Aihua Yan

A review of the IT outsourcing empirical literature and future research directions

An enormous amount of information has been produced about the IT outsourcing phenomenon over the last 20 years, but one has to look to the academic literature for consistent, objective, and reliable research approaches and analyses. Our review finds that, in practice, the academic literature on IT outsourcing has very much honored both rigor and relevance in the ways in which research has been conducted. Our central purpose in the review was to answer two research questions: What has the empirical academic literature found about information technology outsourcing (ITO) decisions and outcomes? What are the gaps in knowledge to consider in future ITO research? To answer these questions, we examined 164 empirical ITO articles published between 1992 and 2010 in 50 journals. Adapting a method used by Jeyaraj et al. (2006), we encapsulated this vast empirical literature on ITO in a way that was concise, meaningful, and helpful to researchers. We coded 36 dependent variables, 138 independent variables, and 741 relationships between independent and dependent variables. By extracting the best evidence, we developed two models of outsourcing: one model addressed ITO decisions and one model addressed ITO outcomes. The model of ITO decisions includes independent variables associated with motives to outsource, transaction attributes, client firm characteristics, and influence sources. The model of ITO outcomes includes independent variables associated with client and supplier capabilities, relationship characteristics, contractual governance, decision characteristics, and transaction attributes. We also examined the interactions among broad categories of variables and the learning curve effects resulting from feedback loops. Overall, ITO researchers have a broad and deep understanding of ITO. However, the field continues to evolve as clients and suppliers on every inhabited continent participate actively in the global sourcing community. There is still much research yet to be done. We reviewed recent studies that have identified gaps in current knowledge and proposed future paths of research pertaining to strategic motivations, environmental influences, dynamic interactions, configurational and portfolio approaches, global destinations, emerging models, reference theory extension, and grounded theory development.

Business process outsourcing studies: a critical review and research directions

Organizations are increasingly sourcing their business processes through external service providers, a practice known as Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Worldwide, the current BPO market could be as much as

Review of the empirical business services sourcing literature: an update and future directions

279 billion and is predicted to continue growing at 25% annually. Academic researchers have been studying this market for about 15 years and have produced findings relevant to practice. The entire body of BPO research has never been reviewed, and this paper fills that gap. We filtered the total studies and reviewed 87 empirically robust BPO articles published between 1996 and 2011 in 67 journals to answer three research questions: What has the empirical academic literature found about BPO decisions and outcomes? How do BPO findings compare with Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) empirical research? What are the gaps in knowledge to consider in future BPO research? Employing a proven method that Lacity et al. (2010) used to review the empirical ITO literature, we encapsulated this empirical literature on BPO in a way that is concise, meaningful, and helpful to researchers. We coded 43 dependent variables, 152 independent variables, and 615 relationships between independent and dependent variables. By extracting the best evidence, we developed two models of BPO: one model addresses BPO decisions and one model addresses BPO outcomes. The model of BPO decisions includes independent variables associated with motives to outsource, transaction attributes, and client firm characteristics. The model of BPO outcomes includes independent variables associated with contractual and relational governance, country characteristics, and client and supplier capabilities. Overall, BPO researchers have a broad and deep understanding of BPO. However, the field continues to evolve as clients and suppliers on every inhabited continent participate actively in the global sourcing community. There is still much research yet to be done. We propose nine future paths of research pertaining to innovation effects, retained capabilities, environmental influences, global destinations, supplier capabilities, pricing models, business analytics, emerging models, and grounded theory development.

Mapping the IT Outsourcing Landscape: Review and Future Directions

The 2010 Journal of Information Technology (JIT) article, ‘A Review of the IT Outsourcing Empirical Literature and Future Research Directions,’ analyzed 741 findings on the determinants of Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) decisions and outcomes from 164 empirical articles published between 1992 and 2010. Using the same coding method, the 2011 JIT article, ‘Business Process Outsourcing Studies: A Critical Review and Research Directions,’ analyzed 615 findings on the determinants of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) decisions and outcomes from 67 empirical articles published between 1996 and 2011. Taken together, these two reviews found that the preponderance of evidence from both ITO and BPO research streams produced largely consistent results pertaining to the categories of independent variables that affected outsourcing decisions and outcomes. To investigate the most current research findings on business services, which comprise ITO and BPO, and to compare the results with the prior JIT reviews, we replicated the method used in the prior JIT reviews. In this update, we examined 174 newly published articles across 78 academic journals published between 2010 and 2014. We found that researchers have significantly expanded the variables of interest in the last 4 years. In all, researchers investigated 69 new variables. Compared with earlier research, this review of recent articles found a deeper exploration of the direct effects of transaction attributes, sourcing motivations, client and provider capabilities, and governance on sourcing decisions and outcomes. Researchers have also studied a broader variety of sourcing decisions, including shared services, captive centers, rural sourcing and backsourcing. This update also found a more nuanced understanding of relational governance and its interaction with contractual governance. We assessed the research progress that has been made on ten previously identified gaps in knowledge. We proposed a future research agenda that includes continued, incremental progress on ‘normal science’ research questions, as well as more ambitious research goals. We challenged researchers to investigate how sourcing clients, providers, and advisors can protect jobs, protect the environment, and ensure security in an increasingly automated world.

Review of 23 Years of Empirical Research on Information Technology Outsourcing Decisions and Outcomes

During the past 20 years, a rich but diverse body of theoretical and empirical work has accumulated on information technology outsourcing (ITO). Researchers have studied ITO from over 20 theoretical perspectives — including theories from economics (e.g., Transaction Cost Economics, Agency Theory), strategy (e.g., Resource-Based View, Resource Dependency Theory), sociology (e.g., Relational Exchange Theory, Social Capital Theory, Innovation Diffusion) and natural sciences (e.g., Punctuated Equilibrium Theory) (Barney, 1991; Eisenhardt, 1989; Ekeh, 1974; Gould and Eldredge, 1977; Nahapiet and Ghosal, 1998; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Rogers, 1983; Williamson, 1991). By appropriating so many theories, researchers have tested a large number of relationships between independent and dependent variables. Because of this diversity, findings from the overall body of empirical ITO literature have been difficult to summarize, analyse, and evaluate succinctly.

Understanding the dynamics of users' belief in software application adoption

The 2010 Journal of Information Technology article, “A Review of the IT Outsourcing Empirical Literature,” analyzed 741 empirical findings on the determinants of Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) decisions and outcomes published between 1992 and 1st quarter 2010. In this paper, we replicated the method and coded additional findings published until the end of 2014. Combining the Lacity et al. (2010) with the additional findings, we used a total of 1,170 findings to produce the most robust models on ITO decisions and outcomes to date. The model of ITO decisions includes independent variables associated with transaction attributes, outsourcing motivations, influence sources, client characteristics and capabilities, relationship characteristics, and environmental variables. The model of ITO outcomes includes independent variables associated with transaction attributes, relational and contractual governance, client and provider capabilities, client characteristics and decision characteristics. The models serve as solid foundations for researchers seeking to advance academic contributions based on strong empirical data.