Manoeuvring the Rough Commercial Landscape through Outsourcing

Abstract

The global commercial landscape is moving dynamically and continues to loom in the rigour environment, forewarning the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to get their act together before the next wave of the rough economic landscape hits their bottom line. SMEs discover that they need to reposition themselves, and consistent with this, many SMEs embark on outsourcing as one of their business strategies to manoeuvre their companies so that they could survive and sustain during the tough time. Therefore, this chapter studies the prevalence of outsourcing among entrepreneurs in SMEs in Malaysia. Outsourcing is a convoluted process and can bring new development opportunity for the SMEs to quest for their competitiveness. A sample of ten SME entrepreneurs from Malaysia participated in this study. A series of interviews were conducted among these entrepreneurs to probe their behaviours and outlook on outsourcing. The results showed that SME entrepreneurs highlighted the importance and impact of outsourcing in managing and running their business enterprise. Some entrepreneurs perceived outsourcing as a key trend shaping the future of their activities in terms of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, flexibility, and performance. In sum, this study generates agenda for researchers to reach more conclusive evidence about the practice of outsourcing among SMEs.