Outsourcing: a public‐private sector comparison

Outsourcing is one of the fastest‐growing and arguably most important areas of business activity. This article examines the differing motivations behind and approaches to outsourcing of public and private sector organisations in the UK, and what they can learn from each other. It compares the experiences of a police force with that of a financial services company and concludes that neither appears to have a monopoly on good practice, but that the private sector could benefit from the public sector’s more structured approach, while the latter could benefit from the more strategic orientation of the private sector.