Would that be a round trip ticket? : Bringing outsourced functions back home

Sammanfattning: Introduction: Outsourcing as a phenomenon has recently gained a lot of attention and is by some even considered as a trend. Traditionally, the functions to outsource have often been activities like computer operations or production with the purpose to cut costs or util-ize on resources not available in-house. The issues of outsourcing are however increasing, making the insight of the sources of competitive advantage and core competences more important than ever. With the rising amount of outsourced functions in firms of today, more and more outsourcing projects tend to end up with poor results. The combination of suppliers failing to live up to the standards set and an increased pressure of cost savings and quality improvements from customers is becoming untenable for many companies. As a result, large efforts are put into coordination and training and some companies even break their outsourcing agreement to either turn to another supplier or bring the function back in-house. Motives for bringing an outsourced function back in-house are often con-cerned with issues of quality and control. Purpose: The purpose is to determine whether backsourcing is merely a tool to correct implications of unsuccessful outsourcing agreements or if there are other underlying mo-tives to the process. Method: The study has been conducted according to the qualitative research approach. Empirical data has been collected through personal semi-structured interviews with repre-sentatives from three different companies that recently have backsourced a business func-tion. The empirical data have been analyzed in the light of relevant theories concerning outsourcing and backsourcing. Analysis: The analysis indicates on both differences and similarities of motives for, and implications due to outsourcing among the investigated companies. The same is evident for the backsourcing of the specific functions. Conclusions: From the analyzed data, conclusions can be drawn that all the companies suffered from implications from their respective outsourcing agreements and used back-sourcing to compensate for these. However, the process has, in some cases, increased knowledge and made the function perform better once taken back in-house.