Employing U.S. Military Families to Provide Business Process Outsourcing Services: A case study of Impact Sourcing and Reshoring

Abstract

Abstract:This paper describes how a startup business process outsourcing (BPO) provider named Liberty Source helped a large U.S.-based client reshore business services from an established Indian BPO provider. Founded in 2014, Liberty Source is a for-profit firm that provides a competitive alternative to offshoring while fulfilling its social mission to launch and sustain the careers of U.S. military spouses and veterans who face various employment disadvantages. Thus, the case describes reshoring in the context of impact sourcing. It addresses key impact sourcing issues pertaining to workforce development, scalability, and impact on employees. The impact was positive: the workers found the employment and stable salary were beneficial, "the military" culture fit well with the workers, and workers received considerable flexibility and greater career options. Liberty Source was able to reduce a client's costs after reshoring the client's processes because Liberty Source's U.S. site had about 20 percent fewer full time equivalents (FTEs) FTEs than the original India location and because Liberty Source received subsidies. We found evidence that the offshore BPO provider and Liberty source experienced difficulties with finding enough skilled staff for the wages offered and both firms experienced attrition problems, although attrition was greater in India.

Offshoring and reshoring of services in tourism: a round trip

“…There is already an abundance of economic literature that analyses the determinants of the reshoring of material inputs in manufacturing companies (Fratocchi et al, 2014, Martínez-Mora andMerino, 2014;Stentoft et al, 2016;Delis et al, 2019). However, reshoring in services has hardly been analysed and there are very few studies available that examine its characteristics, causes and effects (Luce and Merchant, 2003;Aksin et al, 2007;Roggeween et al, 2007;Bharadwajand and Roggeween, 2008;Metters, 2008;Aundhe and Mathew, 2009;Nearshore Americas, 2010;Isidore, 2011;Heizer and Render, 2014;Lacity et al, 2016;Albertoni et al, 2015Albertoni et al, , 2017Fuster et al, 2020). The economic literature has yet to analyse whether this reshoring phenomenon in services is affecting the tourism sector.…”

La gestión de la tecnología y la innovación en el sector defensa: resultados desde un análisis bibliométrico

“…Aquí se ha identificado una tendencia marcada, en los últimos dos años, en tanto las palabras clave que están emergiendo son: "sistemas de información", "emprendimiento", "inversiones", "comercio" y "desarrollo tecnológico". Esto se relaciona con que, para las Fuerzas Militares y la industria de defensa, el desarrollo tecnológico producto de la I+D+i, impacta a otras industrias civiles como una manera de cooperar, porque permite construir y actualizar tecnologías duales (civil-militar) de manera más rápida y económica, lo cual se logra con el uso de productos comerciales (Aloini, Dulmin, Mininno, Pellegrini & Farina, 2018;Chavez, Stinnett, Tierney & Walsh, 2017;Kerlooza, Setiawan & Asrianto, 2018;Lacity, Khan & Carmel, 2016;Maestre Góngora & Nieto Bernal, 2017;Simplício, Gomes & Romão, 2017;Sottilotta, 2016) Se evidencia dispersión en la publicación del conocimiento generado en el área de GTI en el sector defensa. Sin embargo, se determina que la revista holandesa "Technological Forecasting and Social Change" cuenta con 13 artículos publicados, que hablan de la temática.…”

Entrepreneurial impact sourcing: a conceptual framework of social and commercial institutional logics

“…Data used here to map Liberty Source on our framework are a subset of data collected during a broader case study (Lacity et al, 2016) on impact sourcing and came from multiple sources. During the broader data collection stage, we conducted 15 interviews with the leadership team and employees.…”