Developing an outsourcing questionnaire: validation study

Most developed countries have witnessed a sharp increase in outsourcing operations.
These operations range from the service sector to manufacturing of various components such as
automotive components. However, many organisations practicing outsourcing are failing to achieve
their objectives for a number of reasons. In depth literature search has revealed that weaknesses in
outsourcing operations are due to a large number of defects in aspects ranging from ‘order request’ to
‘invoice payment confirmation’. Analysis has shown that lack of quality in the outsourcing system is
the predominant reason for weaknesses in the outsourcing operations. During the literature review, it
was established that most of the data available on outsourcing was related to non-UK companies. In
view of this information, it is crucial to develop a questionnaire to acquire information related to
outsourcing from UK based companies. The Questionnaire is used to find out if any other newly
generated problems are contributing to the poor quality of the outsourcing system resulting in failure.
This paper presents an overview of outsourcing weaknesses/defects acquired through the literature
search and a step by step process preparing a questionnaire to investigate the weaknesses in the
outsourcing system and operations. The questionnaire is designed with a rational to measure the
frequency of the quality defects in the outsourcing system. As such they are best aimed at collecting
data to improve the framework.

Citation:
Adnan, A.; Arunachalam, S., Cazan, A., Arreymbi, J., Webb, P.A. (2008) ‘Developing an outsourcing questionnaire: validation study’ Proceedings of Advances in Computing and Technology, (AC&T) The School of Computing and Technology 3rd Annual Conference, University of East London, pp.108-118.