The Role of Client-internal Social Linkages for Outsourcing Success – An SNA Approach

What is the role of a firm’s internal social relations between business departments and IT unit for the success of its IT outsourcing relationship? In this paper, we propose that the relationship between business and IT of a firm is crucial for achieving effective outsourcing management and for enabling the vendor to deliver the services as demanded. Since the business side of the client firm represents the users of the information systems but the IT unit represents the interface to the outsourcing vendor firm, interaction between both units is proposed to be required for maintaining a good outsourcing relationship. Based on a survey in the German Banking Industry and by adopting a Social Network Analysis Approach which captures the interaction structure within the client firm and thus represents an innovative scale to outsourcing research, we show that tight social linkages within the client firm lead to higher service quality achieved by the vendor firm

Deviations of Governance In IT Multi-Sourcing: A Case Study

IT outsourcing (ITO) refers to the shift of IT/IS activities from internal to external of an organization. In prior research, the governance of ITO is recognized with persistent strategic importance for practice, because it is tightly related to ITO success. Under the rapid transformation of global market, the evolving practice of ITO requires updated knowledge on effective governance. However, research on ITO governance is still under developed due to the lack of integrated theoretical frameworks and the variety of empirical settings besides dyadic client-vendor relationships. Especially, as multi-sourcing has become an increasingly common practice in ITO, its new governance challenges must be attended by both ITO researchers and practitioners. To address this research gap, this study aims to understand multi-sourcing governance with an integrated theoretical framework incorporating both governance structure and governance mechanisms. The focus is on the emerging deviations among formal, perceived and practiced governance. With an interpretive perspective, a single case study is conducted with mixed methods of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and qualitative inquiries. The empirical setting embraces one client firm and its two IT suppliers for IT infrastructure services. The empirical material is analyzed at three levels: within one supplier firm, between the client and one supplier, and among all three firms. Empirical evidences, at all levels, illustrate various deviations in governance mechanisms, with which emerging governance structures are shaped. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of ITO governance in three domains: the governance of ITO in general, the governance of multi-sourcing in particular, and research methodology. For ITO governance in general, this study has identified two research strands of governance structure and governance mechanisms, and integrated both concepts under a unified framework. The composition of four research papers contributes to multi-sourcing research by illustrating the benefits of zooming in and out across the multilateral relationships with different aspects and scopes. Methodologically, the viability and benefit of mixed-method is illustrated and confirmed for both researchers and practitioners.IT-palveluiden ulkoistamisen tarkoituksena on hankkia organisaation tarvitsemat IT-palvelut toiselta organisaatiolta. Hankittavien palveluiden laatu on aiemman tutkimuksen mukaan riippunut siitä, miten palveluiden ulkoistusta on hallittu. Aihepiiristä ei kuitenkaan ole olemassa integroitua tieteellistä viitekehystä. Lisäksi aiempi IT-palveluiden hallintaa käsittelevä empiirinen tutkimus on perehtynyt vain kahdenvälisiin asiakas–tuottaja suhteisiin. Tämän johdosta on tärkeää tutkia lisää IT-palveluiden ulkoistamisen hallintaa yleensä ja erityisesti niissä tilanteissa, joissa IT-palvelut on ulkoistettu useille toimijoille eli kyse on IT-palveluiden moniulkoistamisesta. Tässä tutkimuksessa kehitettiin IT-palveluiden moniulkoistamisen hallintaan soveltuva integroitu, tieteellinen viitekehys, joka sisältää sekä hallinnan rakenteet että hallinnan mekanismit. Työn empiirisessä osassa erityisenä kiinnostuksen kohteena oli se, mitä palvelun hallinnasta oli virallisesti sovittu, kuinka eri osapuolet olettivat hallinnan tapahtuvan, ja miten hallinta käytännössä toteutui. Aihetta tutkittiin tulkitsevan tapaustutkimuksen keinoin yhdistäen puolistrukturoitua haastattelututkimusta ja sosiaalisten verkostojen analyysiä. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin yhdestä asiakasyrityksestä ja sen kahdesta IT-palveluiden toimittajasta. Aineiston analysointi tehtiin kolmella tasolla: yksittäisen toimittajayrityksen, asiakkaan ja toimittajan välisen suhteen sekä kaikkien toimijoiden välisten suhteiden tasolla. Tutkimuksessa osoitetaan, että aiempi IT-palveluiden ulkoistamisen hallintaa käsittelevä tutkimus on jakautunut kahteen tutkimusalueeseen, joista toinen keskittyy hallinnan mekanismeihin ja toinen hallinnan rakenteisiin. Tutkimuksessa kehitetty IT-palveluiden ulkoistamisen hallinnan uusi viitekehys hyödyntää sekä hallinnan mekanismeihin että hallinnan rakenteisiin liittyviä käsitteitä. Tutkielma osoittaa, että moniulkoistamiseen liittyviä toimijoita kannattaa analysoida sekä itsenäisinä toimijoina että verkoston jäseninä. Tutkimus nostaa myös esille hyötyjä laadullisten ja määrällisten tutkimusmenetelmien yhdistämisestä sekä tieteellisen tutkimuksen tekemisessä että yritysten käytännön kehitystyössä.Siirretty Doriast

Who is Doing What: The Impact of Task and Role Documentation on Outsourcing Service Quality

Our research contributes to the quest for management action items that drive outsourcing management success. We hypothesize and empirically show that a certain piece of IT governance, the explicit documentation of roles and responsibilities of staff residing in the client firm’s retained organization contributes to social alignment in terms of interaction quality, shared knowledge, and trust between the client firm’s business and side and the outsourcing vendor. Our model is quantitatively tested by using data from 171 IT outsourcing arrangements in the German banking industry. We show that the documentation of tasks and responsibilities affects the service quality delivered by the vendor in terms of reliability and responsiveness, and that this impact is fully mediated by both client-internal social alignment and vendor/client alignment. This result represents a piece for helping practitioners to develop a better understanding of how to design their outsourcing governance to maintain and improve ongoing outsourcing relationships

A Social Linkage View on the Business Value of IT

Our research intends to explore whether a social perspective on IT business alignment can help shed light on the IT value creation process by considering different facets of interpersonal linkage. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model which could be discussed at the JAIS workshop. Further, we use some empirical data from 149 US banks in order to find first empirical evidence whether our research focus represents a promising direction. We find initial support for our main hypotheses that communication, cross-domain knowledge and mutuality among and between IT and business staff significantly impact IT usage and business process outcomes. The final results of our research could contribute to our understanding of how the IT resource should be understood and used to measurably contribute to firm goals. The initial findings support the caveat of recent studies suggesting that informal aspects of alignment might be quite notable (e.g. Chan, 2002) and show that our theoretical understanding of alignment should be extended to better incorporate social aspects of daily work life

Applying social network analysis to identify project critical success factors

A key challenge in project management is to understand to which extent the dynamic interactions between the different project people—through formal and informal networks of collaboration that temporarily emerge across a project´s lifecycle—throughout all the phases of a project lifecycle, influence a project’s outcome. This challenge has been a growing concern to organizations that deliver projects, due their huge impact in economic, environmental, and social sustainability. In this work, a heuristic two-part model, supported with three scientific fields—project management, risk management, and social network analysis—is proposed, to uncover and measure the extent to which the dynamic interactions of project people—as they work through networks of collaboration—across all the phases of a project lifecycle, influence a project‘s outcome, by first identifying critical success factos regarding five general project collaboration types((1) communication and insight, (2) internal and cross collaboration, (3) know-how and power sharing, (4) clustering, and (5) team work efficiency) by analyzing delivered projects, and second, using those identified critical success factos to provide guidance in upcoming projects regarding the five project collaboration types.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Enabling customers engagement and collaboration for small and medium-sized enterprises in ubiquitous multi-channel ecosystems

Over the last few years, we have encountered an exponential growth in online communication opportunities. Organizations have more and more ways to connect and engage with their current or future customers. The existence of more opportunities in connecting to people can be both an enabler and a burden. Being present at a multitude of different channels requires the effective management of a very large number of adapted contents, formats, and interaction patterns fulfilling the communication and cooperation needs of distributed target groups. In this respect, we integrate existing fragmented communication and monitoring approaches into a full-fledged communication model as a basis for an adequate engagement approach. We describe applications of our approach in both the eTourism and manufacturing domain. In this paper, we introduce an approach that will enable communication, collaboration and value exchange of users through a multitude of online interaction possibilities based on the use of semantic technology. Finally, we also compare our approach with existing solutions with respect to the identified challenges in this subject.European Union (UE) EU FP7 284860 (MSEE