What do shared service models involve? Which business processes can and/or should be shared? This ASM volume deals with such questions relating to the increasingly popular use of Shared Service Centers in organizations. The volume intends to move beyond debating the relevance of shared services towards more systematic research action.

This book focuses on virtual teams, which are fraught with cooperation problems. It offers novel insights into how team members experience and overcome these problems by empirically studying hybrid virtual teams in Shared Services Organizations. It firstly enhances the reader’s understanding of contextual challenges relating to cooperation and shows how members of such teams experience faultlines through distance, disconnection through reliance on communication technology and discontinuity through temporality of team composition. Secondly, it explores how they use 22 practices to overcome the cooperation problem, which can be categorized as strategies of identity constructing, trusting and virtual peer monitoring. Lastly, the study analyzes the role of technology, demonstrating that state-of-the-art media can facilitate, but not ensure the use of these strategies and practices. As such, the book has implications for both researchers and practitioners.

This book constitutes the revised selected papers from the 10th Global Sourcing Workshop held in Val d’Isère, France, in February 2016. The 11 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 47 submissions. The book offers a review of the key topics in outsourcing and offshoring of information technology and business services offering practical frameworks that serve as a tool kit to students and managers. The range of topics covered is wide and diverse, but predominately focused on how to achieve success in shared services and outsourcing. More specifically, the book examines outsourcing decisions and management practices, giving specific attention to shared services that have become one of the dominant sourcing models. The topics discussed combine theoretical and practical insights regarding challenges that industry leaders, policy makers, and professionals face or should be concerned with. Case studies from various organizations, industries and countries such as UK, Italy, The Netherlands, Canada, Australia and Denmark complete the book.

This is one of the few books on the market dealing with offshoring of professional services, a dynamic phenomenon of high relevance in the global economy. The market for offshore services is worth more than 1 trillion dollars annually and employs millions of people. Global offshoring of services has been recently undergoing a profound transformation due to automation and robotisation of tasks. It can be associated with the increased codifi cation of knowledge, commoditisation of services and advancement in technology. The global perspective has been supplemented by a detailed analysis of offshoring in Central and Eastern Europe. It witnesses a dynamic growth of foreign direct investment (FDI) in professional services, resulting in capital and knowledge transfers. This books is a result of a holistic approach and an interdisciplinary research. It is enriched with conclusions from meetings with representatives of: authorities responsible for attracting FDI; associations of offshoring fi rms; and enterprises operating in professional services. It was also a result of numerous discussions with scholars during academic conferences and research seminars.

The Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management is an authoritative and comprehensive reference resource with almost 400 entries on core HR areas and key concepts. From age discrimination, to zero hours contracts, each entry reflects the views of an expert and authoritative author. The terms included vary from singular concepts such as performance appraisal and industrial conflict, to organisational behaviour terms including organisational culture and commitment; and broader management terms such a resourcing and management development. Each entry provides a list of references and further reading to enable the reader to gain a deeper awareness and understanding of each topic. This book is an ideal companion to a standard HRM textbook, and both undergraduate and postgraduate students will find it to be of value. It will also be useful for academic researchers, HR practitioners and policy specialists looking for a succinct expert summary of key HR concepts.

Gerd Schwarz analyzes the pros and cons of shared service centers for the implementation of IT, finance, personnel and purchasing processes and make design suggestions on the empirical study of American public companies are based at 72. It describes how through the development of shared service centers achieved cost and quality improvements and shows based on the transaction cost approach to outsourcing to the differences in detail.

This report examines how adopting the shared services model of human resources (HR) services delivery can help businesses achieve better alignment between their HR service and specific business needs. Chapter 1 provides background information on the research project underlying this report, which included the following data collection activities: site visits to 15 organizations in different sectors that had introduced some form of HR shared service; interviews with four consultants regarding the present and future of HR shared services; and literature reviews. Chapters 2-7 discuss the following aspects of adopting and implementing the HR shared model: (1) reasons for creating an HR shared service (overall picture, cost reasons, quality reasons, organizational reasons, and technological facilitation); (2) the strategic, operational, and support activities involved in HR shared services and how shared HR services were introduced at the organizations studied; (3) issues in the delivery of shared services (centralization, devolution, in-sourcing versus out-sourcing, structuring the service, and service definition and monitoring); (4) the advantages and disadvantages of the HR shared services model; (5) the future of shared services in light of technological innovation and organizational change; and (6) issues in creating successful shared services. The bibliography contains 51 references. (MN)