Outsourcing: State-of-the-Art in India and an Insight to Coal Mining Industry

In the present era of globalization, outsourcing proves to be one of the prominent and emerging business practices widely adopted by the firms around the world in order to stay competitive. The academic literature on outsourcing in the Indian context mostly deals with the outsourcing of information technology/information systems (IT/IS) and business process outsourcing (BPO) that are outsourced to Indian IT firms by the multinational companies (MNCs) located abroad. However, studies on outsourcing practices followed by the Indian firms may be inadequate in the extant literature. It was observed that the decision of outsourcing is often taken in an aggressive manner with an emphasis on short-term cost advantage rather than giving due consideration in realizing the significant contribution of such decisions over the long-term competitiveness of the organization. The present study provides a structured approach to analyze the suitability of outsourcing in line with the organizational strategy for performance improvement for the coal mining organization in India.