Human resource management (HRM) outsourcing in the Asian public sector: A probe into the achievability and consequences in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand

Under the ideology of ‘small government, big individual’, outsourcing of public service functions is gaining momentum, particularly when it comes to certain professional areas such as human resource management (HRM). Upper tiers of the public service and managerial functions have largely been immune to outsourcing. The present studies on outsourcing are extensive, but are largely western-centric, and qualitative or quantitative in nature. This study combines qualitative and quantitative techniques, making use of survey questionnaires to explore the perceptions of bureaucrats and contractors towards public sector outsourcing against an Asian context comprising Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand. The results suggest that the political contexts of the jurisdictions shaped certain perceptions of the respondents. However, for other attributes such as the reasons for outsourcing public services and the constraints facing them, the respondents generally shared typical stereotypes of contractors and bureaucrats. Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.