On the Issue of the Civil Content of the “Outsourcing” Category in the Russian Civil Law System

This publication is dedicated to the research of the role and definition of the legal content of outsourcing in the system of Russian civil law. Using such scientific methods of research as analysis, description, classification, intellectual modeling, extrapolation, methods of logical cognition and the formal legal method, the authors reveal the economic and organizational content of the category “outsourcing”, distinguish outsourcing from other methods of managing resources and resource potential, identify the legal nature of outsourcing relationships in based on private law regulators, and distinguish outsourcing from outstaffing as well. An economic definition of outsourcing is given as a method of managing and using resources predominantly by small and medium-sized participants in business turnover, associated with the involvement in the process of creating useful value of third-party capital, labor and intellectual resources, technologies, technological solutions and management models, as well as proven business designs with the aim of increasing your own productivity, reducing costs and reducing liability. It is noted that, from the point of view of Russian civil law, outsourcing can be defined as a variant of one of the types of obligations regulated by the Civil Code, as a mixed contract, as an unnamed contract. It is established that the legal nature of outsourcing follows from obligatory relations, which prevents the mixing into such relations of other types of contractual borrowing of resources (primarily outstaffing), where, in addition to the private law component, there is a public law fill. The final part contains a conclusion about the complementary nature of contractual outsourcing relationships for the domestic civil law system.