Information systems outsourcing

Abstract

In the last fifteen years, academic research on information systems (IS) outsourcing has evolved rapidly. Indeed the field of outsourcing research has grown so fast that there has been scant opportunity for the research community to take a collective breath, and complete a global assessment of research activities to date. This paper seeks to address this need by exploring and synthesizing the academic literature on IS outsourcing. It offers a roadmap of the IS outsourcing literature, highlighting what has been done so far, how the work fits together under a common umbrella, and what the future directions might be. In order to adequately address the immense diversity of research on IS outsourcing and outsourcing in general, we develop a conceptual framework that helps us to categorize the literature. In particular, we look at the research objectives, methods used and theoretical foundations of the papers. In identifying the major research objectives, we view outsourcing as an organizational decision process and adapt Simon's stage model of decision making. This allows us to identify five major sourcing issues, from which at least one is covered by each academic article. These are the questions of <i>why</i> to outsource, <i>what</i> to outsource, <i>which</i> decision process to take, <i>how</i> to implement the sourcing decision, and what is the outcome of the sourcing decision. In analyzing the literature, we identify and structure the main explanatory factors and theoretical relationships within each of these sourcing stages. Based on our discussion of the research objectives, theoretical foundations and research approaches taken in the literature, we show how the various research streams hang together and we come up with a number of implications for research. Moreover, we identify a number of emerging sourcing issues. We believe that research on these "new" phenomena such as offshore outsourcing, application service providing and business process outsourcing would benefit from 'standing on the shoulders' of what has already been accomplished in the field of IS outsourcing.

Development of Outsourcing in the Customs Sphere

“…Foreign publications studying outsourcing emphasize its application in the sphere of information technology (Lacity & Willcocks, 2000;Dibbern et al, 2004). The Russian Banking Encyclopedia provides the following definition: "outsourcing is the type of functional computer services rendered by a specialized firm to its clients (banks, insurance companies, exchanges, etc.)"…”

Modeling on Intention to Increase BPO of Venture

“…As to quality improvement, the literature shows why firms keep outsourcing some processes of their business [70,71,72]. It is certain that firms also expect the BPO supplier to provide a consistent quality for process improvements [73].…”

“…Quality improvement refers to all available efforts for a small venture firms including choice of outsourcing several processes of their business [70,71,72], aiming at gaining trust and loyalty from customers. The sample items to measure this construct are; 'Using BPO keeps improving our business performance', 'Quality failure rate can get decreased remarkably by using BPO', 'BPO provides better performance than doing it by our hands'.…”

Economics of Offshore IT Outsourcing: An International Trade Perspective

“…Only 22% of the outsourcing outcomes were negative. Outsourcing has been found to reduce costs [11,12], increase exports [11,13], improve productivity and enhance an organization's flexibility [14] and increase new product innovation [11].…”