Shifting sand: Organizational identity, partnership and IT outsourcing

This study pertains to the influence of organizational identity and organizational image on the quality of an information technology outsourcing relationship. Organizational identity is conceptualized as the mental representation that organizational members have of themselves as social group in terms of practices, norms, and values and how they understand themselves to be different from members of other organizations. We focus on two key organizational images that are defined from two perspectives: within and from the outside of the organization. From within, it refers to what members believe outsiders perceive the organization’s identity (construed external image); from the outside, it represents how outsiders (clients, partners, etc.) actually appraise the organizational attributes (mirroring image or reputation). In an outsourcing context, we conjecture that the degree of proximity between each partner’s respective interpretation of organizational identity and the image the other party has of them influences the quality of the relationship, mainly in terms of trust, understanding, and conflict – or lack thereof. In this research in progress paper, we use secondary data to explore the nature of these relationships