Outsourcing and customer service: cultures and competencies

Outsourcing requires staff from two organisations to work together to achieve sometimes conflicting ends. Practitioner advice suggests a matching of organisational cultures; however, whilst there is some research on the impact of national culture in offshore outsourcing, little attention has been paid to the issue of organisational culture, nor the type of interventions that may be useful. This paper discusses research on differences in organisational culture between suppliers and clients in outsourcing, and potential best-practice in staff development to reduce problems.