IT Outsourcing Governance: Contracts, Relationships And Modes Of Control

The aim of this research is to provide insights into the interplay between contractual and relational governance in IT outsourcing arrangements. Current IT outsourcing literature has predominantly viewed the contract as a governance mechanism that establishes a framework for the supplier-client relationship, monitors behaviours and measures performance. Our study departs from this high level view and using the Foucauldian notion of governmentality, sheds light upon the conjunction of formal and social control that the contract manifests. Along these lines, our analysis will provide insights into the role of the contract in the creation of “reflexive self-control” and its potential to contribute to the establishment of shared norms, values and goals

Elemen kemanusiaan dan perantara amalan perkongsian ilmu tersirat dengan kejayaan penyumberan luar sistem maklumat

This thesis examines the relationship between human elements such as roles, internal strengths and communication and the information systems outsourcing success. It also assesses the impact of tacit knowledge-sharing practices as the mediator of the relationship. A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed by mail to the project managers of information systems outsourcing companies registered with Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor. Of the total, 168 were returned and only 166 questionnaires were coded and analyzed. The analysis of the hypotheses were carried out using multiple regression analysis and hierarchical multiple regression. The findings indicate that the elements of role such as the project scope and undertaking tasks, the elements of internal strength such as self-confidence, compassion, sincerity and willingness to change, and the elements of communication such as formal and informal discussions, and rational discussion had positive and significant impacts on the outsourcing information systems‟ success. In addition, the study also showed that the practice of sharing tacit knowledge fully mediates the relationship between role and the information systems‟ outsourcing success and also partially mediates the relationship between communication and the information systems‟ outsourcing success. Overall, these findings are consistent with the recommendations of the attribution theory, the resource-based theory and the findings of previous studies. This study also contributes to the process of developing and validating the research instrument, in which the items of measurement for human elements such as internal strengths and communications are scarce and not statistically validated. The findings of this study may also help the industries to develop specific training modules for their staff to ensure that each has elements of humanity. This is because these elements have a positive and significant impact on the success of the outsourcing of the information systems. The industry also needs to give serious attention to tacit knowledgesharing practices among their staff because the practice is a liaison or mediator to the relationship

IT Outsourcing Relationship Quality Dimensions and Drivers: Empirical Evidence from the Financial Industry

This work contributes to outsourcing research by shedding some light on IT outsourcing relationships. A theoretical model is developed that shows the influence of determinants on relationship quality. Relationship quality is captured by a set of five dimensions from previous literature and enhanced by two new dimensions (communication quality, forbearance). Determinants from the literature are extended by two new elements (interaction structure, service quality). By using a case study approach from the German financial industry, we show the applicability of interaction structures and service quality as relationship quality determinants. Interaction structures like employee trainings or transfer of staff have a strong positive impact on communication quality and mutual business understanding, whereas service quality mainly influences the level of conflict in a relationship. The results regarding the two proposed relationship quality dimensions are mixed. Communication quality is a good measure for capturing relationship quality and shows strong connections to interaction intensity and interactions structures. The applicability of forbearance as a relationship quality dimension is ambiguous. Some banks see forbearance as dimension of relationship quality, while others use forbearance as a strategic element to force the provider into delivering additional or better services

IT outsourcing partnerships: Empirical research on key success factors in Bulgarian organizations

Outsourcing has recently developed as an overall business strategy in the search for global competitiveness. As a part of this process, IT outsourcing is widely spread in the Central and Eastern European countries. The objective of the paper is to identify the key factors affecting the success of IT outsourcing partnerships on the basis of an empirical study conducted in Bulgaria. The paper presents selected results from a survey of outsourcing relations considering the development of successful strategic partnerships in IT outsourcing practices. According to its results, the most influential factors of these partnerships’ success are the level of achievement of partnership goals, top management commitment, and the level of effective communication. In addition to this, a trustful sharing of information and knowledge between partners can build a competitive synergy for achieving goals which otherwise cannot be accomplished separately by the organizations themselves. The key factors contribute to the strengthening of IT outsourcing partnerships and to the improvement of the organizational performance of both partners

Avaliação do outsourcing : em que medida está ser eficaz em Moçambique

Mestrado em Gestão de Sistemas de InformaçãoCom o crescimento da prática do regime do outsourcing à escala mundial e o surgimento de instrumentos para a sua avaliação, as questões que se tornam importantes responder são respeitantes ao grau de eficácia do regime e é neste âmbito que se debruça virando as suas atenções para as organizações moçambicanas. Naturalmente, torna-se também importante identificar e esclarecer os factores que afectam o seu sucesso. O modelo OS (Grover, Cheon e Teng, 1996), será aplicado como o principal instrumento da avaliação, por se ter constatado ao longo da revisão bibliográfica, como instrumento vastamente difundido, consistente e proclamado por vários investigadores como sendo o melhor instrumento para uma avaliação da eficácia do outsourcing no cômputo geral. Os resultados apontam para a prática generalizada de outsourcing selectivo e com maiores benefícios estratégicos ditados pela fraca oferta (local) de recursos humanos e tecnológicos.As outsourcing evolves world wide and new evaluations instruments come-out for outsourcing evaluation, questions to be answered are regarding the level of effectiveness of outsourcing regime. Thus, this study is focused into the mozambican market. It is also identified the key success factors affecting its success. The instrument from Grover, Cheon e Teng (1996), will be the key measure of the evaluation as it was identified during the bibliographic review as widely used instrument, consistent and also powered by many researchers as the best overall effectiveness evaluations instrument. The result reveals a selective outsourcing as the Mozambique outsourcing practiced regime, with more strategic benefits, rather than economic. This may result from the lack of human and technologic resources all over the country

IT outsourcing governance: a conceptual framework for theory and practice

The objective of this study is to improve our understanding of IT Outsourcing Governance, which has become an increasingly significant topic in recent years. In order to gain an understanding of this topic, an extensive literature review was performed and analyzed with argument mapping. The data yielded from the argument maps was used to create a comprehensive framework for IT Outsourcing Governance. What resulted was a new conceptualization of IT Outsourcing Governance, focused not only on governance structures and decision rights, but also on relationship management. This conceptualization not only provides a better understanding, but also presents a sharp contrast to the traditional view of IT Governance in which relationship management is not a major factor. In addition to the argument maps, a social representations survey was performed in order to elicit differences in the conceptualization of IT Outsourcing Governance between academics and practitioners. The results of the survey were used to perform a core/periphery analysis, which identified core and peripheral concepts used by academics and practitioners when discussing IT Outsourcing Governance. The core topics identified show a high degree of overlap with the dimensions of the framework previously developed. Finally, a review of existing technologies developed specifically to manage outsourcing arrangements (Outsourcing Relationship Management Tools) was performed in order to better understand the alignment between technology and management practices. This analysis showed that the features of Outsourcing Relationship Management tools seem to be misaligned with the duties and responsibilities of people in charge of the day-to-day management of the client-vendor relationship. The contribution of this research lies in advancing our understanding of IT Outsourcing Governance by providing a framework and new definition for this concept, along with a new theoretical lens to understand the evolution of relationships into partnerships. Additionally, this study augments the tools available to researchers by introducing argument mapping, a seldom-used technique for discourse analysis that proved to be very effective for eliciting relevant dimensions related to IT Outsourcing Governance from a literature review

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse