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There is an increasing recognition of outsourcing firms as new organizational forms with unique systems and practices. This paper seeks to use a configurational approach to integrate learning from outsourcing literature, organization and management theory, strategic management and strategic human resource management in order to understand similarities and differences between outsourcing firms and their performance. It aims to examine if certain combinations of work designs, strategic orientations, client relations and contexts could lead to better organizational performance within a sample of outsourcing firms.

A combination of descriptive and exploratory research design has been used to collect data from 60 outsourcing firms across India. Using survey and semi‐structured interviews, data have been collected from the top management team and non‐managerial employees in each organization (n=836 respondents). Principal components factor analysis, Ward's minimum variance method, K‐means cluster analysis, and χ² have been used to arrive at configurations of outsourcing firms. Kruskal‐Wallis one‐way ANOVA and Tamhane's T2‐test have been used for further hypothesis testing.

Five dominant configurations of outsourcing firms emerge, namely, clear‐eyed strategists, adapting professionals, focalizing artisans, conservative controllers, and overambitious associates. Specific configurations of outsourcing firms are associated with better performance across a variety of organizational performance parameters (average attrition, growth in employment, growth in clients, growth in offered processes and overall satisfaction with organisational performance).

Future research could include financial performance measures and could examine potential conflicts in performance outcomes. It would also be interesting to include client perspective in future studies on outsourcing firm success. Replicating the results of this study across countries would enhance their validity and generalizability.

It is hoped that the findings of this paper will contribute to theory building in the field of both outsourcing and configurational research. At the same time, the study is expected to help managers who are trying to move their outsourcing firms in the direction of sustainable success through the choice of appropriate strategies, designs, inter‐organizational relations and contexts.

This is one of the initial studies to classify outsourcing firms using organizational level variables. While most prior studies have examined outsourcing success from the client perspective, this paper provides an important shift towards studying organizational performance from the outsourcing firm's perspective. Since configurational membership can predict which firms will perform better than others on objective and subjective performance measures, this paper provides a useful framework to managers for structuring processes and inter‐organizational relations while making informed strategic choices.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the interdependencies involved and how interaction takes place in the context of a project organization as a network of academic and business actors.

This study focuses on relationships between business and academia and applies a single case research strategy. Data are collected through a series of theoretically sampled in-depth interviews including company observations. The single case study provides a rich narrative of the network structure and processes involved in establishing, implementing and completing a research project in Poland. The Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group network approach focusing on resource combinations that emerge in a network structure characterized by interdependency and integration is applied to analyze interaction in this project-organized network.

Change in interdependencies, interaction and integration are analyzed individually, and in conclusion in relation to each other. While supply chain management literature postulates that integration is a management goal, a driver of successful business, this study points out that integration is an outcome of interaction in a context of changing interdependencies. This means that managerial focus should rather be driven to understanding the nature of network interdependencies, their path of change and how interaction is carried out in this emergent context.

The study aims to help better understand the potential for research project cooperation by explaining how businesses and research units can cooperate through an understanding that integration is a complex phenomenon, focusing on how management may better support services production through careful consideration of that integration is developed through considerations of interdependencies as context of interaction in the varied business cultures a project network comprises. Project management is more a learning process than a planning process.

Researchers need to collaborate to address grand challenges such as climate change, poverty and sustainable food production. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the researchers in a globally distributed research program interact to move their research forward.

The authors interviewed 14 participants in the research program.

In spite of the spatial distribution of the researchers the output from the research program is predominantly collaborative; as much as 79 percent of the publications are co-authored by researchers from multiple countries. However, the researchers mostly work alone on their contributions to their joint work and spend minimal time interacting. This strategy of minimal interaction is punctuated by islands of intense interaction when they occasionally meet in person. Interaction feels natural, productive and satisfying to them when they are co-located but less so when they are distributed, probably because they experience technology-mediated interaction over a distance as somewhat impoverished. The interviewees mention that the minimal-interaction strategy incurs the risks of cracks in common ground and of misconstruing minimal interaction as lack of commitment. But the strategy is generally well-liked.

The experience of technology-mediated interaction as impoverished points to an explanation for the finding of less interaction in distributed than co-located research. It should be noted that the study is restricted to one research program.

By questioning widely touted recommendations for ongoing, regular and sustained interaction this study provides a fresh look at scientific collaboration.

P-card (i.e., procurement card) programs have been praised as innovative means for procurement systems to save fiscal resources for municipal government while granting greater purchasing discretion for departmental endusers. Using Hillsborough County (Tampa), Florida as a case study, the authors identify four critical factors that influence the successful implementation of municipal P-card systems. In the final analysis, the authors suggest that the distinction between organizational success and failure for these programs is likely to be a factor of organizational commitment more than technical capacity.

This study aims to enlist the red flag behaviors exhibited in financial services frauds.

A pluralistic mixed methodology was adopted in this study. Data collected via semi-structured interviews were coded, quantified and subjected to descriptive analysis to identify the most frequently exhibited red flag behaviors in financial services frauds. The relative risk of exhibition of the identified red flag behaviors was assessed by intuitively comparing the red flag behaviors identified in financial services frauds (experimental group, n = 24) with the red flag behaviors identified in a heterogeneous control sample of non-financial services frauds (control group, n = 28).

This study identifies six red flag behaviors likely to be more frequently exhibited in financial services frauds than in non-financial services frauds.

Results of this study can be used to develop a typical behavioral profile of a financial services fraud perpetrator. Active communication of this profile in fraud awareness training can help make fraud conspicuous in the financial services industry.

This study is unique because human behavior as a possible fraud indicator is an under-researched area. Further, this study examines first level of evidence and attempts an ex-post analysis of actual red flag behaviors exhibited in acknowledged fraud cases in which the perpetrator/perpetrators has/have been clearly identified.

Understanding the relational factors in information technology outsourcing (ITO) processes is essential for managers to exercise successful governance over their relationship. Based on this premise, this paper aims to present a study about relational factors using judgments of managers from small and medium-sized supplying and contracting companies involved in ITO relationships, helping to understand the differences between what they believe to be relevant for maintaining the relationships.

The analytical approach consisted of applying fuzzy sets theory elements, converting the managers' judgments into crisp values through a defuzzification process, and the multicriteria method ELECTRE IV that created the rankings of the relational factors according to the defuzzified judgments. The approach was applied with 16 managers from supplying companies and 34 from contracting companies, in both cases located in a large Brazilian pole of information technology.

The main findings indicate that suppliers are initially more concerned with contractual aspects, being in the highest positions in the ranking: detailed contract, service level agreement and costs. Only after these elements, suppliers prioritize aspects less linked to the contract. For contractors, customer relationship management is the most important, followed by costs and commitment by managers, which indicates more openness to issues-oriented to relational development.

The approach adopted in this article is differentiated by prioritizing relational factors that are not always directly perceived in ITO relationships. Another important consideration is that most studies focus only on the perspective of supplier selection by contracting companies. In this paper, both suppliers' and contractors' judgments on the importance of ITO relational factors were analyzed, creating rankings that supported understanding the difference between the two perspectives.

The research focuses on the impact of client vendor communication on client satisfaction in information system projects and after client satisfaction that will bridge them toward the information system continuance intention of clients. Importance of this study is to understand the effect of client-vendor communication on client satisfaction.

The sample size of the study was 200 respondents and data was collected from electrical manufacturing industries. It is a quantitative field study, and the time horizon of this study is cross-sectional. The data collected was then analyzed by doing the structural equation modeling in PLS-SEM in order to examine the relationships.

Findings of this study likewise demonstrate the mediating impact of client satisfaction between the relationship of client-vendor communication and information system continuance intention as well as between the relationship of expectation confirmation and information system continuance intention. Future studies may include the multi-motive information system continuance model (MISC) to explain the constructs in more depth because it includes different dimensions of expectation confirmation which will help more to understand information system continuance intention.

This study determines the role of information system continuance intention in terms of client-vendor communication and expectation confirmation through the impact of mediator client satisfaction. Previous studies have explained that client-vendor communication affects client satisfaction positively and confirmation also positively affects the client satisfaction. For this research study, the authors have identified the following research gaps. The authors also have found out that the following study is significant in a related study taken in the developed countries. On the contrary, the authors will follow the study and further observe the impact of improved risks in different cities of Pakistan that how client-vendor communication are affecting the success of information

The information technology (IT) industry has been continuously expanding. This has resulted in promoting outsourcing of work by clients to vendors. Most of the published research has focussed on when clients should start outsourcing, what to outsource, criteria for vendor selection, etc., however the vendor side of the relationship has been mostly ignored. The purpose of this paper is to delve deep into the vendors’ side and what aspects a vendor needs to consider in order to maintain a good relationship with the clients.

The research design of the paper is to use literature survey to define the components of the client vendor relationship (CVR), identify the parameters impacting the relationship, establish correlation between the independent variables and the dependent variable; subsequently to propose a framework for the CVR.

The findings have been that – communication, technical value addition, knowledge sharing and client vendor adaptability are vital to any outsourcing engagement and if the vendor is able to get good knowledge transfer of the application at hand and the business domain, it can perform better. Vendors, which proactively resolve issues, ensure stable deliveries before time and identify improvements in the software outside the work assigned maintain better relationship. Further a vendor must be adaptable to clients, cultural, time zone differences, should provide a good project manager and be ready to change tools, resources as per client needs. As long as the vendor is able to ensure the above, the stability of the client country and need for information security is not as important to vendors.

The study has limitations as it focusses on the vendors’ side and is inclined toward Indian vendors’ perspectives. Future research can include client as well and can be conducted for a different geography.

The research work is original and adds value to the IT service outsourcing industry by identifying the parameters which need to be monitored for a sustainable CVR.

This paper proposes a new research agenda for information technology (IT) outsourcing,motivated by the belief that the social capital concept enables IT outsourcing researchers to capture more of the nuances of the client–vendor relationship in IT outsourcing arrangements.

The paper builds a comprehensive framework of social capital based on Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) to examine the IT outsourcing life cycle. Past research on IT outsourcing is examined applying the parameters of the framework to identify issues that have been addressed in research on IT outsourcing and to uncover the gaps in past research.

The social capital framework is applied to IT outsourcing which suggests new avenues for future outsourcing research.

While past research has identified success factors for IT outsourcing, a significant number of outsourcing arrangement still fail to meet expectations. The research agenda presented in this paper encourages an examination of IT outsourcing from a different perspective to determine how to successfully manage IT outsourcing.

The paper provides a new framework that is useful for identifying the relationships among past research in IT outsourcing as well as for identifying potential topics for future research.