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The challenges facing Business Process Outsourcing in delivering scalable and secure work-at-home solutions: a focus on senior technical and information staff

Stirpe, Giuseppe (2021) The challenges facing Business Process Outsourcing in delivering scalable and secure work-at-home solutions: a focus on senior technical and information staff. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

The benefits of working at home (WAH) are well documented: a 55 percent increase in productivity, improved employee satisfaction, a significant increase in recruitment and retention metrics, and companies gain from savings on office space and other overheads. It is little wonder, therefore, that WAH is growing at an incredible pace with a 115 percent increase in at-home workers since 2005, and more now with the unfortunate coronavirus pandemic (Analytics, 2020). To prevent the spread of COVID-19 which has produced momentous disruptions in the functioning of public sector organizations, there has been a sudden and dramatic shift in the location where employees work. Many workers have converted their bedrooms into meeting rooms, their living room tables into working desks and their kitchens into workplaces. This trend is happening across the world and is likely to stay even after the pandemic.

Academic research on this organizational phenomenon has managed to shed a lot of light on specific issues, namely the importance of remote work-life balance, work-life integration (Beauregard & Basile, 2016) and the side effects of this new technology acceptance model (TAM).

However, the studies have not focused on the technological challenges that senior staff have daily in delivering such solutions. This paper, therefore, addresses these gaps while investigating how upper managers in Business Process Outsourcings (BPOs) are delivering scalable and secure ‘work at home’ solutions. It will primarily focus on answering questions and challenges from a technical and operational perspective, while also focusing on employees’ perception of the flexibility and control organizations may indirectly have over them.

The approach the author has taken in this research was in line with what Creswell (2013) called a mixed design. A mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches, using an online survey, was taken in order to first identify the size of the companies managers were working for, and then define any challenges faced by the same managers in delivering secure and scalable ‘work at home’ solutions.

Item Type: Thesis (Masters)
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management > Human Resource Management
H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > Outsourcing
Divisions: School of Business > Master of Business Administration
Depositing User: Clara Chan
Date Deposited: 27 Jan 2022 16:58
Last Modified: 27 Jan 2022 16:58
URI: https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/5362

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