Shared services: towards a more holistic conceptual definition

Abstract

The concept of shared services has been popular with many organisations. From a research perspective, relatively little is known about how this concept manifests itself in organisations. The literature shows that it is viewed in a highly fragmented manner in terms of functions and activities that are included and how it is implemented. These have led to, inter alia, little consensus on its definition. In this paper, an attempt is made to better understand its definition. A case study design involving a large publicly owned company from Australia that is in the process of implementing shared services was used to analyse the definition of the term. Results show that shared services is a broad concept with a number of key features. These features are discussed, followed by the presentation of a synthesised conceptual definition. The implications of this conceptualisation for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

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