GESTÃO DA TERCEIRIZAÇÃO DE TI: IDENTIFICAÇÃO DO ESTADO DA ARTE POR MEIO DE UM PROCESSO CONSTRUTIVISTA DE INVESTIGAÇÃO E ANÁLISE BIBLIOMÉTRICA

Este trabalho tem como objetivo identificar e conhecer os mais relevantes artigos e seus parâmetros sobre o tema Gestão da Terceirização de Tecnologia da Informação por meio de um processo construtivista – Knowledge Development Process – Constructivist (ProKnow-C). Foram selecionados 23 artigos, compondo o Portfólio Bibliográfico (PB). A partir do PB evidenciou-se que: i) o periódico mais presente foi o The Journal of Strategic Information Systems; ii) o artigo mais citado foi Poppo, L. & Zenger, T. (2002); iii) o autor mais presente no PB foi o J. Goo; iv) os autores mais citados em geral foram L. P. Willcocks e M. C. Lacity; v) a palavra-chave mais presente no portfólio foi “Outsourcing”.This paper underlines the task characteristics of the emergency management life cycle. Moreover, the characteristics of three ubiquitous technologies including RFID, handheld computers and GIS are discussed and further used as a criterion to evaluate their potential for emergency management tasks. Built on a rather loose interpretation of Task-technology Fit model, a conceptual model presented in this paper advocates that a technology that offers better features for task characteristics is more likely to be adopted in emergency management. Empirical findings presented in this paper reveal the significance of task characteristics and their role in evaluating the suitability of three ubiquitous technologies before their actual adoption in emergency management

IT OUTSOURCING SUCCESS FACTORS FOR THE CLIENT ORGANIZATION

Information and Technology Outsourcing (ITO), as defined by Willcocks et al.[1], is the practice of sourcing all or part of an organization‘s IT and IS functions along with its related services from an outside vendor. Due to the huge sum of money involved on each ITO contract, ITO managers were under pressure to successfully deliver what has been expected from the contract. This paper will focus on synthesizing ITO success factors from the current literatures to suggest a complete list of factors which influence the ITO success for the client organization. Based from the literatures, the following list of factors is proposed as the ITO key success factors: selective outsourcing, client core capabilities, relationship, ITO process, ITO configuration fit, supplier capabilities, ITO contract and stakeholder management. With a clear understanding on both the expectations and the success measurements, an ITO manager could use the proposed key success factors to enhance the success of his/her outsourcing ITO contract.   Keywords: Information Technology Outsourcing, Key Success Facto

ENHANCING THE APPLICATION AND MEASUREMENT OF RELATIONSHIP QUALITY IN FUTURE IT OUTSOURCING STUDIES

Studies have emphasised the importance of a strong relationship between a client and vendor to ensure positive IT Outsourcing (ITO) outcomes. To measure and assess this relationship strength, a construct known as Relationship Quality (ReQ) has been widely used in the ITO context. However, recent studies have highlighted the inconsistent and even contradictory application of this construct in previous studies raising concern over its validity. To address this matter, we conducted a critical literature analysis to systematically examine how ReQ has been applied in previous ITO studies. The findings from our review highlight three important knowledge gaps with the current ITO studies: 1) lack of rich qualitative studies investigating ReQ that is complex and subjective in nature; 2) inappropriate application of economic and strategic based theoretical lenses; 3) lack of differentiation between ReQ attributes. This study provides a number of recommendations to enhance the application and measurement of ReQ in future ITO studies. The next step of the study will address the three identified knowledge gaps. This study offers important implications to both theory and practice

A Combined Model of IT Outsourcing Partnerships and Success

Outsourcing has the potential to decrease costs, increase focus, improve productivity, add flexibility and innovation, and increase operating income by taking advantage of another organization’s expertise, innovation, or cheaper labor. However, many managers have admitted that outsourcing initiatives have not fulfilled many of their expectations. Furthermore, studies have reported that more than half of outsourcing relationships fail within the first five years of implementation. This paper introduces a comprehensive theoretical model that combines two models proposed previously by Lee and Kim (1999) and Alborz, Seddon, and Scheepers (2003). Both models include sets of factors believed to influence the quality of the outsourcing partnership and, in turn, influence outsourcing success. This paper also extends these two works by proposing two important missing factors: Process Factors and Cultural Factors. The model presented in this paper should be of interest to both practitioners and researchers. For managers in an organization, the proposed model attempts to reduce the complexity of an outsourcing relationship so that both partners can focus on the most important factors that have the greatest potential to increase the likelihood of success. For IS researchers, this paper provides a new theoretical model grounded upon previous research to offer a more comprehensive framework to guide discussion and future research

The construction of client organisations and contract structures in outsourcing within dynamic contexts: a longitudinal case study approach

This explorative study investigates how bureaucratic public sector client organisations deal with information technology (ITO) and business process (BPO) outsourcing in terms of internal management. To supplement the lack of studies emphasising pre-existing client organisational structure and the contextual and internal changes intertwined with and required for outsourcing, the thesis develops theoretical underpinnings that incorporate change, time, dynamism and context. These consist of a structuration theory-informed formal organisation perspective and a processual analysis-informed multidimensional outsourcing configuration framework. This thesis primarily seeks answers to 'why' and 'how' questions such as: why bureaucratic client organisations are concerned about IT outsourcing or BPO; in consequence, how they construct or change their strategy, organisational arrangements and outsourcing contracts; and, what are the contexts and social processes that let those constructions go forward? Studied by means of a longitudinal case study approach, with elements of comparison, the two cases are the IT outsourcing of the Public Procurement Service of Korea‘s e-government procurement system and the BPO of the Teachers‘ Pension Scheme administration of the British Department for Children, Schools and Families. Through contextual and micro-level analyses, the research found that client organisations appear to work at transforming outsourcing-related strategy, contract structure, and their own organisations—which are mutually interrelated—in the context of five IT governance concerns: strategic alignment, delivery of business value, performance management, risk management, and control and accountability. Institutionalised human behaviours were found to be strongly involved with these processes. The thesis provides rich data on how the organisations decomposed and recomposed existing bureaucratic structures and processes. This thesis also found three standards emerging as rationales for the strategic choices of the client organisations when they moved to outsourcing. These were: core vs. non-core perception of outsourced functions; high vs. low supplier switching costs; and high vs. low variability of business and applied IT. Against expectations, explicit distinctions such as cultural differences between two government environments and differences between ITO and BPO, did not sufficiently explain the core phenomena regarding outsourcing and client organisational change. In practice, core/non-core perception was found to be the key shaper of the outsourcing contracts and client organisation construction, though each outsourcing arrangement emerged as distinctively different in terms of relevant decisions, context, and processes. Overall, the research supports Kallinikos's formal organisation perspective for explaining outsourcing as an enabler of organisational change, and provides an enriched and extended outsourcing configuration framework for disaggregating and studying, and for practitioners helping to manage, outsourcing arrangements in depth

ITIL usage, and use of ITIL recommended practices and the IT outsourcing relationship quality

This research examines how outsourced IT arrangements are influenced by ITIL processes that are recommended as being important for the success of outsourcing. The research employed both qualitative (focus groups, one exploratory and one supplementary) and quantitative (Structural Equation Modelling) methods to evaluate the effects of ITIL recommended practices on the outcomes of IT outsourcing arrangements. It used, as informants, Australian IT service managers. The initial part of the research showed that informants believe the ITIL framework can positively influence IT outsourcing relationships. An analysis of data from an initial focus group suggested that ITIL improves the outcomes of an outsourcing arrangement through better use of SLAs (service level agreements), more knowledge sharing, and more effective inter-organisational communication. This analysis research also revealed that the participants thought that it is through improving performance and customer satisfaction that ITIL leads to a better outsourcing relationship. The second part of the research confirmed that ITIL usage statistically impacts the quality of SLAs, but does not statistically impact knowledge sharing, communications quality, or overall evaluations (technical service quality, cost savings and commitment to the outsourcing arrangement). On the other hand, communications quality, a core element of ITIL’s philosophy, does, through its effect on technical service quality (or, in other words, vendor performance), have a substantial effect on evaluation. The research also highlighted the importance of technical service quality (i.e. performance), which is the major factor leading to a purchaser’s commitment to the outsourcing arrangement (producing a large statistical effect on that variable). This finding is consistent with prior research. When presented with the quantitative findings the informants in a second, supplementary focus group (all users of ITIL) suggested that, contrary to the results of the survey analysis, ITIL had played a very important role in the success of their outsourcing arrangements. They proposed that outsourcing success depends on how well ITIL recommended practices are exercised. The ITIL users in this focus group also suggested that understanding and meeting each other’s expectations is critical to outsourcing success, and is an indicator of “mature” implementation of ITIL. This is consistent with an alternative explanation for the statistical findings: that many firms, though not formally using ITIL, still focus effort on effective communications (a core ITIL suggestion), leading to positive outsourcing outcomes (Technical Service Quality, Satisfaction, and Commitment) even when ITIL was not formally employed. The research has enhanced our understanding of how ITIL can contribute to IT outsourcing relationships through improving SLA quality; it has also fore grounded the important mechanisms of communication quality and knowledge sharing. A key contribution of this research is that there were some inconclusive outcomes from the two studies of the relationship between ITIL implementation and IT outsourcing arrangements. There are apparent contradictions between the survey analysis and the outcomes of the two focus groups. This may be because the preliminary and supplementary focus groups comprised only ITIL users, and so their conclusions represented that perspective alone

The quality-of-relationship construct in IT outsourcing

This paper reports on the conceptualization and measurement of an important management controllable factor affecting the success of an information technology outsourcing (ITO) arrangement, namely Quality of Relationship (QoR). Attributes of the construct were identified from an analysis of the literature, and key attributes selected based on interviews with 29 managers in four pairs of client and supplier organizations. Construct validity of the resultant measure is assessed through comparison with qualitative interview data, and through tests of association between our measure and perceived overall ITO success. The results suggest that the ten indicators identified in the paper provide a valid measure of the quality of relationship that can be used by both client and supplier managers, and researchers, in assessing the health of an ITO relationship.<br /