ABSTRACT
Outsourcing refers to the practice of contracting out activities or functions to specialized suppliers. It concerns both manufacturing and services and can relate to either domestic or international sourcing markets. In other words, outsourcing is not restricted to moving activities or functions to offshore or low-cost locations although in recent years outsourcing has been closely tied to this trend. The outsourcing decision is naturally followed by a sourcing decision, that is, once a company has decided not (or no longer) to perform a
manufacturing or service operation in-house, the next immediate challenge is to find a supplier or service provider that can perform this function on its behalf. The most basic meaning of the term sourcing is therefore ‘product searching’ and is often associated with the prefix ‘global’, ‘international’ or ‘strategic’.
