Making Sense of the Sourcing and Shoring Maze: Various Outsourcing and Offshoring Alternatives

Abstract

Many terminologies have grown out of the outsourcing and offshoring bandwagon. While the corporate world continues to experience these phenomena, the academic world continues to research the same. An attempt has been made to give an overview of the various alternatives in sourcing maze. We first discuss the basic sourcing strategies (insourcing and outsourcing) and the shoring strategies (onshoring and offshoring). We then move deep and wide into the maze and unravel the multiple alternatives that businesses exercise in order to get the best deal for their information system (IS) needs. Approximately 50 terminologies that are related to this growing maze have been discussed. The literature was scanned for various sourcing alternatives and terminologies. The purpose of this chapter is to compile and elucidate the various facets of domestic and global sourcing of IS needs. The reader will gain holistic perspective of a phenomenon that is continuously changing the way business is carried out globally.

Keywords: Outsourcing, Offshoring, Insourcing, Onshoring, Nearshoring

JEL Classification: F2, L1, L2, L8, M1, M3, M5