Leslie P. Willcocks

Bio: Leslie P. Willcocks is an academic researcher from London School of Economics and Political Science. The author has contributed to research in topics: Outsourcing & Knowledge process outsourcing. The author has an hindex of 75, co-authored 461 publications receiving 21718 citations. Previous affiliations of Leslie P. Willcocks include California State University, San Bernardino & University of Warwick.

An empirical investigation of information technology sourcing practices: lessons from experience

Abstract: Following Kodak's landmark information technology (IT) outsourcing decisions in 1989, the IT outsourcing market grew to 76 billion dollars in 1995. As the outsourcing market continues to grow and as new contracting options emerge, the accumulated experiences of firms offer significant opportunities for learning. This paper builds on a previous collection of data on 61 IT sourcing decisions made in 40 U.S. and U.K. organizations during the period 1991 to 1995. This paper reanalyzed transcribed interviews from 145 participants. Using "expected cost savings achieved" as an indicator of success, five best practices were identified in the case companies. First, selective outsourcing decisions had higher success rates than total outsourcing or total insourcing decisions. Second, senior executives and IT managers who made decisions together had higher success rates than either stakeholder group acting alone. Third, organizations that invited both internal and external bids had higher success rates than organizations that merely compared external bids with current IT costs. Fourth, short-term contracts achieved higher success rates than long-term contracts. Fifth, detailed fee-for-service contracts had higher success rates than other types of fee-for-service contracts. The critical elements of three contracting models are described: fee-for-service contracts, strategic alliances/ partnerships, and buying-in of vendor resources. When the practices generated from the case studies are compared with current practices, we begin to understand which practices are proving robust and why new practices emerge. For example, in the participating companies, the rhetoric of a "partnership" was misused to describe contracts that are actually fee-for-service contracts. Today, practitioners who understand the inherent conflicts in fixed fee-for-service contracts are demanding what they perceive to be more favorable contracting options, such as flexibly priced contracts, performance-based contracts, and strategic alliances based on shared risks and rewards. This analysis reconciles some of the apparent discrepancies in past findings about the best ways to source IT.

Core IS Capabilities for Exploiting Information Technology

Abstract: To achieve lasting competitiveness through IT, according to the authors, companies face three enduring challenges: focusing IS efforts to support business strategies and using IT innovations to develop new, superior strategies; devising and managing effective strategies for the delivery of low-cost, high-quality IS services; and choosing the technical platform on which to mount IS services. Three strands of research ? on the CIO's role and experience, the CIO's capabilities, and IS/IT outsourcing ? demonstrate that businesses need nine core IS capabilities to address these challenges: 1. Leadership. Integrating IS/IT effort with business purpose and activity. 2. Business systems thinking. Envisioning the business process that technology makes possible. 3. Relationship building. Getting the business constructively engaged in IS/IT issues. 4. Architecture planning. Creating the blueprint for a technical platform that responds to current and future business needs. 5. Making technology work. Rapidly achieving technical progress ? by one means or another. 6. Informed buying. Managing the IS/IT sourcing strategy that meets the interests of the business. 7. Contract facilitation. Ensuring the success of existing contracts for IS/IT services. 8. Contract monitoring. Protecting the business's contractual position, current and future. 9. Vendor development. Identifying the potential added value of IS/IT service suppliers. IS professionals and managers need to demonstrate a changing mix of technical, business, and interpersonal skills. The authors trace the role these skills play in achieving the core IS capabilities and discuss the challenges of adapting core IS capabilities to particular organizational contexts. Their core IS capability model implies migration to a relatively small IS function, staffed by highly able people. To sustain their ability to exploit IT, the authors conclude, organizations must make the design of flexible IS arrangements a high-priority task and take an anticipatory rather than a reactive approach to that task.

A review of the IT outsourcing literature: Insights for practice

Abstract: This paper reviews research studies of information technology outsourcing (ITO) practice and provides substantial evidence that researchers have meaningfully and significantly addressed the call for academics to produce knowledge relevant to practitioners. Based on a review of 191 IT outsourcing articles, we extract the insights for practice on six key ITO topics relevant to practitioners. The first three topics relate to the early 1990s focus on determinants of IT outsourcing, IT outsourcing strategy, and mitigating IT outsourcing risks. A focus on best practices and client and supplier capabilities developed from the mid-1990s and is traced through to the late 2000s, while relationship management is shown to be a perennial and challenging issue throughout the nearly 20years under study. More recently studies have developed around offshore outsourcing, business process outsourcing and the rise, decline and resurrection of application service provision. The paper concludes by pointing to future challenges and developments.

The Value of Selective IT Sourcing

Abstract: Why does the outsourcing of IT frequently fail to produce the expected cost savings or other benefits? Perhaps because managers don't carefully select which IT activities to outsource. The authors examined sixty-two sourcing decisions at forty organizations through interviews with senior business executives, CIOs, consultants, and vendor account managers. From their data, they developed a set of frameworks to clarify sourcing options and aid managers in deciding which IT functions to contract out and which to retain in-house.

Exploring information technology outsourcing relationships: theory and practice

Abstract: A growing concern among the organisations who are actively involved in Information Technology outsourcing is post-contract management and the ensuing development of what many practitioners and scholars have coined the ‘outsourcing partnership’. This paper integrates theoretical concepts from organisation theory, social exchange theory, and relational contract theory with existing research on IT outsourcing, to develop a conceptual model for understanding the relationship. In particular, we conceptually elaborate and then address the relationship's properties — identified as interactions, contract, context, structure, and behavioural dimensions. Preliminary exploratory research into relationship practice in twelve organisations involved in outsourcing presents some interesting findings that advance the thinking about the outsourcing relationship. We found the conceptual model useful in elucidating important relationship management areas, highlighting not only the outsourcing relationship's contractual, social, and economic characteristics, but also many additional elements found to have relevance in practice.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

Abstract: How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

A resource-based perspective on information technology capability and firm performance: an empirical investigation

Abstract: The resource-based view of the firm attributes superior financial performance to organizational resources and capabilities. This paper develops the concept of IT as an organizational capability and empirically examines the association between IT capability and firm performance. Firm specific IT resources are classified as IT infrastructure, human IT resources, and IT-enabled intangibles. A matched-sample comparison group methodology and publicly available ratings are used to assess IT capability and firm performance. Results indicate that firms with high IT capability tend to outperform a control sample of firms on a variety of profit and cost-based performance measures.

Do formal contracts and relational governance function as substitutes or complements

Abstract: Relational exchange arrangements supported by trust are commonly viewed as substitutes for complex contracts in interorganizational exchanges. Many argue that formal contracts actually undermine trust and thereby encourage the opportunistic behavior they are designed to discourage. In this paper, we develop and test an alternative perspective: that formal contracts and relational governance function as complements. Using data from a sample of information service exchanges, we find empirical support for this proposition of complementarity. Managers appear to couple their increasingly customized contracts with high levels of relational governance (and vice versa). Moreover, this interdependence underlies their ability to generate improvements in exchange performance. Our results concerning the determinants of these governance choices show their distinct origins, which further augments their complementarity in practice. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.