Outsourcing Competence

The topic of this paper, competences needed for outsourcing, is organized by first providing a generic competence scheme, which is subsequently instantiated to the area of sourcing and outsourcing. Sourcing and outsourcing are positioned as different areas of activity, neither one of which is subsumed under the other one. It is argued that competences relevant for outsourcing are mainly community based rather than evidence based. Subjective ability and objective ability are distinguished as categories, together making up ability, which are distinct but not necessarily disjoint from competence. Conjectural ability is introduced as a form of subjective ability. A person’s competence profile includes competences as well as abilities, including subjective ones. Competence assessment and acquisition as well as the impact of assessed competence on practical work is described. The analysis of competence and ability thus developed is used as standpoint from which to extract a specification of an audience for a theory of outsourcing, yet to be written. Moreover, it allows to formulate requirements for and in preparation of the development of an outsourcing theory. Formulating these requirements is done under the assumption that a person’s awareness of a theory of outsourcing is expected to strengthen that person’s outsourcing competence profile. This work has been performed in the context of Symbiosis, an NWO funded project (NWO is The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), which focuses on software process outsourcing. The title is ambiguous, it can be disambiguated as follows: X-competence where “X = outsourcing”. When making reference to this paper we will refer to the authors as J.A. Bergstra, G.P.A.J. Delen, and S.F.M. van Vlijmen. Here Jan abbreviates Johannes and Bas abbreviates Sebastiaan as is customary in Dutch.