Title: Shared services: towards a more holistic conceptual definition

Authors: Prakash J. Singh, Adam Craike

Addresses: Department of Management and Marketing, The University of Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia. ' Department of Management and Marketing, The University of Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia

Abstract: The concept of shared services has been popular with many organisations. From a research perspective, relatively little is known about how this concept manifests itself in organisations. The literature shows that it is viewed in a highly fragmented manner in terms of functions and activities that are included and how it is implemented. These have led to, inter alia, little consensus on its definition. In this paper, an attempt is made to better understand its definition. A case study design involving a large publicly owned company from Australia that is in the process of implementing shared services was used to analyse the definition of the term. Results show that shared services is a broad concept with a number of key features. These features are discussed, followed by the presentation of a synthesised conceptual definition. The implications of this conceptualisation for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

Keywords: shared services; definition; theory; Australia.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2008.017282

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2008 Vol.3 No.3, pp.217 - 230

Published online: 22 Feb 2008 *

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