Exploring the Impact of Fit between Context Factors and Pricing Model Choice on the Success of IT Outsourcing Mega-Deals

The interplay between internal and external contextual factors and pricing model choice in IT outsourcing (ITO) contracts is still an under-researched area in the ITO literature. However, as past and current examples of outsourcing failures indicate, an informed selection of an adequate pricing model indeed plays a crucial, if not decisive role to ensure a successful deal outcome and to mitigate risks in the wake of the deal. Based on contingency theory, the paper at hand explores 60 ITO megadeals (\u3e EUR 50 million) for the impact of the alignment of business objectives and market factors with pricing model choice on ITO deal performance. Our empirical results, which were based on a fitas- gestalts conceptualization, suggest that a high congruence of business objectives and market characteristics with pricing model attributes in ITO contracts engender better cost control and service results and a higher level of satisfaction after ITO deals than a low congruence of these factors. Our findings offer several interesting implications that can be used to improve pricing configurations in ITO deal contracts

Outsourcing of IT Services: Studies on Diffusion and New Theoretical Perspectives

abstract: Information technology (IT) outsourcing, including foreign or offshore outsourcing, has been steadily growing over the last two decades. This growth in IT outsourcing has led to the development of different hubs of services across nations, and has resulted in increased competition among service providers. Firms have been using IT outsourcing to not only leverage advanced technologies and services at lower costs, but also to maintain their competitive edge and grow. Furthermore, as prior studies have shown, there are systematic differences among industries in terms of the degree and impact of IT outsourcing. This dissertation uses a three-study approach to investigate issues related to IT outsourcing at the macro and micro levels, and provides different perspectives for understanding the issues associated with IT outsourcing at a firm and industry level. The first study evaluates the diffusion patterns of IT outsourcing across industries at aggregate level and within industries at a firm level. In addition, it analyzes the factors that influence the diffusion of IT outsourcing and tests models that help us understand the rate and patterns of diffusion at the industry level. This study establishes the presence of hierarchical contagion effects in the diffusion of IT outsourcing. The second study explores the role of location and proximity of industries to understand the diffusion patterns of IT outsourcing within clusters using the spatial analysis technique of space-time clustering. It establishes the presence of simultaneous space and time interactions at the global level in the diffusion of IT outsourcing. The third study examines the development of specialized hubs for IT outsourcing services in four developing economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). In this study, I adopt a theory-building approach involving the identification of explanatory anomalies, and propose a new hybrid theory called- knowledge network theory. The proposed theory suggests that the growth and development of the IT and related services sector is a result of close interactions among adaptive institutions. It is also based on new knowledge that is created, and which flows through a country's national diaspora of expatriate entrepreneurs, technologists and business leaders. In addition, relevant economic history and regional geography factors are important. This view diverges from the traditional view, wherein effective institutions are considered to be the key determinants of long-term economic growth.Dissertation/ThesisPh.D. Business Administration 201

Understanding Online Sourcing Decisions From The Service Clients\u27 Perspective: An Integrative Theoretical Framework

In this study we empirically examine a new global phenomenon - online sourcing – with a quantitative research method. Online sourcing is the newest development in outsourcing recently that uses Internet as the primary sourcing platform to approach the global sourcing of services. We believe that the emergence of online sourcing will fundamentally change the way work is done. Thus, gaining a deep understanding of the adoption of online sourcing becomes particularly important. Drawing upon theories of firms including transaction cost theory, we propose an integrative theoretical framework for the understanding of online sourcing decisions from the service clients’ perspective. The research model is examined with the data collected from an online sourcing platform. Our findings suggest the integrative theoretical framework rather than single perspective in understanding online sourcing decisions. Moreover, the study discloses how outsourcing decision attributes grounded in theories are interrelated within an integrative theoretical framework, as well as the relative importance of each theoretical perspective. Finally implications to theory, practice, business and society are discussed

A study of firm's behavior in the B2B e-business regime

Thesis (S.M.in Construction Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-132).The economic essence of Internet-based B2B business has become an ever-important market concern after the dot-com mania collapsed in early 2001. Many theories have been developed to understand this new business pattern. Nevertheless, lots of puzzles remained unsolved. So far, even whether B2B e-business is a temporary phenomenon; or is it just the extension of the old VAN-EDI system is still under debate. This research tries to answer some of the most fundamental questions of why and how companies adopt e-business application by studying the e-business fast mover's behaviors in the following three domains: the initiative for firm to adopt e-business, the business model and strategy developed to leverage Internet-based network system, and the barriers to implementing e-business practice. (1) The initiative for firm to adopt B2B e-business: the improvement of economic efficiency is used to measure firm's incentive in adopting E-business. Internet-based business tends to reduce production and distribution cost; and increases market transparency. It is argued that benefits from lowered cost are offset by buyer's higher bargaining power. Nevertheless, study shows that market power is critical as advanced computation capacity improves firm's ability to detect buyer's behavior, firms with larger market power have access to better quality data and gain substantial edge over smaller competitors. (2) The business models and strategy developed by firms to leverage e-business: Strategies of existing large firms are to pay their suppliers to link to their system in order to leverage the reduced production cost. They can, however, increase revenue by improving IT-based marketing and service quality. Small firm's strategy is to link their system with large firm's interface to gain competitive advantage over rivals. Start-up's strategy has been to reinforcing network externality to gain market share as markups are thin. The new trend for start-ups will be to differentiate their functionability and create new value-added for production firms. (3) The barriers for firms to adopt e-business: In the industry level, major barriers including fragmented market structure, unstandardized product and production process. In the firm level, the major barriers including organization and culture restructuring, interoperability between ebusiness application and with legacy system, lack of qualified personnel and knowledge, and the interoperability with complementary companies.by I-Tsung Tsai.S.M.in Construction Engineering and Managemen

Business model innovation in the oil and gas supply industry

Master i Energy Management - Nord universitet, 201

Customer Reactions to Bank M&A: Evidence from the Nigerian Banking Industry

Reaction of customers to M&A was investigated using a mixed method framework based on two Nigerian banks in a study that aims at positioning the customer as an actor who is impacted by other M&A actors. Customer and employee narratives were quantitatively tested to ascertain impact on post-M&A customer satisfaction. Customer implications of M&A found expression through five main constructs. The inter-relationship between these constructs and post-M&A customer satisfaction resulted in a divergent-convergent spectrum of M&A-Customer dynamics.Specific findings reveal increased role for technology, but recurrent downtime hampered satisfaction. Credit reality sees objective criteria prioritized over relationship consideration. Customers’ anxiety about new lending regime did not result in any significant threat to post-M&A satisfaction. Employee commitment in the wake of M&A seems superficial. Job insecurity and stress occasioned by casualization, unrealistic targets and erosion of employee dignity resulted in fraud becoming a post-M&A consequence. Rebranding risks being construe as a vanity project. Legitimacy for the regulator rested on socio-economic stability despite reservations by some bankers. The damaging proposition for customer satisfaction by merger as compared to acquisition meant that customer impact assessment can be an alternative decision making tool in choice of growth strategy. Keywords: Merger, acquisition, customer satisfaction, change, strategy, banking

The critical success factors for a low cost airline carrier in Sub-Saharan Africa

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree: Master of Science in Engineering. 15 November 2015Low-cost carrier airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet in Europe, and Southwest Airlines in the US, have largely changed the face of the civil aviation markets in their respective regions by providing an accessible form of air transport for the masses. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where current transport options are unsafe and slow, and distances vast, a massive market of potential passengers exists. Yet the region comes with significant challenges and obstacles not present in other parts of the world. By utilising a grounded theory approach, and identifying the factors that were critical to the success of the abovementioned airlines, inferences were drawn with the results of four separate exercises which were undertaken, which collected primary data relevant to the Sub-Saharan African low-cost market. The results obtained indicate that while certain low-cost carrier critical success factors are universal to all regions, Sub-Saharan Africa exhibits many unique characteristics which require any low-cost entrant to apply a unique, innovative approach in order to maximise the chance of success.MT 201

Challenges of Information TechnologyOutsourcing in Developing Countries - An ExploratoryInterpretive Case Study in Malaysia Suppliers' Perspective

Information technology outsourcing (ITO) practices in developing countries have come with numerous problems ranging from organisational setup, absence of mutual trust between IT suppliers and clients, inconsistent policies and lack of deployable ITO model. Malaysia is not an exception in these problems. Therefore, this research took an in-depth look into various challenges facing Malaysia's ITO industry especially from suppliers' perspective and presents a theoretical model that could be a possible solution to the identified problems. The research looked at problems facing ITO practices in the light of; mutual trust, government policy, cost of service and ITO model. This qualitative research used interpretive and exploratory approach for it analysis and suggested a modified performance and result/outcome-based pricing model based on industrial and academic alignment of the findings. This is a multiple case studies research with five different ITbased organisations; four IT suppliers and one government agency for IT development all within Malaysia. MAXQDA data analysis tool and constant comparative analysis (CCA) method were used to analyze the data. This research contributes to the IS/IT research on ITO from qualitative research paradigm and at the same time succeeded in developing a theoretical model for ITO success in Malaysia through four phases

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

Prospects for Research in Transport and Logistics on a Regional: Global Perspective (I: February 2009: İstanbul: Turkey)

"International Conference on Prospects for Research in Transport and Logistics on a Global - Regional Perspective" has undertaken the challenge to host very important experts and practitioners of Transport and Logistics from a large spectrum of countries. In our opinion, the conference has fulfilled the purpose of establishing an International Society; "Eurasian and Eastern Mediterranean Institute of Transportation and Logistics Association (EMIT)" that is expected to have a very promising role in the Eurasian and Eastern Mediterranean countries. The purpose of the Association is to contribute to establishing and developing the exchange of research work between all parts of the world in all fields of transportation and logistics. This proceedings book consists of 13 chapters, grouping the contributed papers into the following categories: Global Issues in Logistics and Transportation (3 papers), Regional Issues in Logistics and Transportation (2 papers), Education and Training in Logistics and Transportation (2 papers), Supply Chain Management (3 papers), Sustainable Transport Policies, Traffic Engineering (4 papers), Evaluation of Public Policies, Network Models and Environment (4 papers), Contemporary Topics in Transport and Logistics (7 papers), Transport Planning and Economics (3 papers), Planning, Operations, Management and Control of Transport and Logistics (3 papers), Transport Modeling (5 papers), Freight Transportation and Logistics Management (7 papers), Transport and Land Use (3 papers), Transport Infrastructure and Investment Appraisal (2 papers) It can be readily seen from this volume of selected papers that all papers do elaborate on rather timely problems in the fields of expertise related to Transport and Logistics, which have a considerable global importance.TÜBİTAK; Doğuş Üniversitesi ; Uluslararası Nakliyeciler Derneği ; İDO ; Tırsan ; Türk Hava YollarıCommittees, i -- Words of Welcome and Gratitude, ii -- Introduction, iii -- Chapter 1 Global Issues in Logistics and Transportation, 1 -- Potential to Reduce GHG through Efficient Logistic Concepts, 3 -- Werner Rothengatter -- A methodological framework for the evaluation and prioritisation of multinational transport projects: the Case of euro-asian transport linkages, 21 / Dimitrios TSAMBOULAS, Angeliki KOPSACHEILI -- Container port throughput performance - case study: Far east, north west european and mediterranean ports, 29 / Vesna DRAGOVIC-RADINOVIC, Branislav DRAGOVIC, Maja SKURIC, EmirĞIKMIROVlC and Ivan KRAPOVIC -- Chapter 2 Regional Issues in Logistics and Transportation, 35 -- Logistics service providers in turkey: A panel data analysis, 37 / Emel AKTAŞ, Füsun ÜLENGİN, Berrin AĞARAN, Şule ÖNSEL -- Milestones in the process of survey preparation for the logistics sector: case study for Istanbul, Turkey, 43 / Evren POSACI, Darçın AKIN -- Chapter 3 Education and Training in Logistics and Transportation, 51 -- Education in transport and logistics in an age of global economy, 53 / Yücel Candemlr -- The role of education and training in the supply chain sector, 59 / David Maunder -- Chapter 4 Supply Chain Management, 64 -- Modeling reverse flows in a closed -loop supply chain network, 67 / Vildan ÖZKIR, Önder ÖNDEMİR and Hüseyin BAŞLIGİL -- Strategic analysis of green supply chain management practices in T urkish automotive industry, 73 / Gülçin BÜYÜKÖZKAN and Alişan ÇAPAN -- A new framework for port competitiveness: the network approach, 79 / Marcella DE MARTINO, Alfonso MORVILLO -- Chapter 5 Sustainable Transport Policies, Traffic Engineering, 87 -- Clean transport: innovative solutions to the creation of a more sustainable urban transport system, 89 / Ela BABALIK-SUTCLIFFE -- Effects of urban bottlenecks on highway traffic congestion: case study of Istanbul, Turkey, 95 / Darçın AKIN and Mehtap ÇELİK -- Establishing an effective training module for IMDG code in MET institutions, 105 / Kadir CICEK, Metin CELIK -- An investment decision aid proposal towards choice of container terminal operating systems based on information axioms, 109 / Metin CELIK, Selcuk CEBI -- Chapter 6 Evaluation of Public Policies, Network Models and Environment, 115 -- Possibilistic linear programming approach for strategic resource planning, 117 / Özgür KABAK, Füsun ÜLENGİN -- A structural equation model for measuring service quality in passenger transportation, 125 / G.Nilay YÜCENUR and Nihan ÇETİN DEMİREL -- Analysis of potential gain from using hybrid vehicles in public transportation, 133 / İrem DÜZDAR and Özay ÖZAYDIN -- Optimization of e-waste management in Marmara region - Turkey, 141 / İlke BEREKETLİ, Müjde EROL GENEVOIS -- Chapter 7 Contemporary Topics in Transport and Logistics, 147 -- Future prospects on urban logistic research, 149 / Rosârio MACÂRIO, Vasco REIS -- An analyze of relationship between container ships and ports development, 155 / Branislav DRAGOVIC, Vesna Dragovic-Radinovic, Dusanka Jovovic, Romeo Mestrovic and Emir Ğikmirovic -- A holistic framework for performance measurement in logistics management, 161 / Yasemin Claire ERENSAL -- Heuristics for a generalization of tsp in the context of PCB assembly, 167 / Ali Fuat ALKAYA and Ekrem DUMAN -- Premium e-grocery: Exploring value in logistics integrated service solutions, 173 / Burçin BOZKAYA, Ronan De KERVENOAEL and D. Selcen Ö. AYKAÇ -- T ravelers response to VMS in the Athens area, 179 / Athena TSIRIMPA and Amalia POLYDOROPOULOU -- Regional airports and local development: the challenging balance between sustainability and economic growth, 189 / Rosârio MACÂRIO and Jorge SILVA -- Chapter 8 Transport Planning and Economics, 195 -- How financial constraints and non-optimal pricing affect the design of public transport services, 197 / Sergio R. Jara-Diaz and Antonio Gschwender -- Revenue management for returned products in reverse logistics, 203 / Mesut KUMRU -- Intra-city bus planning using computer simulation, 211 / Reza AZIMI and Amin ALVANCHI -- Chapter 9 Planning, Operations, Management and Control of Transport and Logistics, 217 -- A review of timetabling and resource allocation models for light-rail transportation systems, 219 / Selmin D. ÖNCÜL, D. Selcen Ö. AYKAÇ, Demet BAYRAKTAR and Dilay ÇELEBİ -- An approach of integrated logistics HMMS model under environment constraints and an application of time scale, 225 / Fahriye Uysal, Ömür Tosun, Orhan Kuruüzüm -- Freight transport planning with genetic algorithm based projected demand, 231 / Soner HALDENBILEN, Ozgur BASKAN, Huseyin CEYLAN and Halim CEYLAN -- Chapter 10 Transport Modeling, 239 -- Inverse model to estimate o-d matrix from link traffic counts using ant colony optimization, 241 / Halim CEYLAN, Soner HALDENBILEN, Huseyin CEYLAN, Ozgur BASKAN -- The impact of logistics on modelling commercial freight traffic, 251 / Ute IDDINK and Uwe CLAUSEN -- A comparative reviewof simulation-based behavior modeling for travel demand generation, 257 / Seda Yanık, Mehmet Tanyaş -- An efficiency analysis of turkish container ports using the analytic network process, 269 / Senay OĞUZTİMUR, Umut Rıfat TUZKAYA -- A multi-objective approach to designing a multicommudity supply chain distribution network with multiple capacities, 277 / Gholam Reza Nasiri, Hamid Davoudpour and B.Karimi -- Chapter 11 Freight Transportation and Logistics Management, 283 -- Evaluation of turkey’s freight transportation, 285 / Burcu KULELİ PAKand BaharSENNAROĞLU -- Short sea shipping, intermodality and parameters influencing pricing policies in the Mediterranean region: The Italian context, 291 / Monica GROSSO, Ana-Rita LYNCE, Anne SILLA, Georgios K. VAGGELAS -- Relevant strategic criteria when choosing a container port - the case of the port of Genoa, 299 / Monica Grosso, Feliciana Monteiro -- Determination of optimum fleet size and composition - A case study of retailer in Thailand, 307 / Terdsak RONGVIRIYAPANICH and Kawee SRIMUANG -- New container port development: forecasting future container throughput, 313 / Dimitrios TSAMBOULAS, Panayota MORAITI -- Sea port hinterland flows and opening hours: the way forward to make them match better 319 / Marjan BEELEN, Hilde MEERSMAN, Evy ONGHENA, Eddy VAN DE VOORDE and Thierry VANELSLANDER -- International road freight transport in Germany and the Netherlands driver costs analysis and French perspectives, 327 / Laurent GUIHERY -- Chapter 12 Transport and Land Use, 335 -- Land rent and new transport infrastructure: How to manage this relationship?, 337 / Elena SCOPEL -- Effects of pavement characteristics on the traffic noise levels, 345 / Aybike ONGEL and John HARVEY -- Fuzzy medical waste disposal facility location problem, 351 / Yeşim KOP, Müjde EROL GENEVOIS and H. Ziya ULUKAN -- Chapter 13 T ransport Infrastructure and Investment Appraisal, 357 -- Agents’ behavior in financing Italian transport infrastructures, 359 / Paolo BERIA -- Free trade agreements in the mediterranean region: a box-cox analysis, 367 / Matthew KARLAFTIS, Konstantinos KEPAPTSOGLOU and Dimitrios TSAMBOULA