۱- Introduction

۲- Development of theoretical framework

۳- Method

۴- Results

۵- Discussion and conclusion

References

Abstract

Prior literature informs us that a company’s decision to outsource a business process depends on process characteristics such as how frequently the process is performed or how specific the assets required by the process are. In this article, we compare the effects of accounting process characteristics on outsourcing decisions across users of traditional and cloud-based accounting information systems (AIS). By focusing on outsourcing of accounting processes among small and medium sized enterprises, we investigate the effect of five business process characteristics (frequency, human asset specificity, uncertainty, information intensity, and need for customer contact) on the outsourcing decision. Our results reveal that process frequency has a weaker negative effect on the outsourcing decision among users of cloud-based AIS. This appears to contribute to users of cloud-based AIS outsourcing a larger variety of accounting processes. Compared to traditional AIS, the inherent properties of cloud-based AIS such as ubiquitous access, scalability, and integration seem to encourage users of cloud-based AIS to also outsource processes that are frequently performed.

Introduction

During the last few decades, the business process outsourcing (BPO) market has expanded rapidly as more and more companies outsource a wider range of business functions to professional service providers (Asatiani et al., 2019; Lacity et al., 2016). The rationale for outsourcing processes within these functions is simple: it is often cheaper to acquire (buy) services from a professional from the market than it is to develop and maintain the required competence to do (make) them in-house (Fill and Visser, 2000). This make-or-buy decision lies at the core of the substantial body of literature on outsourcing, in which one of the main questions has been whether the business process characteristics influence this decision. The increasing BPO trend can be partially attributed to the increased use of cloud-based information systems that facilitate outsourcing by reducing transaction costs associated with setting up an outsourcing relationship (Clemons et al., 1993; Gurbaxani and Whang, 1991; Han and Mithas, 2013). A key mechanism through which the use of cloud-based information systems enables outsourcing is that it allows the business process groups to be disaggregated into smaller processes1 that can transcend organizational or geographic boundaries (Apte and Mason, 1995; Quinn, 1992), which, in turn, allows the processes to be organized more efficiently between the outsourcer and the outsourcing service provider. This increases flexibility in how the delivery of processes can be organized, thus enabling companies to both reduce costs and concentrate on core processes (Apte and Mason, 1995; Jacobides, 2005; Kedia and Mukherjee, 2009; Mithas and Whitaker, 2007). However, disaggregation can also complicate outsourcing decisions. Instead of merely choosing whether to outsource a business process, companies that practice disaggregation need to make many processlevel micro-decisions. This disaggregation of business processes is especially prevalent in accounting. In today’s accounting outsourcing market, a company can decide to outsource only payroll tax calculation and retain control over the other payrollrelated processes, such as payments and reporting to government agencies. Therefore, to achieve the most efficient work arrangement, the company would need to carefully consider which parts of the process group to outsource.