Offshore outsourcing of information technology services is a recent global trend. Organizations may not have considered the impact of outsourcing on their learning capabilities for future competitive competencies. The impact on learning may depend on the national cultures of the client organization and of the offshore outsourcing vendor. A conceptual model of cultural occlusions to organizational learning in IT outsourcing relationships is developed in this paper. Suggested solutions include employing boundary spanners to mitigate of any unfavourable impacts. The cultural occlusions model may inform IT practitioners in an offshore outsourcing relationship, and the IT industry strategy of developing countries offering offshore outsourcing services
