Managing Flexibility in Outsourcing

In recent years, outsourcing has gained considerable management attention. However, the benefits of outsourcing are not without concessions. One major risk is losing the flexibility to change the extent, nature, or scope of the outsourced business services, and such flexibility is strategically imperative in today\u27s dynamic business environment. This paper seeks to clarify the multi-dimensional notion of flexibility in outsourcing by examining robustness, modifiability, new capability, and ease of exit. Adapting from Evans (1991), we also develop a framework to classify existing practices in managing outsourcing flexibility. We go beyond contractual provision to surface a portfolio of pre-emptive, protective, exploitive, and corrective maneuvers. These strategic maneuvers map well to traditional notions in coordination theory, both in advanced structuring through loose coupling and dependency diversification, and in dynamic adjustment through proactive sensing and reactive adapting. We put forward a set of propositions hypothesizing the relationships between the various strategic maneuvers and the different dimensions of outsourcing flexibility, and discuss the moderating impact of such maneuvers on outsourcing success. We hope the greater conceptual clarity will not only contribute to the effectiveness of outsourcing management but also spawn a new research agenda on outsourcing flexibility

IT CAPABILITIES IN GLOBAL ENTERPRISES

Organizations are globalizing rapidly for growth. However, with globalization they constantly struggle with the often competing objectives of global scale and responsiveness to local conditions and global trends. Prior research suggests that IT capabilities are critical to achieving organizational goals; however there has been relatively little research that explicitly examines IT capabilities in the MNC context. This paper examines in-depth the IT capabilities in a global organization. Drawing on recent research that suggests a goal-oriented approach to IT capabilities, we identify MNC capabilities of Global Scale, Global-Local Responsiveness and Global Coordination. The paper also notes the distinction between resources and processes in the conceptualization of capabilities, and provides empirical support for the resources and associated processes that comprise each of the global IT capabilities

IT Governance in Global Enterprises: Managing in Asia

As businesses reconfigure their value chains and scale up their global expansions, they have to cope with a myriad of complex IT management challenges. This research examines how enterprises realign their global IT strategies for scale, speed, and innovation. Anchored in the IT governance literature, we seek to unravel the required governance structures and processes in balancing the inherent global-local tensions. Through field interviews with CIOs of global enterprises with established Asian presence, we derived a research framework for global IT management. Our findings suggest evolving global-regional-local structural elements in global IT organization supplemented by the institution of horizontal/linking mechanisms. Specifically, the key tension points appear to be in the flexible design of IT service delivery, the facilitation of IT innovation flow, and the nurturing of a global IT management mindset

MANAGING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN TRANSNATIONAL ENTERPRISES

Abstract Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are increasingly shifting from global or multinational strategies towards a transnational strategy (Barlett & Ghoshal 1989

The Institutional Legitimacy of Disruptive Start-ups in Sharing Economy

The sharing economy, with innovative business models (e.g. ride sharing, house sharing, and crowdsourcing), has threatened and disrupted the traditional industries. However, the process of such disruptions and negotiation of new institutional legitimacy is messy. Our study attempts to utilize institutional legitimacy literature to understand the dynamic process of new institutional legitimacy formation in a sharing economy disruption and generate a framework to explain the factors which influence the legitimacy process. We used deep- learning technique to identify the institutional legitimacy issues surrounding Uber, a leading tech start-up in sharing economy, from news articles published between 2009 and 2016. The preliminary results show that institutional legitimacy of sharing economy disruption varies by time and geographical regions

Managing Risks in a Failing IT Project: A Social Constructionist View

Why do IT projects continue to stumble, despite the proliferation of risk management methodologies and a growing body of knowledge on project risk assessment and mitigation? In this paper, we propose an alternative theoretical perspective that views project risk as a social construction process shaped by the risk accounts of social groups and actors within an implementation context. Risk management is embedded in the social processes where risks are negotiated and contested, with some risk accounts amplified and some attenuated. Through the analysis of a large IT implementation in an Asian logistics firm and its trajectory of successive crises, we examine the process of the social construction of risk. Our findings highlight the inherent fragmentation and the challenge of building collectiveness in risk construction, and the need for risk managers to consider the influence of broader social structures and the reshaping dynamism of sudden focusing events in managing complex IT projects

IMPLEMENTING ASEAN STOCK TRADING LINKS: TACKLING THE INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGES

Benefits of financial market integration across different economies have motivated a series of mergers and acquisitions, and electronic trading link-ups across regional financial markets. Drawing on institutional theory, we look beyond technological solutions to surface strategies in tackling the institutional challenges in the context of cross-border financial market integration. Through an interpretative case study of ASEAN Exchanges, we found that successful market integration requires the active lobbying of regulators to gain regulative legitimacy, peer socialization within the profession to attain normative legitimacy, and the reframing of mindsets through education, publicity and new symbolic artifacts to achieve cultural-cognitive legitimacy. Results highlight the importance for entrepreneurial focal actors to adopt an institutional lens and its respective strategies to enhance the success of technology implementation in a highly institutionalized context

A NEW IT ORGANIZATIONAL FORM FOR MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISES

Abstract Globalization has been a major phenomenon since the 1980s. As many multinational enterprises (MNEs

Threat-Balancing in Vendor Transition

While many outsourcing contracts are expiring, and vendor transition is becoming an increasing concern, little research helps organizations manage vendor transition. This paper explores vendor transition across two case sites. In one case, the outgoing vendor cooperated with the client which resulted in the client distancing itself from interactions between vendors. In the second case, the outgoing vendor was openly hostile, with the result that the client allied with the incoming vendor to manage vendor transition. These findings mirror expectations from balance of threat theory, a political science theory about interactions between nations. Balance of threat theory predicts that outgoing vendor hostility and the capability of the client to mitigate hostility determine whether a client takes a hard or soft balancing strategy during vendor transition