ISM Approach to Model Offshore Outsourcing Risks

Abstract

In an effort to achieve a competitive advantage via cost reductions and improved market responsiveness, organizations are increasingly employing offshore outsourcing as a major component of their supply chain strategies. But as evident from literature number of risks such as Political risk, Risk due to cultural differences, Compliance and regulatory risk, Opportunistic risk and Organization structural risk, which adversely affect the performance of offshore outsourcing in a supply chain network. This also leads to dissatisfaction among different stake holders. The main objective of this paper is to identify and understand the mutual interaction among various risks which affect the performance of offshore outsourcing. To this effect, authors have identified various risks through extant review of literature. From this information, an integrated model using interpretive structural modelling (ISM) for risks affecting offshore outsourcing is developed and the structural relationships between these risks are modeled. Further, MICMAC analysis is done to analyze the driving power and dependency of risks which shall be helpful to managers to identify and classify important criterions and to reveal the direct and indirect effects of each criterion on offshore outsourcing. Results show that political risk and risk due to cultural differences are act as strong drivers.

Keywords

• offshore outsourcing
• service
• risk
• interpretive structural modelling
• supply chain