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The objective of sustainability assurance (SA) is to give credibility to nonfinancial information (Cheng et al., 2015). In France, certain companies are subject by regulation to the implementation of SA in particular with the transposition of European Directive 2014/95/EU into national law. SA mission is a process by which an independent third-party organization (ITO) assures companies' nonfinancial information. Although this assignment is mostly performed by professional accountants, other providers can perform this assignment (Cohen and Simnett, 2015). In this research, the authors are interested in strategies for legitimizing the SA missions of independent third-party bodies. Assurance providers use their website to promote their missions. How do independent third-party bodies legitimize their assurance mission in a regulatory context relating to European Directive 2014/95/EU?

The authors carried out a discursive analysis of the promotion of SA missions on independent third-party body websites. A content analysis was performed on the collected textual data.

The results highlight different strategies for promoting the implementation of assurance missions aimed at legitimizing their new skills. Nevertheless, it appears that the providers make very little reference to the quality of nonfinancial information as the objective of SA missions.

The research made it possible to study the promotion of SA through the websites of ITOs. Nevertheless, it would have been interesting to be able to question the ITOs to study their perceptions on their new SA missions.

The research enriches the literature on SA, particularly in a regulatory context relating to European Directive 2014/95/EU. It sheds light on the different strategies put in place by the providers appointed by regulations. From a managerial point of view, the study may allow ITOs to adapt their communication to promote extra-financial missions relating to the European Directive and thus to attract new clients. Finally at the institutional and regulatory level, this research highlights the need to put in place a precise framework relating to extra-financial assurance missions. This may also encourage countries not subject to the verification obligation to introduce such an obligation into their national law.

This is the first study to examine the promotion of SA practice by providers. In addition, very few studies have looked at this practice in a regulatory context and in particular within the framework of the European directive.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of PRINCE2 (PRoject IN Controlled Environments 2) standard on customer satisfaction jointly with vendor relationship management capability in the information technology outsourcing (ITO) context. This paper further tries to explore the above underlying mechanism by studying the mediating effect of deliverable quality.

This paper develops a mediated moderation model to explain the underlying influence processes of PRINCE2 standard, vendor relationship management capability and deliverable quality on ITO customer satisfaction. By conducting a pair-wise survey of 260 project managers in seven Iranian firms, the model and hypotheses are empirically tested with the partial least squares method.

Our results suggest that firms benefit more in terms of IT costs reduction when they have a higher level of complementary investment in an external standard, especially through an interplay effect of the external standard and internal relational aspect. Firms can make business processes more amenable to outsourcing and facilitate monitoring of vendor performance and effective coordination with vendors. More interestingly, we find that this interactive effect is fully mediated by deliverable quality, which, in turn, directly increases ITO customer satisfaction.

This study adds some new knowledge and provides new views to study ITO customer satisfaction by addressing the importance of PRINCE2 standard. This study further enhances our understanding in terms of the underlying pathway through which the PRINCE2 standard jointly affects customer satisfaction with vendor relationship management capability and deliverable quality. With the effort of explicitly explaining the complex mechanisms, this study helps ITO managers proactively escort outsourcing activities and projects.

This paper aims to explain how small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) create information technology (IT) business value through blended IT outsourcing (ITO). The explanatory framework it proposes enables SMEs to replicate IT capability outcomes (i.e. enhance their economic, strategic and technological competences, namely, ITO success) by endorsing an ITO strategy catalyzed by IT vendor integration.

This study uses covariance-based structural equation modeling to test the proposed research model. Data are collected from 251 knowledge-intensive business SMEs located in Science and Technology Parks in Spain.

The results demonstrate empirically that SMEs can replicate IT capability benefits (i.e. enhance their non-IT competences) through blended ITO in which IT, conceptualized as a transversal supporting activity, is outsourced to an IT vendor while the value creation process remains with the buyer. The integration (i.e. process integration and information sharing) of an IT-proficient vendor catalyzes ITO success. More specifically, the results show that, although process integration is not directly related to competence enhancement, fosters information sharing, which directly facilitates ITO success. The results also show that IT vendor proficiency accounts for ex ante trust.

Managers should think of transformational ITO as a strategy to enhance firm competences. For blended ITO strategies to succeed, managers must have a comprehensive understanding of the business they run, as it is important to create conditions that foster inter-firm information sharing. To achieve these conditions, managers should take special care in selecting boundary spanners, who are the pivotal links in competence enhancement.

While most research focuses on ongoing trust (i.e. trust develops as ITO evolves), this study focuses on initial (i.e. ex ante) trust and analyzes IT vendor proficiency (expert, experienced and reputed) to examine trust as an antecedent of ITO. This study also draws on previous conceptualizations of vendor integration to develop and analyze a two-step integration model to explain how IT vendor integration (i.e. process integration and information sharing) catalyzes enhancement of the buyer’s non-IT competences. This study focuses on SMEs, which are often neglected in ITO studies.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the roles various drivers such as cost, strategy and risk play when business process outsourcing/information technology enabled services (BPO/ITES) firms in India outsource their information technology (IT) functions to third-party vendors. If all key drivers associated with IT outsourcing were understood, and such knowledge of those variables was incorporated into the reasons for outsourcing, there would be a greater probability of a successful outcome.

A “hybrid” (quantitative and qualitative) research methodology was used to gain insight into the IT-outsourcing paradigm by BPO/ITES firms in India. A structured questionnaire related to IT-outsourcing activities conducted from 1999 to 2010 was distributed to nine firms. The resulting data were then analyzed. In addition, two Indian BPO/ITES firms that had outsourced their IT to a third-party vendor to cut cost generously granted in-depth information into their IT-outsourcing paradigm and life cycle.

IT outsourcing is perhaps more complicated than other types of outsourcing. Focussing purely on cost is very risky. Practitioners need to take all three drivers – cost, strategy and risk into consideration. Any degradation of services or responsibilities due to IT outsourcing would mean a very unhappy client or even loss of business.

BPO/ITES firms in India tend to focus only on cost reduction from IT outsourcing without taking into consideration other equally important drivers such as strategy and risk. This paper counsels a holistic approach toward IT outsourcing for a successful outcome. In addition, an IT-outsourcing framework and guide is proposed for practitioners.

This paper aims to answer the question: how do clients and BPO service providers work together to foster dynamic innovation? Dynamic innovation is a process by which clients incent providers to deliver many innovations each year that improve the client's performance in terms of operational efficiency, process effectiveness and/or strategic impact.

The paper is based on research conducted in 2011 and 2012 and includes 202 survey responses and 48 in-depth interviews in 24 client organizations.

The most effective innovation incentives are mandatory productivity targets, innovation days, and gain-sharing at the project level. Threat of competition and special governance arrangements for innovation also positively influence innovation. The least successful incentives for innovations were found to be innovation funds, gainsharing at the relationship level, what has been called “pain-sharing”, and benchmarking.

The 24 BPO relationships do not represent a random sample, but rather a convenience sample. The authors aimed to understand emerging best practices from high-performing BPO relationships, thus the paired interview samples are purposefully biased towards higher-performing relationships.

Delivering innovations requires a process the authors call AIFI – acculturating, inspiring, funding, and injecting. The research finds that leadership pairs are key drivers of the dynamic innovation process. Leadership pairs jumpstart the dynamic innovation process by starting with innovation incentives. Even so, just having one right leader makes a positive difference. The positive difference is stronger if that leader is on the client side rather than the provider side. With no right leaders, the practices that the authors describe are less efficacious but still have positive impacts on the levels of innovation experienced.

In the ITO and BPO literatures, researchers have under-examined the more strategic drivers of outsourcing, including innovation. This research examines the process and practices that deliver dynamic innovation in client organizations.

This study aims to examine how different modes of knowledge flows affect the changes of asset specificity and how ownership control moderates the relationship between knowledge flows and asset specificity in the open innovation paradigm.

This paper selects information technology outsourcing as the research base. It uses the feasible weighted least squares modeling method for its analysis and has collected the data from 2,369 research and development contracts of multinational vendor firms in China.

The coupled and outbound knowledge flows have a direct and positive effect on asset specificity. Moreover, the results show that weak corporate control has significant moderating effects on the relationship between both coupled and outbound knowledge flows and asset specificity; the strong control positively moderates the relationship between outbound knowledge flows and asset specificity.

In open innovation, firms build a higher degree of asset specificity to maximize the efficiency of knowledge flows, which then helps them to enhance innovation capacity and market performance.

Preceding studies have tended to examine the influences of asset specificity as an independent variable in a closed innovation paradigm. Asset specificity is hence often left as the antecedent “black box.” This paper, however, opens the “black box” of asset specificity, which is set as a dependent variable, by investigating the influences of knowledge flows on the asset specificity in the context of open innovation. It also reinterprets the role of asset specificity by adopting the lens of open innovation theory.

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.

This chapter reviews ethical challenges confronting nonprofit administration in relation to organizational managerial practices and leadership behaviors. Through a theoretical model of nonprofit-specific toxic leadership, it reviews the dynamics of destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments in cases of unethical and corrupt nonprofit organizational behaviors. It provides a case for prioritizing oversight responsibilities of the board of directors, board supervision, promoting ethical culture in organizational leadership, and implementing policies for addressing destructive and corrupt nonprofit leaders. It reflects on how nonprofit toxic leadership primarily erodes public trust in the nonprofit sector and concludes with practical recommendations for recentering positive behaviors congruent with the nonprofit's social and public good mission.