Title: Outsourcing practices of Midwest US public universities

Authors: Dana M. Johnson; Gregory A. Graman

Addresses: School of Business and Economics, Michigan Technological University, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI, USA ' School of Business and Economics, Michigan Technological University, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI, USA

Abstract: Universities face increased pressures to reduce and contain costs while simultaneously offering high-quality, non-core value-added services to their students, faculty and staff. The purpose of the study was to empirically assess whether and how various dimensions of the outsourcing process for non-core operations in higher education impact performance. Our findings suggest that there is wide disparity in the level of sophistication of outsourcing processes for non-core operations and their impact on performance measurement. The study revealed that organisational variables have an impact and direct relationship to operational revenue and cost. This study focused on Midwest US public universities in seven states.

Keywords: outsourcing; higher education; principal component analysis; PCA; robust regression; performance measurement; USA; United States; university performance; organisational variables; operational revenue; operational costs; public universities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2015.069146

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2015 Vol.8 No.3, pp.268 - 297

Published online: 30 Apr 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article