Title: Sustainable organisations and knowledge process outsourcing: conditions for success

Authors: Susanne Durst; Ingi Runar Edvardsson; Guido Bruns

Addresses: School of Business, University of Skövde, Högskolevägen, Box 408, 54128 Skövde, Sweden ' School of Business, University of Iceland, Gimli, v/Saemundargata, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland ' Incipere, Heresbachstrasse 20, 40223 Düsseldorf, Germany

Abstract: The outsourcing of knowledge processes has become a popular business practice. This situation provides both new opportunities and threats for firms' and their development. In this context, it would be interesting to discuss the link between knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) and sustainable organisations that pursue not only economic issues but also social and environmental ones. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to review extant research on KPO and bring it together with the concept of sustainable organisations. To do so, the paper relied on a combination of recent reviews of scholarly papers on KPO. This proceeding enabled the identification of three main conditions that need to be fulfilled in order to increase the success of the integration of the two terms. The conditions are governance, partnership and organisation members. The recommendations derived from the findings can assist researchers and other actors in better understanding the requirements of KPO for sustainable organisations.

Keywords: KPO; knowledge process outsourcing; sustainable organisations; sustainable business development; conditions; success; knowledge competences; knowledge management; sustainability; systematic review; governance; partnership.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKL.2015.071614

International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 2015 Vol.10 No.2, pp.110 - 123

Received: 03 Dec 2014
Accepted: 21 Apr 2015
Published online: 04 Sep 2015 *

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