Research Proposal on Business Function Outsourcing - Samples

Question: Discuss about the Research Proposal on Business Function Outsourcing. Answer: Introduction The study paper identifies how modern corporate business firms are using the concept of business function outsourcing. Precisely, the concept of outsourcing encourages modern corporations to perform the supportive tasks and management activities by a third-party organisation (Sako and Tierney, 2015). Under a contract agreement, companies can provide some less important HRM tasks to the professional third-party enterprise. In this way, a large organisation can save significant time, resources, and capital for the core business activities that will deliver the majority of the earnings (Weidenbaum, 2015). The study discusses the past literature and subsequent literature gaps. Furthermore, the study identifies primary and secondary research questions based on which the entire study will be conducted. At the same point in time, the paper describes the research design, methodology, limitations, and research plan as well. Project Objective The primary objective of the research is to identify the advantages of business function outsourcing that benefits the organisation in terms of increased efficiency, productivity and cost effectiveness. Additionally, the study aims to evaluate the challenges faced by the modern organisations in outsourcing a particular business function to a third party enterprise. Furthermore, the research will analyse the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing that are faced by the individual firms as well as the economy on a whole. Moreover, both the primary and secondary data will be used in the research to know the business functions that are majorly outsourced and value generated by the outsourcing processes. Project Scope By identifying the literature on the concept of business function outsourcing, the study has delivered primary and secondary questions that will be taken into account for the further research. Furthermore, the entire research design describes the process of quantitative and qualitative research methodology that can be considered to collect primary and secondary data and information related to the study (Retov and Plya, 2011). Also, the research plan has been given for the reader to identify the schedule of the research study. Literature Review In the contemporary business environment, modern companies have precisely valued the outsourcing process to get a job done by the third party professionals. According to Lee and Choi (2011), the process of outsourcing cannot be defined as the core business activity of a corporate firm although the outcome of the procedure is significantly profitable for the organisations. Currently, a number of HRM functions including marketing, customer support, and accounting system has been outsourced involving third-party professional companies. Effectively, during outsourcing of a business function, the management of a firm must include the legal obligations and terms to the outsourcing company so that any misconduct can be dealt under the legal procedure. In this way, security of data and information can be protected. Primarily, modern organisations have opted for outsourcing of business functions due to a number of reasons. According to Lin, Pervan, and McDermid (2007), outsourcing reduces the organisational cost. For instance, to complete a function by a specialist will require significant investment and maintenance as hiring can be expensive for the management. Therefore, to reduce the cost, the process of outsourcing can be taken into account. Furthermore, by outsourcing the less prioritised business functions, firms can concentrate on the core business activities that will lead to a higher amount of profitability. Clearly, outsourcing some of the supporting activities in the business can provide ample space and time for the organisational human resources to shift the focus on core business activities that can earn the majority of the revenue (Kremic, Icmeli Tukel and Rom, 2006). Apart from such benefit, the aim of outsourcing functions is to increase flexibility in the HRM. As support activities are shifted to the third party, the accountability of the support tasks is eliminated from the shoulder of the management. In this way, management can become more flexible to control the core activities profitable for the business. In addition to that, outsourcing provides quality of service. As an organisation assigns significant HRM functions to the professionals, quality of service can be enhanced. In this way, the technique of outsourcing can improve the overall performance as well (Whitfield, 2014). Apart from the advantages, there are a number of harmful effects related to the outsourcing of functions. Most essentially, outsourcing can make a massive impact on the job market. As corporate businesses have outsourced the tasks to other countries, the number of employment has been reduced. Besides, security of information and data can become a huge question in case of outsourcing of functions. In order to outsource the tasks, corporate information has to be shared with the third party that can be a threat to the security of a company (Fitz-Enz et al., 2014). Also, many of the time, outsourcing can provide poor results due to lack of monitoring. With the firm, the functions have been supervised time to time to get the most appropriate outcome whereas in case of outsourcing such things can be overlooked at times. In the meanwhile, the review of the literature mostly elaborates the pros and cons of outsourcing. However, in the bigger perspective, the academic researchers must evaluate how outsourcing has opened up job opportunities at the emerging economies (Lall, Gereffi and Sturgeon, 2009). In the time of the internet and digital media, outsourcing has become one of the most effective tools for the HRM to get the supportive activities in a cost-effective manner. Although there are ethical concerns and customer resistance associated with the outsourcing, precise policy and strategy can eliminate such risks in the upcoming time. Additionally, further study should be focused on the legal aspects that can strengthen the validity of outsourcing in corporate business (Raiborn, Butler and Massoud, 2009). In terms of business benefits, outsourcing encourages corporate firms to invest the most valuable time, resources, and capital to the core activities that can deliver the majority of the revenue. Research Questions/Hypothesis The primary research question that will be answered in the study is presented herein below: How does business functions outsourcing benefits an organisation and what are the problems associated with business functions outsourcing? Furthermore, some of the secondary research questions that will be analysed and answered in the study are: What sorts of business functions are primarily outsourced? Is business function outsourcing an effective way of reducing operations costs? What economic benefits are achieved through business function outsourcing? Does business process outsourcing leads to organisational effectiveness and increase in productivity? How business process outsourcing does lead to outflow of money to foreign economy? How do the organisations in emerging economies get benefitted through business process outsourcing? Research Design and Methodology Qualitative research Qualitative research is a type of exploratory research that is conducted to understand the reason, motivations and opinions regarding a particular problem. Qualitative research provides better understanding of the problem and helps to develop ideas to solve the issue. In this research, the qualitative research technique will be used by conducting primary interview of 3 to 5 entrepreneurs belonging to different organisations. The interviews will be conducted over phone calls or face-to-face meetings (Gray, 2014). The entrepreneurs will be asked about their views regarding outsourcing of business processes and the problems faced by them while entering into an outsourcing agreement. Additionally, the secondary data will be used to backup the findings through adequate theory and literatures. The secondary data collected from various articles, reports, books and online sources will be used to check the validity and reliability of the primary data (Fletcher, 2016). The analysis will be bas ed on hypotheses to find out the advantages and problems related to outsourcing. Finally, the findings of the study will be presented in a descriptive manner to answer the research questions and hypotheses. Quantitative research Quantitative analysis will be conducted in the research in order to check the validity and reliability of the primary data collected from the participants in the form of questionnaire surveys. Online surveys will be conducted to collect data from around 125 to 150 participants working in different organisations at different position. However, the research will aim to interview management level people from both developed as well as emerging nations in order to gain adequate information about the outsourcing processes (Elmarie, Yaeesh and Nirupa, 2012). Furthermore, SPSS tool will be used to conduct statistical analysis in order to perform correlation text, ANOVA test and several other numerical analyses (Gray, 2014). Additionally, the findings of the statistical analysis will be presented through descriptive analysis in order to backup the results with previous findings and literatures. Research Limitations In the research, a number of complexity and limitations have to be taken into account so that the entire study will evaluate the most effective outcome. Precisely, in case of selecting the research methodology, the researcher has to provide the process of methods as well as validity of the analysis. On the other hand, sampling of the research has been a leading challenge for the researcher. During the primary research, a number of limitations and ethical guidelines have to be followed so that the research outcome cannot affect the interviewers (Lacy, 2014). The personal information of the interviewers has been kept hidden according to the policy of the research. Evidently, lack of extensive experience of the researcher can be defined as a major limitation of the research study. Therefore, the researcher has to adopt precise data collection method via questionnaire to get the primary data. In terms of research scope, lack of professional experience can be reflected in the research are a as well (Lacy, 2014). Due to this, the depth of the discussion has seemed to be compromised at different stages of the research. Hence, the research outcome cannot be compared with the research conducted by academic scholars. Time Schedule The limitation of time is a major constraint for a research and a proper research plan is required to complete the paper in time. It is assumed that the entire research will require around 12 weeks to be completed. Furthermore, the time required for the collection of primary data will be 4 weeks. A detailed time schedule for the research has been presented in appendix 2 with the help of a Gantt chart for further consideration. Conclusion By considering the above proposal, it can be seen that outsourcing of business function is a primary strategy for several international expanding companies to minimise their cost. However, there are several challenges that are faced by the organisations while outsourcing the business processes to third party enterprises. Moreover, outsourcing of business functions lead to drainage of domestic earnings to foreign markets and negatively impacts the employment in the home country. Hence, the research will evaluate the benefits as well as problems associated with outsourcing of business functions in details in order to help the management level executives in better decision making. References Elmarie, P., Yaeesh, Y. and Nirupa, P. (2012). Internal audit function: Current status and perception of outsourcing.African Journal of Business Management, 6(49), pp.11829-11838. Fitz-Enz, J., Lawler, E., Madden, J. and Ulrich, D. (2014).Human resources business process outsourcing. 4th ed. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass. Fletcher, A. (2016). Applying critical realism in qualitative research: methodology meets method.International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 20(2), pp.181-194. Gray, D. (2014).Doing research in the real world. 4th ed. London: Sage Publications. Kremic, T., Icmeli Tukel, O. and Rom, W.O. (2006). Outsourcing decision support: a survey of benefits, risks, and decision factors.Supply Chain Management: an international journal,11(6), pp.467-482. Lacy, S. (2014). Reducing Limitations on Practical Academic Research.Newspaper Research Journal, 15(2), pp.76-82. Lall, S., Gereffi, G. and Sturgeon, T. (2009). Measuring success in the global economy: International trade, industrial upgrading, and business function outsourcing in global value chains.Transnational Corporations, 18(2), pp.1-35. Lee, J.N. and Choi, B. (2011). Effects of initial and ongoing trust in IT outsourcing: A bilateral perspective.Information Management,48(2), pp.96-105. Lin, C., Pervan, G. and McDermid, D. (2007). Issues and recommendations in evaluating and managing the benefits of public sector IS/IT outsourcing.Information Technology People,20(2), pp.161-183. Raiborn, C., Butler, J. and Massoud, M. (2009). Support function outsourcing: the hidden costs.International Journal of Strategic Business Alliances, 1(2), p.205. Retov, J. and Plya, A. (2011). Offshore Business Process Outsourcing.Studia commercialia Bratislavensia, 4(15). Sako, M. and Tierney, A. (2015). Sustainability of Business Service Outsourcing: The Case of Human Resource Outsourcing (HRO).SSRN Electronic Journal. Weidenbaum, M. (2015). Outsourcing: Pros and cons.Business Horizons, 48(4), pp.311-315. Whitfield, M. (2014). Strategies: Energy IT and Business Process Outsourcing-Key Concepts and Trends.Natural Gas Electricity, 31(3), pp.24-27.