History and Current Objectives
The ORN project was launched in 2004 by the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) at Duke University, The Fuqua School of Business. Dr. Arie Y. Lewin, Professor of Strategy and International Business and Director of Duke CIBER, was the initiator and has been the Lead Principal Investigator of the ORN project. The initial idea behind the project was to study the advancing trend of offshoring white-collar work, including administrative and technical tasks, as opposed to blue-collar work, which is mainly associated with manufacturing and which has been practiced for many years. In 2004, the CIBER research team launched the first annual on-line survey of U.S. companies engaged in or considering offshoring administrative and technical tasks. The survey was sponsored by Archstone Consulting. It was conceptualized as an annual survey to track offshoring drivers, risks and concrete implementations over time.
After the second annual survey in 2005, Duke CIBER launched collaborations with European research partners to expand the research initiative into a research network and to facilitate the recruiting of companies for the survey. The third survey in 2006 was sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton and involved data collection from U.S. as well as European firms and public agencies, from Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and Spain. Since then, the project has been further extended and now includes research partners and organizations from Scandinavia, Belgium, Australia and Italy. In 2007, the Conference Board became a lead supporter of the ORN project, and the ORN team launched for the first time a complementary survey of service providers, mainly based in India, China and the United States. In 2009, the ORN survey is being converted to a web-based application with a new benchmarking feature adding value to participating organizations. The findings from the annual research surveys have shifted the focus of ORN research over time. After its initial orientation to offshoring white-collar work, the ORN project has put more emphasis on the global search for talent and offshoring of higher-skilled tasks, in particular product development. Most recently, the ORN project has positioned itself as a research project focusing on studying companies in their transition to globalizing their business functions, processes and administrative services. Offshoring is understood as an intermediary step towards evolving new global organizational capabilities rather than an end in itself.
Read more about this topic: Offshoring Research Network
Famous quotes containing the words history and, history, current and/or objectives:
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Without the Empire we should be tossed like a cork in the cross current of world politics. It is at once our sword and our shield.”
—William Morris Hughes (1864–1952)
“Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)