In order for companies to realize their project goals, it is essential that both internal and outsourced employees perform optimally. Employees can gain a better awareness of their performance and help the organization develop a better program to improve both internal and outsourced employee performance.
Motivation and rationale of study
The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is a difference in the performance of outsourced and internal employees in terms of project outcomes and to identify factors that influence employee performance. As a result, the findings of this study can contribute to developing models that can improve the performance of outsourced and internal employees.
Research problem
Objectives
Limitations
Structure of the study
The findings of the research are also interpreted and discussed in relation to the literature. For this reason, it is important, more than ever, to assess the factors that influence employee performance to ensure that both internal and outsourced employees perform optimally so that the organization makes the most of the skills they currently have.
Conclusion
The quality, efficiency and fairness of services is dependent on the availability of skilled and competent IT professionals”, (Nadworny 2007, pg 52).
Defining outsourcing
Nadworny (2007) believes that outsourcing is an approach taken by management where service providers are given more side functions within the company to work on. For example, in the case of Derivco, employees of the external company Zenzar were assigned the task of managing Derivco's back-end systems.
Context of outsourcing
Outsourcing can therefore be summed up as "the transfer of an internal business function or functions and any associated assets to an external supplier or service provider who offers a specified service for a specified period of time at an agreed but presumably qualified price" as stated. by Heywood (2001), cited in Kotze (2004, p. 32).
Outsourcing in IT
Reasons for outsourcing
Palm (2001) conducted an annual analysis of current and potential outsourcing end-users' top 10 reasons why organizations consider outsourcing and provided the Outsourcing Institute (1998) list below.
Advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing
Advantages
The advantage for the organization is that their internal employees acquire skills and knowledge from an outsourced employee (Nadworny 2007). The reason for this is that an organization can determine whether an outsourced employee will have a correct fit with the team.
Disadvantages
It is important to choose the right external partner, as they can understand and gain knowledge about the organization's capabilities. However, if this is not done correctly, the organization can suffer greatly from change (Arabe 2002).
When to outsource
- Development portfolio
- Organisational learning
- Company’s position in the market
- Current IT organisation
- Position on the Strategic Grid
This situation resulted in the organization losing a lot of revenue as things were done according to the outsourced vendor as the vendor was not customer oriented. For the outsourcing provider, it is important to remove these systems and not focus on how the organization got to where it is, (Applegate et al. 2007).
What to outsource
- IT Infrastructure
- Innovation
- Accounting functions
- Software support
Outsourcing administrative and non-essential departments in an organization can be successful as employees can focus on their core job responsibilities (Fraser 1994). After determining what to outsource, an organization can decide which type of outsourcing will best suit their department and organization.
Types of Outsourcing
- Ad hoc staff augmentation
- Out tasking
- Project based outsourcing
- Managed services
Jaffe (1998) explains that it is not only about the money spent on outsourcing, but rather about the performance and satisfaction of the employees. In this type of outsourcing, the outsourced employee is responsible for providing the services as well as the design, process and programs to be used in a project.
Labour brokers
Background to labour broking
Labour broking in South Africa
According to Jack (2008) if labor brokers were banned from South Africa, SA would be put in a situation where thousands of people would be out of work. July (2009) suggested that one solution to this problem is not to ban labor brokers, but rather for unions to closely monitor labor brokers and ensure compliance with collective agreements and the BCEA.
Growth of labour broking in South Africa
The outsourcing Life Cycle
- Strategy and initiation phase
- Business analysis phase
- Vendor selection phase
- Execution and implementation phase
- Completion or termination phase
At this stage, the organization will have a dedicated team that identifies parts of the organization that will be outsourced (Kumar et al. 2007). As a result, the organization will need to communicate this change early and inform employees of any change in the corporate structure (Kumar et al. 2007).
Departments affected by the decision to outsource
Strategy
This matrix aligns each of an organization's services and functions in the matrix so that the organization can make the final decision. Lacity and Willcocks (2001) cited in Pengilly (2007) explain that functions and services that fall in the lower left corner can be outsourced, while those functions and services that fall in the upper right corner should be kept internal to the organization.
Finance
Human resources
Importance of software development lifecycles methodologies in outsourcing
- Agile
- Spiral
- SCRUM
- Prototyping
- Waterfall
This allows the developers to catch changes in the project and prepare for them in advance. Initially, the project manager will create a high-level project plan or draft project to understand the dates and estimate the completion date.
Factors that affect performance of outsourced vs. internal employees
- Organisational factors
- Project factors
- Management factors
- People factors
Management does not inform its people about the objectives and direction in which the company is moving (Heide et al.). Management does not inform its people about the objectives and direction in which the company is moving (Heide et al. 2002).
Theoretical frameworks
- The Job characteristic model
- Organisational model
- Project Performance
- The Bennett and Franco’s model on work motivation
- Shapley’s model
- Combined performance model
However, a review of the text by Jelstad (undated) reveals that there are numerous gaps in the theory of job characteristics. 2001) claims that actual effort does not affect the increase in job characteristics or outcomes, which is of great importance. Devlin (1989) suggests that top management must manage these linkages and critical paths that connect different parts of the organization's functional systems and value activities, as schematically illustrated in Figure 2-6. Sharpley (2002) is of the opinion that factors such as achievement and perceptions are important for motivation.
Conclusion
Background of company
Company culture
Optimal fit depends on the total flexibility of the structure (Gupta and Govindarajan 1984; Reed and Buckley 1988). Furthermore, the company's vision is to be a more project-driven (project-centric) and customer-focused entity. Management has identified the need to improve productivity and efficiency of operations, as well as improve software quality.
Background to the research methodology
Sampling technique used
Rules for project selection criteria
Projects
7 Major Project Seven Short-Term Waterfall Timeline This is to improve the entire transfer, registration and banking process for players. 8 The Big Eight Project Short Term SCRUM Timeline Error Reporting and Monitoring This will allow error messages to be sent to the server whenever a certain event occurs. 10 Big Project Nine Long-Term Timeline Prototyping Automatic promotion manager with trigger-based events.
Sample size
Data collection method
Data collection tool to be used
Design of the questionnaire
Issues included in this section were management style, project and social factors, which are discussed in Chapter 2 of the literature review. This part of the questions asked allows the researcher to gain additional insight into the study of performance between in-sourced and outsourced employees.
Administration of the questionnaire
Validity and reliability
External validity
Internal validity
The p-value is greater than 0.05. Therefore, there is no statistical evidence that there is a difference in team role understanding between external and internal employees. They influence the quality and success of implementation (Anderson and Narasimhan 1979; Herbert and Deresky 1987). They influence the quality and success of the project (Anderson and Naraimhan 1979; Herbert and Deresky 1987).
Reliability
Conclusion
This chapter explained the research method used by the researcher as well as the method used to conduct the study in order to obtain valid and reliable results.
Demographics
- Outsourced vs. internal employees
- Gender and position in the company
- Age group
- No of work years experience
The first group of education levels DBD/DBA/Developer shows that most of the respondents belong here. The graph shows that the majority of respondents belong to the second category (22-32). Figure 4-3 shows that only 5% of employees have less than one year of experience.
Major findings
- Investigation of differences between internal and outsourced employees
- Professional education
- Professional qualification 2
- Team methodology
- Democratic/participative leadership
- Team lead, leads by infusing energy
- Team lead has the power to make decisions on his own
- Need for supervision
- Work related problems
- Suitability of equipment
- Meeting of project timelines
- Scope
- Meeting of business requirements
- Understanding of team role
- Conflict management
- Quality of communication
- Team members completing a piece of work
- Understanding of goals and strategy
- Understanding of policy
In this case, we have statistical evidence that there is a difference between outsourced and in-house employees. Nevertheless, there is no statistical evidence that there is a difference in the perception of equipment suitability levels between outsourced and in-house employees. The p-value is greater than 0.05, therefore there is no statistical evidence that there is a difference in team dynamics between external and internal employees.
Analysis of variance
- Exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis
- Factor analysis
- Extraction method: Principal component analysis
- Reliability analysis
- Interpretation of factor analysis
- Proposition vs. Factors
- Conclusion
As this factor focuses on meeting the project deadline, none of the implementation models identified in the literature reviewed in section 2.14 represent it. The business requirement is defined at the beginning of the project where the client will define what they require. There was a significant change in the use of the SCRUM methodology as more internal employees used this methodology.
Introduction
Recommendations
- Risk analysis techniques
- Risk assessments
- Risk mitigation
- Assessment and evaluation
It can be concluded that more remote employees were exposed to the democratic leadership style. One way to achieve employee involvement is to involve both internal and external employees in the initial stages of project planning. However, it was found that a large number of outsourced employees did not know which methodology they were using.
Recommendations for future research
Humming corporate culture questionnaire, last accessed 20 September 2009, from http://humming.net.au/questionnaire.pdfure. 2002) Leadership, team building and team member characteristics in high performance project teams, Engineering Management Journal, 14 (4), pp. 2010). The perils of performing without a net, Journal of information technology, 5(4), pp. 2003) Factors Affecting Performance, last accessed September 20, 2009, from http://home.att.net/nicklos/articles.htm. 1999). 1994) Organizational design for self-managed teams, Industrial Management and Data Systems, 94(10), pp. 2006) New Frontiers in Employee Communication, last accessed September 20, 2009, from http://www.edelman.com/image/insights / content/ Ne wFrontiers2006_Finalpaper.pdf.
Questionnaire
Agree Agree Neutral Disagree My team leader/leader listens to my ideas and considers them, but will make the final decision. My team leader/leader was given the authority to make decisions on my own fist only and entirely. I am satisfied with the quality and frequency of communication I receive from my team. I can rely on my team members to get the job done.
Correlations
My project's provider scope is being fulfilled My project's business requirement is being fulfilled.
Rotated Component Matrix
Analysis
Ethical Clearance
