capabilities enable the HR SSC to provide day-to-day services to take care of individual end-users and support the business, the dynamic capabilities enable transformation of HR delivery throughout the organization and increase HR’s strategic contribution.

One limitation of this study is the extent to which the capabilities and their role in value creation are generalizable to transactional non-HR SSCs. SSCs providing services that cover other business functions might develop and deploy different capabilities. The use of a capability map is not limited to the capabilities uncovered in this study, however.

In the literature, the primary focus regarding transactional services is limited to cost savings and efficiency. This chapter addresses the potential of the transactional SSC and introduces the capability map as a tool to leverage its potential.

Du Pont Changes. S.W. MCCUNE III has been promoted from Deputy Managing Director to Managing Director of the Du Pont Co. (United Kingdom) Ltd. He succeeds W. H. MCCOY, who returns to the U.S.A. on special assignment with the parent company in Wilmington, Delaware. A graduate in chemical engineering of Princetown University, Mr. McCune has had over 20 years' experience in elastomers research and sales work.

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of shared services by end-users and why this may conflict with the use as intended by the shared service center (SSC) management.

By applying structuration theory, this empirical study draws on qualitative data obtained from semi-structured interviews with managers and end-users of an SSC. This SSC is part of a Dutch subsidiary of a multinational corporation that produces professional electronics for the defense and security market.

We find two main types of shared services usage by end-users which were not intended by the SSC management: avoidance and window-dressing. These forms of unintended usage were the result of contradictions in social structures related to the centralization and decentralization models as appropriated by end-users and management.

Our findings show that the benefits of shared services depends on how well contradictions in managers’ and end-users’ interpretive schemes, resources, and norms associated with centralization and decentralization models are resolved.

A popular argument in existing studies is that the benefit of shared services follows from the design of the SSC’s organizational structure. These studies overlook the fact that shared services are not always used as their designers intended and, therefore, that success depends on how the SSC’s organizational structure is appropriated by end-users. As such, the originality of this study is our focus on the way shared services are used by their end-users in order to explain why SSCs succeed or fail in reaping their promised benefits.

The chapter presents case evidence to argue that rather than comprising noncore, back-office business support services, shared service centers (SSCs), when viewed from a knowledge management perspective, can create both valuable and firm-specific resources and dynamic capabilities.

Literatures in strategic management, knowledge management, and business process sourcing are drawn on as a prelude to a longitudinal case study conducted by the authors in a large private sector utility company.

A knowledge management perspective demonstrates how the SSCs, as a hybrid organizational form, may help to redefine core versus noncore activities and thus, to play a role in the creation and protection of firm-specific resource and dynamic capabilities.

The SSC model is an emerging phenomenon and the field work is restricted to a single case study. Further field research is suggested.

The findings should be useful to those organizations embarking on the reconfiguration of back-office support services which might gain from further consideration of what activities might be seen as constituting core enterprise architecture. The case study demonstrates that when the traditional core activities of the organization become commoditized over time, a core competence becomes the management and administration of a bundle of technical projects premised on the processes and information systems of the SSC.

Shared services is an emerging phenomena and scholar literature is nascent. The chapter explores potential benefits of the SSC model beyond the headline agenda of cost reduction through efficiency savings and labor arbitrage.

THIS year's reinforced plastics conference at Brighton was the subject of our leading article in the November issue. We give below brief summaries of the papers most likely to be of interest to the aircraft industry. The organizers were the British Plastics Federation, 47–48 Piccadilly, London, W1.