Title:	PREDICTING OUTSOURCING SUCCESS: PUBLIC VS. BUSINESS SECTOR
Author(s):	Knut Ekker , Ragnar Andresen , Petter Gottschalk
ISBN:	978-972-8924-35-5
Editors:	Piet Kommers (series editors: Piet Kommers, Pedro Isaías and Nian-Shing Chen)
Year:	2007
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	outsourcing, conflict management, information sharing, project organization.
Type:	Short Paper
First Page:	400
Last Page:	405
Language:	English
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Paper Abstract:	Outsourcing of IT functions in organizations are analyzed with a focus on the contractual arrangement or the informal dynamics of the outsourcing relationship. This paper follows the tradition of the latter approach, introducing the relative importance of conflict management and information sharing as intervening variables explaining outsourcing success. The analysis of the outsourcing experience of 92 public and business organizations in Norway reveals that about 3/4 of the organizations have outsourced some or all of the IT functions. The analysis also reveals that businesses more often organize the outsourcing as a project compared with public organizations. Outsourcing success is most often achieved by business organizations that outsource all or a large proportion of IT functions as a project. The importance of information sharing as an intervening variable also contributes towards explaining variation in outsourcing success, but the importance of conflict management is a marginal variable in this study. The background and intervening variables explain about 25% of the variance in outsourcing success. Further research with a modified operationalization of the intervening variables is necessary to improve the prediction of outsourcing success.
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