* Corresponding Author. Email address: sazizzadeh2010@yahoo.com, Tel: +98-914-348-5482 Investigating the relationship between outsourcing and performance based on Balanced Score Card (Case study: Ilam Post Office) Karam Khalili 1 , Fariba Azizzadeh 1* , Arash Adhami 2 (1) Department of Management Esfahan, ‘Science and Research Branch’, Islamic Azad University, Iran (2) MA of Industrial Management, Ilam, Iran Copyright 2014 © Karam Khalili, Fariba Azizzadeh and Arash Adhami. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Today, outsourcing can play a crucial role in satisfying customers and meeting their requirements; therefore post office has devoted some of its services and supports for improving the performance, reducing the expenses, and modifying the organizational structure. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between outsourcing and the performance based on Balanced Score Card (Ilam Post Office) in 2013. This study was a descriptive-survey and it utilized a questionnaire for collecting data. SPSS software was used to analyze the data. Useable data were gathered from 18 managers and assistants. T-student and correlation method was used for data analysis. The results showed that there are a strong and positive relationship between outsourcing post office activities and performance management in three aspects of financial, customers and internal processes; however there was a positive and weak relationship between the aspect of learning and outsourcing. Keywords: Outsourcing, Performance management, Post office, Balanced Score Card. 1 Introduction Outsourcing, competitive pressure and renewal of the labor are all the business realities in the twenty- first century (D. W. Drezner (2004), P. Engardio (2006) [5, 6]). Outsourcing is a fact that reduces the costs of business by using less labor and gains higher profit (R. Griffeth and P. Ed. Hom (2004) [7]). We are living in the information society, a society in which people have as fast access to the information as the leaders. We are living in the era of specialized and shared markets; in these markets the customers are accustomed to perfect services and goods. For this, it's required for institutions to be highly flexible and adaptable, and to produce high quality products and be responsive to the needs of customers (M. Ozburn and N. Gabler (1991) [12]). In the past, the key to success was being vast and enormous but nowadays the significance of high quality is increasing. One of the ways to achieve this success is to outsource. In the past, outsourcing was used when organizations were not able to perform perfectly, were weak in competitive markets, their capacity was reduced, were faced with financial problems or their technology Journal of Data Envelopment Analysis and Decision Science 2014 (2014) 1-11 Available online at www.ispacs.com/dea Volume: 2014, Year 2014 Article ID: dea-00037, 11 Pages doi:10.5899/2014/dea-00037 Research Article Data Envelopment Analysis and Decision Science