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Towards a typology of structural arrangements for shared services: evidence from the higher education sector

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Abstract

Shared services are increasingly prevalent in practice, their introduction potentially entailing substantive and highly consequential organizational redesign. Yet, attention to the structural arrangements of shared services has been limited. This study explores types of structural arrangements for shared services that are observed in practice, and the salient dimensions along which those types can be usefully differentiated. Through inductive attention to the shared services literature, and content analysis of 36 secondary case studies of shared services in the higher education sector, three salient dimensions emerged: (1) the existence or not of a separate organizational entity, (2) an intra- or inter-organizational sharing boundary, and (3) involvement or not of a third party. Each dimension being dichotomous yields 23 combinations, or eight shared services structural arrangement types. Each of the eight structural arrangement types is defined and demonstrated through case examples. The typology offers clarity around shared services structural arrangements. It can serve as a useful analytical tool for researchers investigating the phenomenon further, and for practitioners considering the introduction or further development of shared services arrangements. Important follow on research is suggested too.

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Notes

  1. We also integrated other synonyms for ‘University’ to check for completeness of information collected and found that the search term used as above captured all of the relevant information.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computing, Information Systems Department, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310 UTM Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

    Suraya Miskon

  2. Science and Engineering Faculty, Information Systems School, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Gardens Point, 2 George St, Brisbane, QLD, 4001, Australia

    Erwin Fielt, Wasana Bandara & Guy Gable

Authors
  1. Suraya Miskon
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  2. Erwin Fielt
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  3. Wasana Bandara
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  4. Guy Gable
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Suraya Miskon.

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Responsible Editors: Frank Ulbrich and Mark Borman

Appendix A: Mapping the Case Studies to the Core Themes

Appendix A: Mapping the Case Studies to the Core Themes

Table 2.

Table 2 Summary of 36 case studies coded against the three dimensions (D1, D2 and D3).
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Miskon, S., Fielt, E., Bandara, W. et al. Towards a typology of structural arrangements for shared services: evidence from the higher education sector. Electron Markets 23, 149–162 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-012-0116-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-012-0116-0

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