Content analysis of underlying outsourcing motives.

Abstract: Outsourcing has over the years become more important when organizations increasingly focus to become best-in-class within their specific area. With this goal, outsourcing may be used to support core activities or dispose of activities judged as non-core for the organization. With these different ways to apply outsourcing, outsourcing may be used with various motives depending on the organizations goal. To better understand these motives, the aim of this paper is to acquire a deeper understanding of underlying motives organizations may have prior to make an outsourcing decision. This study is carried out through a content analysis of press releases published between 2005 and 2010. The results reveal three mayor motives that appear with a higher frequency in the study. These are; motives to gain competence/technology, motives to gain quality and motives to gain a higher flexibility.