There is a gap in the literature related to understanding the relationship between outsourcing of accounting functions and financial performance (productivity and cost efficiency) of SMEs. This study ...examines the relationship between accounting outsourcing and financial performance in terms of cost efficiency and profitability in SMEs operating in Greater Sydney, Australia. An online survey of employees and managers (N = 80) of Australian SMEs using snowball sampling assessed the demographics, accounting outsourcing, organisational profitability, and cost-effectiveness of these SMEs. Data were analysed using linear regression and correlation analyses. The empirical analysis revealed that the outsourcing of tax services was related to a better financial performance of SMEs in terms of both cost efficiency and profitability. The outsourcing of management accounting functions was beneficial to the productivity of SMEs, whereas the outsourcing of general accounting was not related to higher productivity. Collectively, the findings of this study will assist SMEs in identifying resource gaps and the reasons for turning to external accountancy services to close the gaps and improve their financial performance.
•The roles of cost and quality advantage in third-party remanufacturers are highlighted.•In-house remanufacturing is not always in an inferior position.•Both repairing cost and customers’ perception ...of returned quality are essential for the OEM’s optimal remanufacturing strategy.•Outsourcing with the obvious quality advantage is dominant in remanufacturing.•High environmental impact or low acceptance of the remanufactured product causes a conflict between profit and environment.
Outsourcing remanufacturing is a commonly adopted business practice under which original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) outsource remanufacturing to third-party remanufacturers (TPRs) and focus on new products. Motivated by different advantages from TPRs, we develop two models to characterize the features: (1) the TPR has a cost advantage by improving remanufacturing system and device (Model C); (2) the TPR has a quality advantage from brand guarantee (Model Q). The results suggest that in-house remanufacturing seems to be in an inferior position, but actually it is better than outsourcing if TPRs’ advantages and the customers’ perception of returned quality are unobvious. Both repairing cost and customers’ perception of returned quality are essential for the OEM’s optimal remanufacturing strategy. The outsourcing is dominant in the relatively high repairing cost or customers’ perception of returned quality. Moreover, the obvious quality advantage plays the dominant role in outsourcing. Furthermore, we analyze the environmental impact and consumer surplus of remanufacturing strategies and identify the condition under which strategy benefits the environment and customers. When the environmental impact (acceptance) of the remanufactured product is relatively high (low), the optimal strategy presents a conflict between environment and customers’ benefit.
The 2010 Journal of Information Technology (JIT) article, ‘A Review of the IT Outsourcing Empirical Literature and Future Research Directions,’ analyzed 741 findings on the determinants of ...Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) decisions and outcomes from 164 empirical articles published between 1992 and 2010. Using the same coding method, the 2011 JIT article, ‘Business Process Outsourcing Studies: A Critical Review and Research Directions,’ analyzed 615 findings on the determinants of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) decisions and outcomes from 67 empirical articles published between 1996 and 2011. Taken together, these two reviews found that the preponderance of evidence from both ITO and BPO research streams produced largely consistent results pertaining to the categories of independent variables that affected outsourcing decisions and outcomes. To investigate the most current research findings on business services, which comprise ITO and BPO, and to compare the results with the prior JIT reviews, we replicated the method used in the prior JIT reviews. In this update, we examined 174 newly published articles across 78 academic journals published between 2010 and 2014. We found that researchers have significantly expanded the variables of interest in the last 4 years. In all, researchers investigated 69 new variables. Compared with earlier research, this review of recent articles found a deeper exploration of the direct effects of transaction attributes, sourcing motivations, client and provider capabilities, and governance on sourcing decisions and outcomes. Researchers have also studied a broader variety of sourcing decisions, including shared services, captive centers, rural sourcing and backsourcing. This update also found a more nuanced understanding of relational governance and its interaction with contractual governance. We assessed the research progress that has been made on ten previously identified gaps in knowledge. We proposed a future research agenda that includes continued, incremental progress on ‘normal science’ research questions, as well as more ambitious research goals. We challenged researchers to investigate how sourcing clients, providers, and advisors can protect jobs, protect the environment, and ensure security in an increasingly automated world.
Face recognition has been extensively employed in practice, such as attendance system and public security. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) algorithm is one of the most significant ones in the ...field of face recognition, but it is very difficult for many clients to employ it in their resource-constrained devices (e.g., smartphones and notebook computers). Outsourcing computation provides a promising method for clients to perform heavy tasks with limited computing power. In this paper, we design a protocol of outsourcing LDA-based face recognition to an untrusted cloud, which can help the client to complete the operations of matrix inversion (MI), matrix multiplication (MM) and eigenvalue decomposition (ED) simultaneously. The proposed outsourcing protocol can hide the private data of the client from the cloud. More importantly, the client can verify whether the outsourcing results are correct or not with probability one and so it is impossible for the server to deceive the client. In addition, the proposed protocol greatly decreases the computational complexity of the client thus enabling the client to complete LDA algorithm efficiently. Finally, we implement the protocol and give a comprehensive evaluation. The experimental results demonstrate that the client obtain great computing savings and the face recognition accuracy in the proposed protocol is almost identical to the original LDA algorithm.
PurposeThis study aims to provide a conceptualisation of HR outsourcing (HRO) effectiveness from a service quality perspective and subsequently develop a scale – HROSERVPERF to measure HRO service ...performance underpinned S-O-R theory.Design/methodology/approachGrounded on theoretical conceptualisation, literature and information collected through semi-structured interviews, HRO service performance items pool were generated. 257 responses from manufacturing firms in Malaysia that have outsourced their HR were collected. PLS-SEM is used for scale confirmation and validation.FindingsThe conceptualisation of HRO effectiveness and HRO service performance suggests a need for scale development that encompasses service quality-satisfaction-loyalty framework supported by S-O-R theory. Operational improvement, resource alignment and service delivery emerged as the service performance dimensions of HROSERVPERF.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was limited to manufacturing firms in Malaysia, hence little generalisation could be drawn beyond this context. However, this serves as future research opportunities.Practical implicationsHR managers and service providers can employ HROSERVPERF to measure and improve HRO service performance more effectively. Service providers can re-strategise and target their scarce resources to better retain their clients.Originality/valueThis is the first paper that provides HRO effectiveness conceptualisation from a service quality perspective followed by a scale development with formative measures using PLS-SEM underpinned S-O-R theory.
According to research, the Supply Chain Management (SCM) accounts for most of a company’s environmental effects. When goods are manufactured and transported worldwide, supply chains frequently ...include energy-intensive manufacturing and transportation. As a result, sustainability is crucial throughout the supply chain. Putting economic operations in line with environmental preservation and social welfare standards has become important globally. In order to improve the overall performance of the supply chain, the industries are thus looking into their SCM structures in collaboration with a third-party logistics (3PL) service provider. Consequently, for a broader view of increased company value, choosing the correct 3PL supplier for a lasting partnership is of the utmost importance. The fundamental motive of this research is to pick the most suitable 3PL provider for a food manufacturing company (FMC) following a comprehensive review of six distinct viable logistic providers working in India for over a decade. Choosing the best 3PL provider is incredibly difficult and demanding due to the inherent uncertainty related to subjectivity and the qualitative review of the performances of service provider. In this article, we propose a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model based on triangular fuzzy numbers (TFN) that combines the LOgarithmic Percentage Change-driven Objective Weighting (LOPCOW), Full Consistency Method (FUCOM), and DOmbi Bonferroni (DOBI) methods for evaluating criteria and ranking alternatives. The proposed method is tested and verified on a case study of an Indian FMC’s optimal selection of 3PL providers. On the basis of the sensitivity analysis findings, it was established that the presented TFN-based LOPCOW-FUCOM-DOBI model delivers stable or consistent solutions. It is demonstrated in this work that the novel hybrid MCDM approach is an effective and trustworthy technique for rational decision-making.
•A combined subjective–objective method is used for flexible decision making.•Triangular fuzzy numbers for dealing with uncertainty in group decision process.•Fuzzy LOPCOW and FUCOM methods are applied for obtaining criteria weights.•Fuzzy DOBI method utilized for analysing the feasible alternatives.•The proposed method is applied to a 3PL service provider selection problem.
•This study presents an efficient attribute-based encryption scheme.•Encryption process can be securely outsourced to a malicious cloud server.•Our scheme can significantly reduce the computation ...cost for user terminal.•Our scheme can be applied to various services using personal data.
Integrated broadcast-broadband services allow viewers to simultaneously receive broadcast content over the airwaves and additional information related to the content over the Internet. This integration provides opportunities for new services to be tailored and offered to individual viewers. Viewing histories provide a rich variety of data for service providers to learn the preferences of individual viewers and fine-tune their offerings. Each person’s viewing history, however, is privacy-sensitive data and may reveal information that the viewer does not want revealed. In this paper, we propose a system that allows viewers to specify a policy that they would like to be applied to their viewing history, when shared with service providers, by using attribute-based encryption (ABE). A ciphertext is associated with a policy, and it can be decrypted only by service providers who conform to the policy. To reduce the computations of the user terminal, we develop a system with provable security that allows the encryption to be outsourced to a cloud server, without the need to trust the cloud server. To the best of our knowledge, our construction gives the first outsourcing scheme of ABE encryption that is secure against a malicious cloud server. Although our solution is described for integrated broadcast-broadband services, the architecture and results could also be used for sharing viewing histories of OTT (Over-The-Top) services such as Netflix and location histories of mobile services. We implemented our scheme and showed that it significantly reduces the computation cost of a user terminal: about one third that of the Waters’ ABE scheme.
Using unique information on firm level domestic outsourcing of manufacturing jobs by Indian firms, we propose two channels and their interaction as determinants of the fragmentation of production: ...import competition and labor market regulation. We find that greater import competition from China is associated with a significant increase in domestic outsourcing of manufacturing jobs — a 10-percentage point increase in the import penetration ratio leads to a 11%–14% increase in the ratio of outsourcing expenses to the wage bill of a firm. This effect is driven by multi-product firms operating in states with pro-worker labor laws. We find a corresponding increase in the likelihood of sub-contracting among informal sector firms. Our results are consistent with a model where forward-looking firms outsource more in response to an increase in import competition, when there are future firing costs that can be avoided through such outsourcing. We thus are the first to highlight that labor market regulation and its interaction with international trade can determine the organization of production. Our findings have significant development implications that take the form of movement of manufacturing production towards the informal sector (and possible subsequent impoverishment of workers) as a consequence of a major trade shock.
•Import competition and labor regulation determine outsourcing within India.•Chinese import penetration and firm-level outsourcing are positively related.•Rigid labor regulations increase this impact.•Correspondingly, sub-contracting to the informal sector becomes more likely.•Our results are consistent with a model of forward-looking firms.
Reports of firms' behaviors with regard to corporate social responsibility (CSR) are often contrary to their stated standards of social responsibility. This research examines the effects of ...communication strategies a firm can use to mitigate the impact of these inconsistencies on consumer perceptions of corporate hypocrisy and subsequent beliefs about the firm's social responsibility and attitudes toward the firm. Study 1 indicates that a proactive communication strategy (when the firm's CSR statements precede conflicting observed behavior) leads to higher levels of perceived hypocrisy than a reactive strategy (when the firm's CSR statements follow observed behavior). The inconsistent information in both scenarios increases perceptions of hypocrisy, such that CSR statements can actually be counterproductive. Study 1 also reveals how perceived hypocrisy damages consumers' attitudes toward firms by negatively affecting CSR beliefs and provides evidence for the mediating role of hypocrisy during information processing. Study 2 finds that varying CSR policy statement abstractness acts to reduce the hidden risk of proactive communication strategies and can improve the effectiveness of a reactive strategy. Study 3 reveals that an inoculation communication strategy reduces perceived hypocrisy and minimizes its negative consequences, regardless of whether the CSR strategy is proactive or reactive.
Outsourcing remanufacturing is an important way to achieve resource recycling, green manufacturing and carbon neutrality goals. To analyze the impact of carbon trade on manufacturing/remanufacturing ...under outsourcing remanufacturing, this article builds a game model between an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a remanufacturer under the carbon trade policy. In the outsourcing remanufacturing model, this article compares the impact of the carbon trade policy on the unit retail price, sales volume, revenue, environmental impact, and consumer surplus of new and remanufactured products. The research mainly draws the following conclusions: (1) Carbon trade increases the prices of both new and remanufactured products and the cost of outsourcing. Only when certain conditions are met can increased carbon trade prices increase revenue. (2) The carbon trade policy helps reduce the adverse impact on the environment, but only when the carbon trade price is greater than a certain threshold can it increase consumer surplus. (3) Consumer preferences and carbon emissions of the unit product affect manufacturers’ profits. Increased consumer preference for remanufactured products and reduced carbon emissions of remanufactured products contribute to increased sales and revenues.
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