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The purpose of this paper is to find how mature the Polish commercial production companies are in their information technology (IT) sourcing practices, what they do, the practices that are successful, the challenges experienced and the outcomes.The paper presents and critically evaluates the results of a study of IT outsourcing management processes in selected industrial enterprises operating in Poland. Dynamic business contexts, globalisation and advances in IT make the development of IT sourcing models challenging in both theory and practice. This paper examines the principles and practice of sourcing IT and business processes in Poland, a country much under-represented in the literature. Little research has been conducted on the strategic rationale behind IT sourcing decisions, the resulting challenges and the potential or actual consequences of such decisions. This paper addresses these gaps in the understanding of IT sourcing processes by way of examining the types of sourcing models and solutions among manufacturing companies operating in Poland, and by identifying the most problematic and critical factors in effective IT sourcing collaborations. The outcomes are assessed against findings from the broader empirical outsourcing literature, and lessons are drawn for Polish client firms and those in similar economies.

A survey methodology of a limited number of organisations in Poland was used. The study was designed to address the process of managing IT sourcing relations in production companies operating in Poland. The main objective of the study was to formulate working hypotheses to be used in further research on the sourcing models used in the IT sphere. Additionally, the study was designed to provide information on: the potential respondent reactions to the research problem, the understanding of the notions and terms used in the survey questionnaire and the evaluation of the research instrument itself.

Organisations (and their employees) are generally well aware of their IT needs, and that they select quite well providers that suit their particular requirements. In their selection processes, organisations carefully consider not only the providers’ experience and the range of services on offer but also their flexibility in response to the client’s demands, the location and the trust formed in the course of previous cooperation. Communication between the parties typically takes the form of telephone conversations and e-mails. The majority of respondents reported more than one type of problems faced in the course of outsourcing. Problems concentrated in the areas of communication (52 per cent) and organisation (48 per cent), followed by difficulties in enforcing the terms of the contract.

It is a selective sample, focuses only on production companies and does not look at the offshore outsourcing market that has grown up in Poland, but rather what domestic polish organisations do in their sourcing practices.

The organisations still struggle with the organisation and management of relations with their external service providers while getting reasonable results. They have much to learn from the published literature on managing the outsourcing life cycle.

There is a need for better inter-organisational cooperation.

Poland is very underrepresented in the outsourcing literature – there are no examples of surveys like this in the English literature.

Companies are increasingly changing their IT sourcing arrangements. Such changes often involve significant costs. The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain IT sourcing as a dynamic organizational phenomenon and to gain a deeper understanding of the drivers and outcomes of IT sourcing changes at organizational level.

A qualitative approach with interpretive analysis of historical data. Data are collected from companies through interviews and review of public documents where available.

The underlying tendencies of change are either primarily associated with institutional processes, or with what we term “IT‐driven” considerations. The perceived success of IT outsourcing in companies is dependent on these underlying tendencies.

This is an exploratory study and the findings on the underlying tendencies in change will be helpful in further theory development and research on IT outsourcing changes.

Knowledge coming from such research could help companies make more effective decisions about IT sourcing changes and set realistic expectations.

The dynamic perspective taken in this paper is different from the perspectives taken in earlier research where the researchers took cross‐sectional views of IT outsourcing arrangements. This paper shows the importance of re‐examining the reasons for change using the more encompassing concept of orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the antecedent factors that foster and sustain the development of relational norms from a social exchange process perspective and articulates the mediating effect of relational norms on the relationship between inter-partner learning (IL) and IT co-sourcing performance.

A total of 197 usable questionnaires were returned from 1,000 Taiwan enterprises. Results from a partial least squares method supported the hypothesis that relational norms serve as dependent variable (to IL) and independent (mediating) variable (to IT co-sourcing performance).

The empirical results show that IL positively effects partnership identity and collaboration, while both significantly mediate the effects of IL on IT co-sourcing performance.

The research implications confirm that the relational norms which IT co-sourcing parties must include both attitudes and behavior simultaneously, and that IT co-sourcing will not produce good performance without both parties developing shared attitudes and collaborative behavior.

Relational norms can play a critical mediation role to help ensure that both parties reach their common goals successfully and prevent the risk of their effort to cooperate together falling apart. Therefore, project managers have to take account of the importance of relational norms on inter-organizational cooperation or strategic alliances.

This study creates opportunities for further cross-disciplinary studies of inter-firm co-sourcing project especially with regard to relational norms and knowledge sharing.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance our understanding of managerial decision‐making process regarding offshore sourcing of information technology (IT) projects. The study explored the relationship between transaction cost economics and maturity levels of a firm's offshore sourcing activities. Transactions costs theory and firms' offshore sourcing maturity levels provided the framework for studying the decision process.

The present study is a qualitative empirical investigation of the underlying decision process to offshore IT projects. The study is based on interviews of executives in fifteen large to medium size companies.

The data suggest that transaction cost mitigation approaches used by a firm vary based on the size of the company as well as the maturity level of the firm's offshore sourcing activities.

The present study is based on interviews of IT executives in fifteen firms. Case studies and confirmatory studies can provide further insights.

Offshore sourcing maturity can influence cost mitigation tactics used by managers.

This is the first study to explore the relationship between transactions cost economics and offshore sourcing maturity of a firm. Future studies can extend the findings to deepen our knowledge of offshore sourcing challenges.

Frameworks on information systems‐sourcing (IS‐sourcing) decisions are frequently based on rational‐choice theory, neglecting such non‐quantifiable aspects as interpersonal conflicts. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether such interpersonal conflicts have a determining influence on an organization's IS‐sourcing decision.

An illustrative case‐study strategy is applied.

The following interpersonal conflicts had a determining influence on an organization's IS‐sourcing decision: tensions between personnel in the IS department and those in the users' departments; lack of capabilities on a personal level; power in and between departments; and face‐saving in the corporate group. Based on these empirical findings, a generic model is developed to illustrate how interpersonal conflicts enmesh with economic, business, and technical factors, and influence IS‐sourcing decisions.

The generic model enables researchers to study IS‐sourcing decisions better. It enriches previous research on IS‐sourcing decisions and alerts researchers that they need to cope with non‐quantifiable aspects that can have an impact on IS‐sourcing decisions.

Once managers understand how interpersonal conflicts can influence an organization's IS‐sourcing decision, they can assess their own organizations more accurately and estimate outcomes of particular IS‐sourcing decisions more realistically. Thus, this paper enables organizations to make better IS‐sourcing decisions, thereby – in the long run – helping them to use IS more effectively in their attempts to improve their business performances and competitive advantages.

This paper extends previous research on IS‐sourcing and fills a gap in traditional frameworks on IS‐sourcing decisions. It illustrates how various types of interpersonal conflicts enmesh with economic, business, and technical factors, and influence IS‐sourcing decisions.

Near sourcing is starting to be regarded as a valid alternative to global sourcing in order to leverage supply chain (SC) responsiveness and economic efficiency. The present work proposes a decision‐making approach developed in collaboration with a leading Italian retailer that was willing to turn the global store furniture procurement process into near sourcing.

Action research is employed. The limitations of the traditional SC organisation and purchasing process of the company are first identified. On such basis, an inventory management model is applied to run spreadsheet estimates where different purchasing and SC management strategies are adopted to determine the solution providing the lowest cost performance. Finally, a risk analysis of the selected best SC arrangement is conducted and results are discussed.

Switching from East Asian suppliers to continental vendors enables a SC reengineering that increases flexibility and responsiveness to demand uncertainty which, together with decreased transportation costs, assures economic viability, thus proving the benefits of near sourcing.

The decision‐making framework provides a methodological roadmap to address the comparison between near and global sourcing policies and to calculate the savings of the former against the latter. The approach could include additional organisational aspects and cost categories impacting on near sourcing and could be adapted to investigate different products, services, and business sectors.

The work provides SC researchers and practitioners with a structured approach for understanding what drives companies to adopt near sourcing and for quantitatively assessing its advantages.

This chapter provides evidence on the factors that influence the design of the control arrangements that govern support services. Specifically, we study sourcing decisions of non-strategic information technology (IT) support services. While the popular management literature suggests to outsource non-strategic activities, in practice organizations perform these services (partly) in-house. Based on transaction cost economics (TCE), we hypothesize that control structure choices depend on asset specificity, uncertainty and frequency. Using survey data on IT sourcing decisions from 89 firms in the construction industry, we find support for most of our hypotheses. Our results indicate that asset specificity deriving from the degree of organizational embeddedness of the IT function negatively affects firms’ propensity to outsource their non-core IT support, and that (behavioural) uncertainty intensifies this negative effect. As expected, we also find that frequency has a negative direct effect on the willingness to outsource IT services provision. However, we find no support for the hypothesized interaction between asset specificity and frequency. Overall, our study indicates that the organization's choice to outsource non-strategic support services depends on the organizational role of these services, rather than on their technological characteristics.

Although cost savings are found by many researchers to be a major reason for sourcing from China, the actual cost savings may not be as great as expected. This paper aims at studying and comparing the true cost of sourcing from China and companies' perceptions of the total cost of their China sourcing projects.

This research comprises six case studies and a mailed survey to 201 UK manufacturers with the experience of global sourcing from China. Comparisons of the findings from the cases and the survey are made.

The findings provide a comprehensive analysis of the total costs of outsourcing from China. Additional costs (additional to the quoted price), found from in‐depth case studies, averaged 50 per cent of the quoted price. The perception of additional costs, found from a survey, averaged 25 per cent of the quoted price. Taken together, these findings suggest that companies generally do not comprehensively measure the costs of global sourcing, and significantly underestimate the true costs incurred.

This has implications for decision making and ultimately profitability, and the paper suggests that more attention is paid to measuring the actual total acquisition costs. It confirms the benefit of a comprehensive cost framework, as a checklist that will prompt companies to think about all the possible sources of cost when sourcing globally. This should both guide their decision making, and also act to identify possible cost reduction activities.

This research is the first effort to establish the total cost of sourcing from China and to compare this with companies' perceptions of the cost of such sourcing. It is valuable in providing increased understanding of the sources and magnitudes of the costs of sourcing from China.

This paper reports the findings of a two‐year EPSRC funded research project into relationship and performance strategies in power regimes. The findings from 12 very different industrial and service sector cases studies demonstrate that there is a correlation between the ability to improve the performance of suppliers and the power circumstances that exist between the buyers and suppliers. Buyers appear to be able to achieve improved performance from suppliers in situations of buyer dominance or interdependence. The research also demonstrates that whatever the objective power circumstance managers often subjectively misperceive the appropriate sourcing choices available to them. As a result business relationships can be aligned, but they are often misaligned. Furthermore, misaligned relationships may be “remediable” but they may not.

Using case studies of business process outsourcing enterprises in India, this study aims to discuss how impact sourcing is used to provide employment opportunities to persons with disabilities (PWDs) and summarizes the business factors associated with successful impact sourcing for PWDs.

The effect of impact sourcing on the employment of PWDs is a newly emerging phenomenon, and this study focuses on the impact-sourcing mechanism and investigates whether such sourcing contributes to promoting PWD employment in India. It does so by examining the business model characteristics of organizations through case studies.

The results show that effective training systems and operational styles enable continuous market competitiveness for social enterprises. The case studies also demonstrate that it is possible to expand businesses by transferring and replicating management know-how through an organization’s operating model. It also highlights the catalytic role of impact sourcing service providers in promoting formal PWD employment in a labor market where the informal economy is dominant. Central and local governments’ support for social enterprises may promote formal employment of PWDs, an internationally-recognized goal.

Impact sourcing for PWDs is an emerging field. This study offers a new contribution to existing work integration social enterprises literature by providing new insight into effective ways of achieving employment for PWDs through outsourcing business. This study highlights the important role of social enterprises in achieving formal employment of PWDs.