Regulating Vendor-Client Workarounds: An Information Brokering Approach

Many organizations now source tasks from shared service units (SSUs). SSUs are dedicated centers, focused on a particular business function, which delivers common and standardized services, from a central point, to different parts of the organization (Fielt et al. 2014; Gospel & Sako 2010; Gartner 2013). Shared service models have become increasingly popular with large multinationals including General Electric, Unilever, and more recently Vodafone and Diageo (Davis 2005). A typical SSU provides services back to its internal clients more efficiently and at a reduced cost (Herbert & Seal 2012). SSUs are expected to improve existing processes and service delivery (Fielt et al. 2014), deliver new services (KPMG 2014), and even generate revenue (Lacity & Fox 2008), whilst at the same time continuing to drive down costs for the larger organization. Increasingly, many SSUs themselves are turning to outsourcing to gain benefits of labor arbitrage, access to new skills, and to free up internal SSU resources for value-adding activities (KPMG 2014).