Outsourcing

Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally,[1][2] i.e. in-house,[3] and sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another. The term outsourcing, which came from the phrase outside resourcing, originated no later than 1981.[4][5][6] The concept, which The Economist says has "made its presence felt since the time of the Second World War",[7] often involves the contracting out of a business process (e.g., payroll processing, claims processing), operational, and/or non-core functions, such as manufacturing, facility management, call center/call center support.

The practice of handing over control of public services to private enterprises (privatization), even if conducted on a limited, short-term basis,[8] may also be described as outsourcing.[9]

Outsourcing includes both foreign and domestic contracting,[10] and sometimes includes offshoring (relocating a business function to a distant country)[11] or nearshoring (transferring a business process to a nearby country). Offshoring and outsourcing are not mutually inclusive; one can exist without the other. They can be intertwined (offshore outsourcing), and can be individually or jointly, partially or completely reversed,[12] in methods including those known as reshoring, inshoring, and insourcing.