Offshore outsourcing

About: Offshore outsourcing is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1017 publications have been published within this topic receiving 27668 citations.

Information systems outsourcing: a survey and analysis of the literature

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 why to outsource, what to outsource, which decision process to take, how 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.

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.

Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution?

Abstract: IN FEBRUARY 2004, when N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard professor then serving as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, caused a national uproar with a "textbook" statement about trade, economists rushed to his defense. Mankiw was commenting on the phenomenon that has been clumsily dubbed "offshoring" (or "offshore outsourcing")-the migration of jobs, but not the people who perform them, from rich countries to poor ones. Offshoring, Mankiw said, is only "the latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about at least since Adam Smith. ... More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that's a good thing." Although Democratic and Republican politicians alike excoriated Mankiw for his callous attitude toward American jobs, economists lined up to support his claim that offshoring is simply international business as usual. Their economics were basically sound: the well-known principle of comparative advantage implies that trade in new kinds of products will bring overall improvements in productivity and well-being. But Mankiw and his defenders underestimated both the importance of offshoring and its disruptive effect on wealthy countries. Sometimes a quantitative change is so large that it brings about qualitative changes,

Explaining variations in client extra costs between software projects offshored to india

Abstract: Gaining economic benefits from substantially lower labor costs has been reported as a major reason for offshoring labor-intensive information systems services to low-wage countries. However, if wage differences are so high, why is there such a high level of variation in the economic success between offshored IS projects? This study argues that offshore outsourcing involves a number of extra costs for the client organization that account for the economic failure of offshore projects. The objective is to disaggregate these extra costs into their constituent parts and to explain why they differ between offshored software projects. The focus is on software development and maintenance projects that are offshored to Indian vendors. A theoretical framework is developed a priori based on transaction cost economics (TCE) and the knowledge-based view of the firm, complemented by factors that acknowledge the specific offshore context. The framework is empirically explored using a multiple case study design including six offshored software projects in a large German financial service institution. The results of our analysis indicate that the client incurs post- contractual extra costs for four types of activities: (1) requirements specification and design, (2) knowledge transfer, (3) control, and (4) coordination. In projects that require a high level of client-specific knowledge about idiosyncratic business processes and software systems, these extra costs were found to be substantially higher than in projects where more general knowledge was needed. Notably, these costs most often arose independently from the threat of opportunistic behavior, challenging the predominant TCE logic of market failure. Rather, the client extra costs were particularly high in client-specific projects because the effort for managing the consequences of the knowledge asymmetries between client and vendor was particularly high in these projects. Prior experiences of the vendor with related client projects were found to reduce the level of extra costs but could not fully offset the increase in extra costs in highly client-specific projects. Moreover, cultural and geographic distance between client and vendor as well as personnel turnover were found to increase client extra costs. Slight evidence was found, however, that the cost-increasing impact of these factors was also leveraged in projects with a high level of required client-specific knowledge (moderator effect).

A Dynamic Perspective on Next-Generation Offshoring: The Global Sourcing of Science and Engineering Talent

Abstract: Executive Overview The seemingly unlimited availability of science and engineering (S&E) talent in emerging economies and the increasing difficulties of finding such talent in advanced economies have given rise to a new trend: the global sourcing of S&E talent. This paper examines the antecedents and dynamics of this trend. In particular, it examines the coevolution of macroeconomic forces, domestic and offshore national policies, industry dynamics, and firm-level offshoring capabilities driving today's offshoring decisions. The analysis exploits findings from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN) project. By taking a dynamic and multilevel perspective on next-generation offshoring, this paper may inform both firm-level strategies and national policy-making.