The Conference Board is partnering with the Fuqua School of Business at Duke to produce Fuqua’s annual offshoring research survey.
The Center for International Business Education Research (CIBER) at Fuqua produces the study, which is being conducted for the fourth time.
Researchers track data from executives at Fortune 500 and other firms.
The Conference Board, which is based in New York, is a global research and business membership organization.
"Being able to draw on the longest-running and most-recognized annual research survey on offshoring is a rare opportunity and we are very pleased it has come our way," said Ton Heijmen, the board’s senior advisor on offshoring and outsourcing.
"We believe this is a perfect extension of the research program on offshoring that we have been conducting at The Conference Board," Heijmen added.
The Conference Board also said it would launch a research working group to study outsourcing at a strategic level. Using the Duke survey results, the new group will develop a set of frameworks, applications, tools and techniques that executives can use for outsourcing planning.
Booz Allen Hamilton worked with CIBER on its 2006 report. Archstone Consulting supported the 2004 and 2005 reports.
In the 2006 report, CIBER reported that companies were embracing a “new and growing trend” of offshoring product design, engineering and R&D,” not just production jobs.
“Although labor arbitrage strategies continue to be key drivers of offshoring, sourcing and accessing talent is the primary driver of next-generation offshoring,” the researchers wrote.
“A key reason for the new trend is the looming shortage of highly skilled domestic talent in science and engineering, which is beginning to drive companies, in particular those dependent on technology, to search for talent worldwide," the CIBER document stated. "This shortage is affecting all the industrialized economies and is creating a global race for talent.”
