Hands-off the mess: Contract choice for business process outsourcing

L. Ge
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

An appropriate contract is critical for the success of business process outsourcing (BPO). We investigated how coordination and negotiation costs impact choices of contract types. We characterized three types of contracts in terms of vendor incentives for cost savings and flexibility to change besides payment schedule. There is a trade-off between levels of incentive to reduce costs and flexibility to change. Thus firms need to choose the appropriate type of contract by weighing one type of concern against another based on the characteristics of transactions. Using data from US companies, we found that the concerns of managing interdependence are better mitigated with high incentive contracts with detailed service descriptions such as Fixed Price contracts while the concerns of opportunistic behavior in ex post adaptation should increase the preference to contracts with more flexibility for changes such as Time and Materials contracts.
摆脱混乱:业务流程外包的合同选择
适当的合同对于业务流程外包(BPO)的成功至关重要。我们研究了协调和谈判成本如何影响合同类型的选择。除了付款时间表外,我们还根据供应商对成本节约和灵活性的激励,对三种类型的合同进行了描述。在降低成本的激励水平和改变的灵活性之间存在权衡。因此,企业需要根据交易的特点,通过权衡一种关注类型与另一种关注类型来选择合适的合同类型。使用来自美国公司的数据,我们发现管理相互依赖的担忧可以更好地缓解高激励合同中详细的服务描述,如固定价格合同,而事后适应中的机会主义行为的担忧应该会增加对更具灵活性的合同的偏好,如时间和材料合同。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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