| dc.description.abstract | An organizational competitiveness based on capabilities and production strategies, results
in a better quality, efficiency and flexibility in the firms operation. With the increasingly
competitive environments along with changing customers' demands, companies are
required to continuously evaluate, improve and reengineer their operations with the aim
of identifying those strategies that enhance the firms’ performance. Outsourcing is one
such strategy that can be pursued. The research objective was to establish the effect of
outsourcing on operational performance of major petroleum firms in Kenya. The research
adopted a descriptive research design. Data was collected using a self-administered
questionnaire that was distributed to 20 senior and middle level managers at the firm that
were selected randomly. It was found that outsourcing increased the firm’s
competitiveness through access to modern technology and expertise, cost savings and
enable the firm to focus on core competence. Firms can maximize returns on internal
resources by concentrating investments and energies on core competencies which can be
achieved through firms’ transfer of resources from non-value added staff functions to
value-added core functions. The expected performance from the outsourcing was not
achieved due to a lack of trust which resulted in none sharing of information for fear of
sharing with competitors and lack of synergy. Success of outsourcing depends on a userprovider
relationship based on mutual trust and faith. Consequently, it is recommended
that the firms should adopt those practices that would guarantee them competitive
advantage in their business environment and at the same time they outsource the
processes to the organizations that will provide high quality services which will enable
the firms achieve the desired objectives. The limitation of the study was that the data in
this research was collected from top managers of the organizations on the basis of their
subjective evaluations, objective performance indicators should also be employed in the
analysis | en_US |
