Information Technology (IT) outsourcing is a serious option available to modern managers. An emerging trend is the focus on relationship management in IT outsourcing, imploring organisations to look past tactical objectives and concentrate on strategic outcomes. In a global economy business sponsors are connecting with overseas vendors in IT outsourcing in an attempt to accelerate realisation of benefits. This complicates outsourcing arrangements, because cross-cultural differences may add to the complexity of fostering relationships. This study examines how to manage IT outsourcing relationships in a cross-cultural context to enhance IT outsourcing success. Due to the exploratory nature of this study, interpretivist case studies were adopted. The researcher investigated three IT outsourcing cases within one Chinese organisation. One case has a vendor with a western cultural background and the other two with a Chinese cultural background. The main data were collected through interviews with key managers in the case organisation, complemented by secondary data (such as published reports, internal documents). Some additional data concerning the cross-cultural differences were also collected from the two Chinese vendors and another western vendor who provided corporate strategy consulting services to the case organisation. Analysis of data showed that a good contract implementation, the established trust and the acknowledgement of vendor's high value were recognised as the three distinguishing characteristics of a satisfactory IT outsourcing relationship. In managing relationships the outsourcing company emphasised not only contract implementation but even more importantly communication with vendors, recognition of mutual interests, establishment of social/personal bonds, and appropriate allocation of project resources. It was shown that the relationship management practices influenced the dynamics of a relationship as well as the outcome of an IT outsourcing project. Furthermore, the relationship management in IT outsourcing was found to be culture-sensitive. By demonstrating that companies with different cultural background held different perceptions of relationship management practices and had different understandings of the nature and dynamics of the relationships, this study contributes to the understanding of relationship management in IT outsourcing, especially when cultural differences among the parties are involved. These findings also have practical implications for IT outsourcing involving global and partner-based alliances.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/188239 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Wu, Wei, School of Information Technology, Systems, & Management, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Information Technology, Systems, and Management |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Wei Wu, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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