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BRODGER3 is the username of Brian Rodger BSc MSc MBA and I can be contacted at BRODGER3@YAHOO.COM

I have over 20 years experience in the IT industry and I am currently preparing my reseach proposal for a DBA or PHd. Researching the skills, knowledge and competencies required in the client, supplier and advisor organisations to enable the outsourcing market to grow and to realise the business value. The research takes into account the positive and negative implications of outsourcing. The premise is that this will require a higher number of experienced and qualified technicians, architects and managers that can cope with the complexity of working in multi-sourcing environments. One of the main outputs is the Wikibook The Outsourcing MBA.

Contents 1 Research 1.1 Overall Aim of Research 1.2 Outcomes 1.2.1 Wikibooks:The Outsourcing MBA 1.2.2 Outsourcing Curriculum 1.3 Rationale and Background 1.4 Research Approach 1.4.1 Development Stage (CURRENT 2007) 1.4.1.1 Wikipedia 1.4.1.2 Expert Panel LinkedIn 1.4.1.3 Activities 1.4.2 Proposal Stage 1.4.2.1 Literature Review 1.4.2.2 Methodology Development 1.4.2.3 Activities 1.4.3 Year 1 1.4.3.1 Idiographic Study 1.4.3.2 Nomothetic Study 1.4.3.3 Demographic Survey 1.4.3.4 University Courses 1.4.3.5 Outsourcing Solution Taxomony 1.4.3.6 Activities 1.4.4 Year 2 1.4.4.1 Globalization 1.4.4.2 Activities 1.4.5 Year 3 1.4.5.1 Activities 1.4.6 Year 4 1.4.6.1 Activities 1.4.7 Dissertation Stage 1.5 Working Pages 1.6 External Links 1.7 References

[edit] Research

The working title is The competancies and skills required to make outsourcing a success. This is a Social research project that attempts to create or validate theories through data collection and data analysis, and its goal is exploration, description and explanation of the primary theme of outsourcing.

[edit] Overall Aim of Research

The result of the research will be a dissertation of eighty thousand words. The aim is to undertake a substantial piece of work that evaluates and reflects on work experience, previous study, current literature and research.

The research is to identify the skills, knowledge and competencies required in the client, the supplier and advisor organizations to enable the outsourcing market to grow and to realise the business value. The research takes into account the positive and negative implications of outsourcing. The premise is that this will require a higher number of experienced and qualified technicians, enterprise architects and managers that can cope with the complexity of working in multi-sourcing environments. The aim is to identify the core competencies and methods for developing them. An output will be a general curriculum that would lead to an MBA/MSc in the management of Outsourcing.

The primary issue affecting the growth of outsourcing is the availability of skilled managers that will tend to have experience accross multiple disciplines. It is acknowledged that there no one single person can fulfuil all roles in outsourcing therefore a team approach is adopted. The research takes a holistic and and transdisciplinary approach examining the interrelationships between various disciplines that interact to produce an outsourcing management team.

[edit] Outcomes

The primary goal is to put into practice the lessons learnt in the industry and to place my work place experience into an academic context to gain a DBA/PHd. There will be other outcomes including:

[edit] Wikibooks:The Outsourcing MBA

The project will attempt to corral a number of industry experts into collaboratively develope a new open-content text for students and practitioners of outsourcing. The text appears in Wikibooks under the title The Outsourcing MBA. The researcher will act as "lead authors" for a book, however it is anticipated to develop organically over time.

[edit] Outsourcing Curriculum

The research will develop an outsourcing curriculum that can be applied to undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional development. This will generate a body of theory which will have direct relevance to educational practive in developing outsourcing competence in the UK market. No curriculum planning of any kind can go on in a vacume it must take place in an environment whcih is prey to pressures and contstraints. The reseach will discover, evaluate and comment on these an example being the economic function that education in outsourcing will have in the UK and globally.^[1]

[edit] Rationale and Background

To grow outsourcing both (onshore and offshore) requires the skills to put deals togther, close them and then deliver the business value. The reseach looks at two populations, the general poplation and skills that are outsourced and the smaller and main focus, the population involved in selling and managing outsourcing agreements.

Outsourcing recieves a very negative reception in the general press and public opinion. It has been called a management fad. Is outsourcing worthy of study at this level?

Delivery skills are in demand from Clients less than 40 percent of clients cited "access to qualified personnel" as a key driver in 2004, that number in 2006 is close to 70 percent ^[2]. There are calls for more eduction in high end skills with investment science education.^[3]

The skills shortage of outsourcing experts who design the solutions and deliver "transformational outsourcing". Clients are looking to outsourcers to be more aggressive in their solutions to create radical business models that can give the client an edge and change the game in their industries. Do outsourcers have the business and innovation skills to do this for clients? ^[4]

The client organisation also lack the skills to manage outsourcing effectivly with 70 percent globally do not even have a formal sourcing strategy.^[5]

A literature search in the UK uncovered no higher education courses that have 'outsourcing' in their title. Secondly only two courses mention outsourcing searching the university resources as www.ucas.com and www.prospects.ac.uk. These were the Open University and Queens Belfast. The google search '+outsourcing +university +degree +course site:.ac.uk' did a little better with 2,170 hits but uncovered only 3 more courses. A review of course and career guides available on the high street also did not uncover any particularly useful advice on courses or careers in outsourcing^[6].

[edit] Research Approach

[edit] Development Stage (CURRENT 2007)

The project wil be inductive and start with research into one word outsourcing and observation of the empirical world leading to the construction of explanations about what has been observed. Rather than theories about the causes the project will look forward to suggested practical solutions. The aim is to provide advice and guidance to both practitioners and researchers with the focus being on improving industry best practice rather than adding to academic theory.

[edit] Wikipedia

It is recommended that a research diary is kept to record progress. A personal paper journal will be kept along with an experimental approach using Wikipedia and Wikibooks. As the project will run until at least 2012 the notes, references and analysis that is applicable to Wikipedia will be entered on-line. In line with the rules of Wikipedia this will be limited to referenced items no original research will appear. This will make available the collection of relevant referenced work to peer review on a day-to-day basis.

A useful feature of Wikipedia are the links both internal and external. By enclosing a term in [[brackets]] if it is defined in the encyclopedia then I can be assuured that the correct term is used and understood. An example on this page would be my original use of business benefits which had no entry changing to business value which does.

A danger of using Wikipedia is the accusation of plagiarism in the final dissertation. I will be careful to separate the content intended for the dissertation and that relating to best practice. The dissertation will focus on describing why something is important and should be included in the content. The Wikipedia entry will contain the content itself. The advantage of using Wikipedia is that the content can be reviewed by a global audience and through the community editing the content it will be determined if the original reasons for including it were justified.

[edit] Expert Panel LinkedIn

The social networking site LinkedIn is a ready made expert opinion panel. The site makes the following claim "LinkedIn Answers unlocks the world’s best source of business knowledge: trusted professionals". The site is designed for industry professionals and there is a feature to ask questions to the experts. Anyone can submit and answer a question and active users become an expert. Person’s credentials can be checked to substantiate the validity and importance of any comments. There is a specific and relevant section called Offshoring/Outsourcing. This will be tested with a series of questions to establish the quality as an expert panel for the research.

[edit] Activities

• Literature review of outsourcing on Wikipedia and Wikibooks.
• Search of questions and answer in the outsourcing/offshoring section of LinkedIn.
• Create outsourcing bibliography on Wikibooks.
• Search for graduate and post-graduate courses that deal with the management of outsourcing.

[edit] Proposal Stage

[edit] Literature Review

Outsourcing

The literature review for outsourcing will have two points of focus. Firstly the review of material that talks directly about outsourcing. Secondly management and economic literature that is relevant to outsourcing although not directly mentioned. Many organisational article are written from the view point of a single entity. In outsourcing the relationship is more complex and in this case the critical review will include comments on how the main points can be applied to outsourcing.

A wider literature review will be conducted to bring a multi-discepline view to the skills and competancies required in outsourcers. This review will also feature the process of eduction and adult learning.

Higher Education

A review of literature that is relevant to developing a curriculum for careers in outsourcing management. The planing model will have four dimensions; objectives, content, methods and evaluation^[7].

[edit] Methodology Development

Social research can be inductive or deductive. The inductive inquiry is a model in which general principles and theories are developed from specific observations. The initial phases of the research (development and proposal) will be inductive based on the literature search and opinion collection. The findings will establish the general principles and be extrapolated into a curriculum for educating outsourcing experts. The latter stages the deductive inquiry will test specific expectations of the curriculum.

[edit] Activities

• Annual search of UK university courses relevant to outsourcing.
• Evaluating approaches for the development of a curriculum.

[edit] Year 1

[edit] Idiographic Study

In the study of psychology, idiographic^[8] describes the study of the individual, who is seen as an entity, with properties setting him/her apart from other individuals. The reseach will seek out individuals who are seen as exceptional and at the top of the industry. A study of their career background, education and development may result in a full description of a set of competencies linked to job descriptions.

[edit] Nomothetic Study

Nomothetic^[8] is the study of a cohort of individuals. Here the subject is seen as representing a class or population and their corresponding personality traits and behaviours. The research here will focus on one company or group within a company to verify and build on the idiographic study. This will be a multi-year study and provide a generalized understanding of the challanges for outsourcing experts.

[edit] Demographic Survey

Empirical data is data that is produced by experiment or observation. The research will conduct a survey through questionnaires and interviews to establish the work experience and educational attainment of a number of outsourced organisations.

[edit] University Courses

A search for available university under-graduate and post-graduate courses and curricula in the UK will be completed to collect empirical data about the availability of suitable higher education options for outsourcing experts. This search will be repeated each year to track the penetration of outsourcing into the UK higher education system.

[edit] Outsourcing Solution Taxomony

A taxonomy is a classification of things, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification. The research will develop a taxonomy for the classification of the elements that make-up an outsourcing solution. The taxonomic scheme will be used to correlate with the skills and competencies required to develop and deliver the solutions. The taxonomy will have a hierarchical structure with the top level consisting of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Infrastructure and Technology Outsouricng (ITO) and Transactional Outsourcing (TO). The Outsourcing Solution Taxonomy will be an appendix in the Wikibook The Outsourcing MBA.

In subsequent years the Outsourcing Solution Taxonomy will be correlated with the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, often called Bloom's Taxonomy, to determine the different objectives and skills and set the learning objectives that educators need to set for a career in outsource management.

[edit] Activities

• Annual search of UK university courses relevant to outsourcing.
• Development of the Outsourcing Solution Taxonomy.

[edit] Year 2

[edit] Globalization

What happens to outsourcing skills as today's low cost locations become closer to economic parity with the UK / USA? How does this effect the demand for skills and global integration? Is there a need to have alignment of eduction and skills in all these economies to improve global outsourcing?

[edit] Activities

• Annual search of UK university courses relevant to outsourcing.
• Review of knowledge management.
• Curriculum theory and design.

[edit] Year 3

[edit] Activities

• Annual search of UK university courses relevant to outsourcing.
• Outsourcing Solution Taxonomy correlatation with the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.

[edit] Year 4

[edit] Activities

• Annual search of UK university courses relevant to outsourcing.

[edit] Dissertation Stage

• The development of the dissertation will be a combination of on-line Wiki's and off-line academic writing.
• The on-line text will use footnotes and then be converted to the Harvard Reference System for final submission.

[edit] Working Pages

Induction Programme | Outsourcing | Service Level Agreement | The Outsourcing MBA

[edit] External Links

• The National Outsourcing Association

• European Doctoral Programmes Association in Management and Business Administration (EDAMBA)

• Global Outsourcing Toolkit

[edit] References