A Framework to Select an Appropriate Contractor in Outsourcing and Offshore Outsourcing

Outsourcing means strategic use of other company's resources to accomplish business processes, which can be in the form of outsourcing or offshore outsourcing. One of the important risks of outsourcing projects is selecting an inappropriate contractor. Contractor selection process is very complex because of many and sometimes contradictive criteria. So it needs accurate investigations. The purpose of this research is to design a framework for selecting an appropriate contractor in outsourcing and offshore outsourcing and to specify the weight of each criterion. Method of data gathering is questionnaire which is distributed among internal and external managers and experts. This framework could be helpful for the managers of organizations in contractor selection decision making processes and causes risk reduction in these projects. The results showed that there are twenty important criteria in outsourcing and twenty four criteria in offshore outsourcing; some of them are contractor's innovation, financial stability and cultural adaptation.