ABSTRACT

The study sought to investigate the effect of outsourcing on organizational performance. The study was guided by the following research objectives, to investigate whether the school undertakes outsourcing of projects/services, to establish whether outsourcing programs at the school achieve their stated objectives of improving organizational performance, productivity, market share, and quality and to investigate the factors that are associated with the success or failure of outsourcing programs. The study findings showed that the school does carry out outsourcing of services from third party service providers as shown by the greater majority of respondents. The school though did not suffer adverse disadvantages of outsourcing as only 46.15% of the respondents believed that the school faced disadvantages as a result of its outsourcing of projects/services to third parties. Instead the school's outsourcing programs did offer the school rewards as was shown by just over 92% of the respondents believing that outsourcing benefited the school It was thus concluded that the school's outsourcing programs marginally satisfied the school's outsourcing objectives. The findings also showed that when it came to outsourcing management, the school was effective and thus concluded that factors that were considered by the school before outsourcing were Cost restructuring, Quality Appraisal, Current Employee skills, Appraisal process and legal issues, Staffing issues and Risk management. Major recommendations to the study were that the school should reappraise its objectives for seeking to outsource particular functions of the business. The school should invest in further training for its own personnel on core aspects of what services the school carries out in-house and what it out sources. This would also act as an incentive to the current staff who may not feel completely secure in their jobs. This insecurity counter acts marginal gains that outsourcing may be providing to the school in terms of productivity.