Shared service implementation in multidivisional organizations: A meta-synthesis study

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore shared service center (SSC) implementation. Shared service is a key concept by which corporations organize their resources. Research indicates that some organizations struggle with implementing SSC and sometimes entirely fail to implement them. Although prior research exploring the determinants of implementation success is relatively scarce, researchers have conducted several SSC implementation case studies. However, these valuable findings remain isolated in stand-alone case studies. We aggregated the results of these studies using a qualitative meta-synthesis to identify, extract, and synthesize variables, their interrelations, and their relationships to SSC success. The outcome is a theoretical model that describes which factors are important and how and why they are related to SSC success. Overall, we make important contributions to the growing SSC research by shedding theoretical light on SSC implementation. We also provide a set of propositions and make suggestions for future research.