Governance Of Outsourcing

The business landscape is changing. Outsourcing is now a growing phenomenon in which specific functions are subcontracted to specialist companies, often elsewhere in the world. IT represents a particular case for outsourcing, both in terms of benefits and potential inter-organizational problems. Deciding whether to keep IT in-house or to whether outsource it is a key management responsibility. Once a decision for outsourcing has been made, relationships with external provider(s) have to be established and managed. This book combines both research and practical examples to explore how this can be done successfully. Uniquely, the book provides a governance model for such partnerships, exploring the risks and responsibilities involved for both parties. Drawing on the theories of interfirm networks and the boundaries of the firm, here, it provides an accessible and cutting-edge perspective. Incorporating industry examples from a global network of companies (including four case specific chapters), this book investigates partnerships in industrial sectors and IT functions. An invaluable resource for those involved in IT and new technology management as well as strategic business management and planning, this book presents all the necessary theory with an indispensable practical perspective.

This book offers a guide to the many pitfalls of IT Outsourcing. It provides clear criteria for the application of governance principles to the outsourcing process, and thereby enables readers to implement IT Outsourcing so that it supports overall business goals.

Stefanie Leimeister examines different types of IT outsourcing relationships and their characteristics depending on the outsourcing clients’ underlying expectations. The author derives actionable advice for applicable strategies and an effective allocation of resources for an outsourcing venture.

The authors propose that corporations be able to hire other corporations to provide board services.

The aim of this book is to investigate the discursive power of two original, theoretical lenses when applied to real outsourcing arrangements and phenomena. The Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and Foucauldian perspectives are brought to bear on five outsourcing relationships in order to test the application of these discourses to rich qualitative data over the outsourcing contractual life-cycle. This will be the first study illustrating the relevance of Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, discourse and power relations to the study of outsourcing arrangements, and will also incorporate the perspectives of both client and supplier organizations. Using discourse analysis, the objective is to critically deconstruct and provide fresh insight into the normative ‘outsourcing’ discourse that has grown up around global sourcing practices over the last 30 years.

Many companies outsource parts of their information systems (IS) function to external service providers. However, many IS outsourcing projects fail. One of the main reasons for this failure is a lack of knowledge of appropriate governance of the relationship between client and vendor. While research indicates that the two main governance mechanisms, i.e., contractual and relational governance, may change over time, there is no consensus on how and why they change. A dynamic view on IS outsourcing governance is developed to understand those governance changes. This contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate on the relationship between contractual and relational governance, i.e., whether they act as complements or substitutes. In addition, one research article focuses on the impact of information technologies on the governance of IS outsourcing projects. The four research projects included in this book provide insights into how IS outsourcing governance may be improved.