**Author details**

*Outsourcing and Offshoring*

**4. Final considerations**

decision strategically.

fail is also suggested.

**Acknowledgements**

importance of this being a strategic decision, considering the risks and benefits, as well as transaction costs, resources and the typology and characteristics of partners. If this planning is effective, it allows correct determination of all the constructs included in the decision with positive impacts on quality, competitive advantage and maximisation of organisational performance. This mean that *"the outsourcing decision not only impinges on the operational procedures of firms, but also affects claims* 

This postulation is in line with the literature reviewed in the previous sections, given that we are talking about a decision of a strategic nature [9, 13, 30, 56, 79], which should be supported by an organisational policy of reducing current and future costs [29, 34, 62, 63], of an efficient allocation of available resources (internal and external) [7, 33, 63, 70]. No less important for the success of this externalisation is the improvement in the competitiveness of the organisations, provided

In addition, this model uses as theoretical framework, the theory of transaction costs (cost reduction), the resource-based theory (efficient allocation of resources) and the Relational View Theory (efficient and effective partner relationships).

Outsourcing is beginning to be common practice in organisations, focusing on the softest organisational structures and in this way significantly reducing fixed structural costs, whether in production, service provision or human capital. However, choosing this instrument involves risks and uncertainties, since it involves transaction costs between the parties, important matters related to resources and assets, and efficient, trusting relations between the contracting and contracted firms. It is therefore essential to make a detailed analysis of these risks in parallel

The literature presented here showed the importance of considering this strategic choice - outsourcing -, always bearing in mind that maximisation of organisational performance is a consequence of increased quality, productivity and competitive advantage in relation to rivals. If this is not taken into consideration, organisations that resort to outsourcing face the challenge of surviving in the global market, as they can enter a spiral of negative effects due to not having planned their

As with any study, this one is not without limitations. Firstly, the fact of being a descriptive study, and so it will be important in the future to make a systematic literature review through a bibliometric analysis, resorting to RStudio, for example. The second concerns the theories used, as many support outsourcing (e.g., knowl-

Although not a recent topic in the literature, it will be interesting in the future to carry out empirical studies of the negative and positive effects of outsourcing on the organisational performance of those contracting. Study of why contracted entities

The authors are grateful to the anonymous referees of the book for their extremely useful suggestions to improve the quality of the paper. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from National Funds of the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the project "UIDB/04007/2020".

edge-based theory, social-exchange theory, core competences theory).

*against organisations and their future net cash flows"* ([80], p. 11).

that the determinants mentioned by Berson [69] are guaranteed.

with the benefits arising from this type of partnership.

**46**

Mário Franco1 \*, Margarida Rodrigues1 and Rui Silva<sup>2</sup>

1 CEFAGE-UBI Research Center, Universidade da Beira Interior, Portugal

2 CETRAD Research Center, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal

\*Address all correspondence to: mfranco@ubi.pt

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
