Chapter 1 Shared Service Centers: From Cost Savings to New Ways of Value Creation and Business Administration

Purpose The reason of this chapter is to clarify at a conceptual level the phenomenon of shared service centers. The aim of the chapter is to enable managers make better decisions when applying the concept of shared service centers. Design/method/approach This is a conceptual chapter, in which the phenomenon of shared service centers is being rewritten, from an initial cost efficiency level, into a constituting building block in the new nature of the firm. Findings The findings of this chapter are that especially the combination of financial shared service centers and IT shared service centers are an instrument to organize information outside the structure of the internal organization of the firm, as implied by the changing nature of the firm. Also shared service centers are enablers for new business models, especially those based on human capital. Practical implications Executives and managers that have a better conceptual understanding of the application of shared service centers will create more benefits beyond costs savings. Originality/value This is the first chapter in which shared service center is reconceptualized in terms of the changing nature of the firm. With that it is also one of the first chapter describing the changing nature of the firm in operational terms. The value of the chapter is that it will help executives to define more efficient change processes. A second value of the chapter is that it opens new avenues of empirical and conceptual research for academia.