Not so Shore Anymore: The New Imperatives When Sourcing in the Age of Open

Software outsourcing has been the subject of much research in the past 25 years, largely because of potential cost savings envisaged through lower labour costs, ‘follow-the-sun’ development, access to skilled developers, and proximity to new markets. In recent years, the success of the open source phe-nomenon has inspired a number of new forms of sourcing that combine the potential of global sourcing with the elusive and much sought-after possibility of increased innovation. Three of these new forms of sourcing are opensourcing, innersourcing and crowdsourcing. Based on a comparative analysis of a number of case studies of these forms of sourcing, we illustrate how they differ in both significant and subtle ways from outsourcing. We conclude that these emerging sourcing approaches call for conceptual development and refocusing. Specifically, to understand software sourcing in the age of open, the important concept is no longer ‘shoring,’ but rather five identified imperatives (governance sharedness, unknownness, intrinsicness, innovativeness and co-opetitiveness) and their implications for the development situation at hand

The future of software development methods

Most of the software development methods in use today are founded on concepts that emerged in the early decades of the software industry – the systems development life cycle, object orientation, agile and lean methods, open source, software product lines, software patterns – the list goes on. However there are several disruptive elements present in the current software landscape – software ecosystems, servitization, the Internet of Things, parallel processing, cognitive computing, quantum computing – that pose significant challenges in terms of the software development methods that might be appropriate. We suggest that these disruptive elements highlight the need to create new software development methods more appropriate to the needs of the current development environment

Outsourcing labour to the cloud

Various forms of open sourcing to the online population are establishing themselves as cheap, effective methods of getting work done. These have revolutionised the traditional methods for innovation and have contributed to the enrichment of the concept of 'open innovation'. To date, the literature concerning this emerging topic has been spread across a diverse number of media, disciplines and academic journals. This paper attempts for the first time to survey the emerging phenomenon of open outsourcing of work to the internet using 'cloud computing'. The paper describes the volunteer origins and recent commercialisation of this business service. It then surveys the current platforms, applications and academic literature. Based on this, a generic classification for crowdsourcing tasks and a number of performance metrics are proposed. After discussing strengths and limitations, the paper concludes with an agenda for academic research in this new area

MIS-aligned Student Perspectives of Outsourcing and Offshoring

Outsourcing and offshoring (sourcing) aspects of IS functions have been common organizational activities for decades.However, the landscape is evolving. Organizations are shifting from primarily single vendor-client sourcing relationshipstoward innovative multi-vendor relationships integrated into organizational strategic plans. Current students are tomorrow’sleaders, and as such it is critical that IS programs teach cutting edge strategic sourcing concepts. We analyzed studentperceptions of the pros and cons of sourcing and found that current students largely anchor to a limited number of conceptsthat may be outdated and not representative of today’s competitive sourcing landscape. Current organizational trends insourcing require a different skill set for IS managers than those required in the past. More must be done to inform students ofcurrent trends in order to prepare them for the skills needed to be effective in their future IS roles. A framework of requiredskills for future IS managers is offered

Not so shore anymore: the new imperatives when sourcing in the age of open

Software outsourcing has been the subject of much research in the past 25 years, largely because of potential cost savings envisaged through lower labour costs, ‘follow-the-sun’ development, access to skilled developers, and proximity to new markets. In recent years, the success of the open source phe-nomenon has inspired a number of new forms of sourcing that combine the potential of global sourcing with the elusive and much sought-after possibility of increased innovation. Three of these new forms of sourcing are opensourcing, innersourcing and crowdsourcing. Based on a comparative analysis of a number of case studies of these forms of sourcing, we illustrate how they differ in both significant and subtle ways from outsourcing. We conclude that these emerging sourcing approaches call for conceptual development and refocusing. Specifically, to understand software sourcing in the age of open, the important concept is no longer ‘shoring,’ but rather five identified imperatives (governance sharedness, unknownness, intrinsicness, innovativeness and co-opetitiveness) and their implications for the development situation at hand

Crowdsourcing: A Taxonomy and Systematic Mapping Study

Context: Crowdsourcing, or tapping into the power of the crowd for problem solving, has gained ever-increasing attraction since it was first introduced. Crowdsourcing has been used in different disciplines, and it is becoming well-accepted in the marketplace as a new business model which utilizes Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs). Objective: While both academia and industry have extensively delved into different aspects of crowdsourcing, there seems to be no common understanding of what crowdsourcing really means and what core and optional features it has. Also, we still lack information on the kinds and disciplines of studies conducted on crowdsourcing and how they defined it in the context of their application area. This paper will clarify this ambiguity by analysing the distribution and demographics of research in crowdsourcing and extracting taxonomy of the variability and commonality in the constructs defining the concept in the literature. Method: We conduct a systematic mapping study and analyse 113 papers, selected via a formal process, and report and discuss the results. The study is combined by a content analysis process to extract a taxonomy of features describing crowdsourcing. Results: We extract and describe the taxonomy of features which characterize crowdsourcing in its four constituents; the crowd, the crowdsourcer, the crowdsourced task and the crowdsourcing platform. In addition, we report on different mappings between these features and the characteristics of the studied papers. We also analyse the distribution of the research using multiple criteria and draw conclusions. For example, our results show a constantly increasing interest in the area, especially in North America and a significant interest from industry. Also, we illustrate that although crowdsourcing is shown to be useful in a variety of disciplines, the research in the field of computer science still seems to be dominant in investigating it. Conclusions: This study allows forming a clear picture of the research in crowdsourcing and understanding the different features of crowdsourcing and their popularity, what type of research was conducted, where and how and by whom. The study enables researchers and practitioners to estimate the current status of the research in this new field. Our taxonomy of extracted features provides a reference model which could be used to configure crowdsourcing and also define it precisely and make design decisions on which of its variation to adopt

Crowdsourcing creativity in government : state of the field in the four research paradigms

Creativity, innovation, openness and involving citizens in decision making belong to a set of efforts undertaken by the government. This is possible thanks to crowdsourcing that is a tool to communicate with citizens and that is a source of knowledge and that provides new, creative ideas. However, despite the research intensity in the area of crowdsourcing creativity in government, the research results obtained to date are still ambiguous and fragmentary. Research on crowdsourcing government is often limited to interpretive traditions. This gives an incomplete picture of government crowdsourcing since three additional research paradigms are omitted: interpretative, postmodern, and critical. Our ambition is to raise awareness about the presence of many paradigms in crowdsourcing government research. The aim of this article is to present crowdsourcing government from the perspective of four paradigms by Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan. We are trying to achieve this by presenting a review of research on crowdsourcing government taking into consideration four paradigms: positivist, interpretative, critical, and postmodern. We suggest that a single paradigm is not able to provide a complete picture of crowdsourcing government, and thus we seek interactions between the paradigms and postulate multi-paradigmatic research that may lead to further development of knowledge

Fairness and Bias in Algorithmic Hiring

Employers are adopting algorithmic hiring technology throughout the recruitment pipeline. Algorithmic fairness is especially applicable in this domain due to its high stakes and structural inequalities. Unfortunately, most work in this space provides partial treatment, often constrained by two competing narratives, optimistically focused on replacing biased recruiter decisions or pessimistically pointing to the automation of discrimination. Whether, and more importantly what types of, algorithmic hiring can be less biased and more beneficial to society than low-tech alternatives currently remains unanswered, to the detriment of trustworthiness. This multidisciplinary survey caters to practitioners and researchers with a balanced and integrated coverage of systems, biases, measures, mitigation strategies, datasets, and legal aspects of algorithmic hiring and fairness. Our work supports a contextualized understanding and governance of this technology by highlighting current opportunities and limitations, providing recommendations for future work to ensure shared benefits for all stakeholders