Antecedents and Performance Outcomes of Onshore and Offshore BPO

While firms increasingly utilize business process outsourcing (BPO) to manage operations and achieve strategic objectives, there is limited research on the implications for firms and consumers. This dissertation begins to address these implications by studying antecedents and performance outcomes of onshore and offshore BPO. The first chapter studies factors that enable firms to outsource business processes. Our empirical analysis indicates that firms with stronger IT infrastructure and business process codification are more likely to engage in BPO. The second chapter studies implications of BPO for firm performance. Our empirical analysis indicates that quality benefits from BPO lead to cost and time benefits. The third chapter studies impacts of offshoring for customer satisfaction. Our empirical analysis indicates that as firms offshore IT and business processes, they simultaneously increase the value and quality of goods and services. This research is important as firms more broadly incorporate BPO into their global sourcing strategies.