| Global competition, increased need for flexibility, access to global resources, and the ability to obtain better value for company stakeholders have driven organizations to engage in outsourcing. Relevant literature has shown that organizations have not obtained the expected value from a majority of the outsourcing projects they have been involved in due to the prevalence of various risks associated with them. In today's dynamic economic climate, it is extremely challenging for a project manager to ensure an outsourcing project is both effective and cost efficient for stakeholders.;In this dissertation, the primary risks associated with outsourcing projects have been identified, rated and then ranked based on the ratings collected from industry professionals. Furthermore, they have also been classified into two major categories. This prioritization of risks could help project and engineering managers to use their risk mitigation resources more effectively and efficiently, thus extenuating risks to a more acceptable level.;Since the nature of the outsourcing environment is dynamic, which could cause the ranking to vary, the external factors associated with outsourcing projects such as location and an industry professional's amount of experience have also been discussed. An understanding of the external factors could help decision makers take a more proactive approach to risk mitigation strategies for outsourcing projects. Lastly, the interrelationships between the various risks have been studied so that project and engineering managers could better understand the effects of outsourcing risks on each other.;The ranking, classification, understanding of interrelationships between the various outsourcing risks and the external factors affecting them, serve as building blocks for a new approach, which could be used by project managers, to mitigate the risks associated with outsourcing projects more effectively to provide better value to the stakeholders. |
