Human Resources and Outsourcing in the Networked Firm

Catalog description

This course examines outsourcing decisions from a human resources perspective, and the human resource implications of managing workers in increasingly networked organizations. Outsourcing, offshoring, spin-offs, and the use of temporary staffing agencies all create challenges for human resource management. Firms face issues of retaining employee knowledge and skills, coordinating HR policies across multiple subcontractors, and motivating workers on different employment contracts - who in some cases work together within a workplace or virtually. In addition, organizations face increasingly complex decisions concerning the mix of sourcing strategies to use for their own HR functions and processes. The quality and content of these decisions have implications for performance outcomes, as well as for job quality and employee careers. We will analyze these challenges and evaluate strategies to address them from a comparative and international perspective, using industry- and firm-based case studies from North America, Europe, and Asia. The course will end with a discussion of current and future trends, including crowdsourcing, managing the human cloud, and the sharing economy. Some sample company case studies include Boeing, P&G, Toyota, and IKEA.