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Shared Services
Edited by Marijn Janssen
1 Introduction
Shared service centers (SSCs) have risen greatly in relevance and importance over the past few years in the private sector as well as in the public sector. Public agencies make use of the concept SSC in order to reduce costs, improve the value of the service they provide and achieve greater administrative efficiencies ([20] Walsh et al. , 2008). In many countries, a lot of SSCs have already been established in public administration ([1] Accenture, 2005). Public agencies request services and operate SSCs together with other agencies ([10] Janssen et al. , 2007). As outlined, SSCs are an often utilized approach to organizing back-office services in the public and private sectors. Nevertheless, researchers hitherto have not investigated SSCs sufficiently; SSCs have only been of minor importance to researchers ([3] Becker et al. , 2009). Furthermore, a lot of definitions of the term exist in literature. These definitions differ in relevant characteristics ([17] Singh and Craike, 2008; [16] Schulz et al. , 2009). A first research project on SSC definitions has been done by [17] Singh and Craike (2008). Their paper reflects the perception of the term SSC by practitioners. A conceptual definition is proposed by means of extensive case study research. Whilst existing SSC definitions from literature are considered, they are neither analyzed nor compared in detail.
For a field of research it is important to have a common understanding of basic terms. Therefore, it is crucial to have an overview of relevant definitions and the differences between them. Otherwise, it is difficult to compare research outcomes and to generate a scientific body of knowledge. Without clarity in definitions it is difficult to do theory-based research or to establish a theory ([17] Singh and Craike, 2008).
Our research attempts to fill this gap by addressing the following basic problem: no identification, analysis and comparison of existing SSC definitions have been done. With this research we address the following key problem area:
- In both literature and practice, the term SSC does not hold a standardized meaning. It is therefore important to identify common accepted characteristics that describe the concept "SSC".
- There are differences in this definition that need to be identified. The impact of these differences...