Taking a Knowledge Perspective on IT and Business Process Outsourcing

Even in semi-recessionary times, in the developed economies IT and business process outsourcing have been some of the biggest business trends and highest growth sectors. For example on our figures IT outsourcing global revenues moved from US$ 154 billion to over US$ 200 billion across the 2002–5 period. Business process outsourcing (BPO) grew more than 25% per annum across 2002–3 in the UK. In Europe, across 2002–5 BPO revenues increased from 43 billion to 72 billion Euros. The USA also experienced noteworthy BPO growth throughout the 2000–2008 period. These figures are likely to increase by at least 7% (ITO) and 10% (BPO) per annum over the 2005–12 period (Willcocks and Cullen, 2005; Oshri et al., 2008) But despite outsourcing’s rise to become a perennial, if not yet routine way of managing IT and business processes, it is surprising that its knowledge management implications have received so little attention, something, we predict, will continue over the next five years Willcocks and Craig, 2007).