Service Design From Staffing to Outsourcing: Analysis of the Literature From the Last Decade

1 Introduction

Outsourcing happens when a client company uses services, people, or transfers ownership rights or decisions to an outside company that acts as a supplier. According to a variety of authors (Dolgui & Proth, 2013; Lacity et al., 2009; Mokhtari & Abadi, 2013; Su et al., 2014), the buyer does not worry about facing resource fluctuations from market needs because the aim is to pay for the amount of work needed, not the people required to do it. A detailed analysis of the information available in the last 10 years regarding resource transactions shows feelings of satisfaction and displeasure on the part of the various stakeholders involved, as well as divergences in value measurement, decision methods, impacts on the economy and society, and even in the normalisation of the concepts involved concepts (Claus Wehner et al., 2015; Riadinska et al., 2018; Veleva & Antonova, 2017).

Individual research using the terms “outsourcing” and “staffing” yields voluminous and usual results, as the themes are not new and impact the modus operandi of organizations. However, when searched in sync and in an aggregate form, the concept of “Staff Outsourcing” is very vague. There is much imprecision, with the idea expressed in a multitude of different definitions in the literature, the exception being that of the authors Dey, Houseman, & Polivka (2012) and Fisher, Wasserman, Wolf, & Wears (2008), who present some ideas regarding this, although it is not enough. To study the subject effectively, it is necessary to connect several points in an attempt to converge the theme, for example, outsourcing practices and different arrangements, staffing practices, temporary work, resource leasing and others. Responding to this need, this paper is based on three objectives. Firstly, to present a review of the literature on Staff Outsourcing practices using advanced text mining and topic modelling techniques. Secondly, to indicate directions for future research in this field that address the gaps and overlaps found here and, thirdly, to elaborate a conceptual, state of the art diagram to support new discussions. This work is one of the first literature review on the subject to date and the fact that text mining and toping model techniques were used decreases the likelihood of human bias, while bringing robustness to the analysis. This work is could be certainly useful not only to academia but also to companies and society as it is a subject that involves working conditions and formats and economic transactions through non-standard forms of employment.

As a methodological approach 186 articles, published over ten years in international peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings and retrieved from bibliographic databases and scientific search engines, were analysed through SLR and text mining. This was followed by a transparent and replicable structuring of information through topics resulting from the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm, as well as analysis and synthesis of results to clarify terminology, definitions, variables, inconsistencies, and underlying theory.

The findings prove that there is a gap in the literature on the concept of staff outsourcing, the lack of standardisation of various terms, the lack of empirical studies from the perspective of vendors and even resources. It is also easy to recognise that in an excessive struggle for cost reduction, the typical outsourcing model may not be the most appropriate when it comes to pure resource trading. The working conditions that an employee in this type of work is subject to, as well as the lack of sufficient regulation raise several points of discussion for researchers.

Chapter two provides a framework of the basic concepts, chapters three and four explain the data collection process, chapter five presents a summary of the analysis of the articles according to the six topics found, and chapter six provides directions for future research, giving an overview of divergent opinions and ends with the presentation of the state of the art conceptual diagram of the subject under study. The last chapter presents the limitations of the study.