Knowledge Process Outsourcing: Identifying Potential Research Agenda Based on Industry Trends

Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) is experiencing rapid industry growth and is projected to be the next significant wave of outsourcing. The emergence of this new wave in outsourcing poses considerable administrative and governance related challenges. In this research, we identify and discuss the difficulties associated with KPOs and compare these difficulties to the previous models of outsourcing of functions and processes. Our aim is to explore the potential impact of knowledge process outsourcing on interorganizational relationships and subsequently investigate the appropriate governance structure. These difficulties include the appropriate identification of knowledge processes that can be outsourced and the need to constrain the potential knowledge loss to an organization that has chosen to participate in the KPO market. Based on the difficulties identified, we propose a set of guidelines based on theory that are essential for creating successful Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to facilitate a KPO. We conclude with a proposed methodology to achieve our objective of identifying candidate processes that can be outsourced with minimal knowledge loss to the outsourcing organization.