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In their search for optimum performance and cost‐efficiency many organizations have been critically examining the value of the seemingly ever increasing cost of, and dependence on, technology. In the course of examining possible alternative, and potentially more efficient, approaches to technology management, the concept of outsourcing has become widely discussed. In this context it has attracted high levels of interest among both industry and Government. In spite of this high level of interest and increasing willingness to consider outsourcing, a great deal of uncertainty exists among potential users regarding both the meaning and implications of entering into outsourcing arrangements. Intends critically to examine the concept, implementation and management issues related to outsourcing information technology services.

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.

The information technology (IT) industry has grown owing to the increase in IT outsourcing prompted by the need for cost reductions in organizations. The IT industry contracts are based on pricing models, which establish the terms and conditions of payment to be made to vendors by clients. The pricing models followed in the industry are mainly Fixed Time Fixed Price (FTFP) and Time and Material (TnM) and the remaining are mostly variations of these. Using the information collected from vendors, the purpose of this paper is to draw a comparison between these pricing models to see which one is more acceptable to vendors along with researching on the reasons behind that. The outsourcing engagement is also based on a set of processes to be used during the contract time and that is known as the Outsourcing Model (OM) being used. This research also derives how pricing models, OMs and Client Vendor Relationship (CVR) being developed are related.

Hypothesis have been formulated on the basis of the literature survey conducted by the authors, subsequently questionnaire was formulated and data were collected from – a total of 500 people were targeted, out of which 70 people responded. Out of these 70 only 50 were usable responses. The respondents were at the manager and above level in different organizations classified on the basis of number of employees. Statistical tests were conducted on these data to check the reliability, prove the hypothesis and establish the mediation and moderation relationships between the pricing model, OM and CVR.

The following paper has established through statistical analysis which pricing model is more befitting to the IT service outsourcing industry and has also demonstrated the moderation and mediation relationship between pricing model, OM and CVR variables.

The major reserach limitation is that it is for only IT vendors in Indian geography. The research can be extended to different businesses and geographies.

The paper has practical implications for the IT service outsourcing industry in India and for their clients to understand the comparison between the pricing models and to study the impact of pricing and OMs on the CVRs.

The research presented is original as no similar work has been found to be published in the journals so far specifically in the Indian context.

This paper presents an overview of a national case study exploring the IS/IT outsourcing phenomenon in the public and private sectors of a developing country. Kuwait has been used as an example of a developing country and the data collection for this study was done there. The primary data on IS/IT outsourcing practices, obtained for the first time in Kuwait, were collected by means of survey questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews supported by organisational documentation. Several public and private sector organisations were selected to participate in the investigation. The main findings of the study suggest that there are differences between the two sectors in their motivation and risk factors evaluation behind the adoption of an IS/IT outsourcing business strategy. The findings also provide an insight into how outsourcing practices, as an information system strategy, are motivated and managed in the context of a developing nation.

This paper aims to examine information system (IS) outsourcing success through the satisfaction achieved therewith. It simultaneously analyzes how IS outsourcing may influence the IS managers’ job.

The results obtained in a survey on this topic carried out over a 12-year period are described. The proposal consists in a model that relates the degree of outsourcing with the satisfaction achieved therewith, in which the influence exerted by IS on the systems manager’s job acts as a mediating variable.

The study concludes that the way in which outsourcing affects the IS managers positively influences the satisfaction achieved with this service.

Outsourcing poses a great challenge for IS managers because they must devote more time to their managerial functions, and they need more knowledge too. These greater requirements or demands will most probably make these executives feel unsatisfied with outsourcing. However, the paper shows that satisfaction increases insofar as, despite all these demands, the working post characteristics improve, and the satisfaction and autonomy of IS managers grows and most importantly, they believe that their job has a higher added value.

No studies had, hitherto, related outsourcing success and the implications of outsourcing for IS managers.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct empirical investigation of value co-creation phenomena in IT services outsourcing. This survey based research enabled to identify antecedents of value co-creation and their impact on value outcomes.

This empirical study identifies 25 drivers of value co-creation in IT outsourcing services. These drivers were identified from reported literature and by studying IT project reports. The data were collected from client and supplier organizations followed by verification of the drivers (using PCA and CFA methodologies) that contribute significantly to value co-creation in the IT services outsourcing domain. Furthermore, using SEM and linear regression, the authors have verified the strength of their relationships with value co-creation.

This research is subjected to exploratory factor analysis, which resulted in six antecedents of value co-creation in IT services outsourcing. These antecedents include alliance relationship, strategic intent, service actualization, intrapreneurship, collective capabilities, and resource management. The alliance relationship, strategic intent, service actualization, and intrapreneurship are found to be significant for value co-creation. While collective capabilities as a standalone was not significant, the relationship of collective capabilities to value co-creation has achieved significance under the influence of alliance relationship, strategic intent, and other antecedents – when tested and hypothesized through the SEM path model.

The research has the following limitations. The antecedents identified are contextual. The potential illustrative, but not exhaustive reasons, for the change of the context may be due to contract duration, age of the project, relationship maturity, expected value outcome from both the parties, etc. The drivers identified in this research are applicable only to IT services (IT and ITES outsourcing). They cannot be generalized to other B2B outsourcing relationship. The authors propose the conducting of separate research to identify the priorities of these antecedents for different types of outsourcing as well different types of value outcomes.

This study has added to the knowledge on value co-creation in IT services outsourcing relationships through empirical modeling. From the perspective practitioners of IT industry, this work brings rich information of what are the drivers to value co-creation and their significance on value outcomes in IT services outsourcing. It can provide guidelines to both clients and service providers of similar industry to assess their current practices for value co-creation and re-prioritize their activities and budgets based on the significance of value based benefits. Moreover, practitioners in the IT services industry can use these value drivers and understand the antecedents for value co-creation. As this work is from a dual perspective, both clients and suppliers can assess the applicability of these drivers and antecedents and adopt them to realize mutual value.

In the past, researchers have focussed on value after it was created and shared among the respective relationship partners, and very few emphasized the need for proactive identification of the antecedents of value co-creation. Researchers have emphasized on the need for an empirical approach, because most of the published studies are theoretical and conceptual in nature. Hence, the significant contribution of this empirical study is to validate the value co-creation drivers identified from literature and qualitative study (case studies) with IT industry practitioners (no. 256) across the globe and the relevance of antecedents to B2B IT services outsourcing body of knowledge.

The information technology (IT) outsourcing has been inexorably growing in spite of its downsides. The main reasons are financial gains and cost reductions, as well as it allows companies to focus on their core selling areas. Within IT outsourcing, offshoring has become a big success because it greatly reduces costs. Countries like India, China and Philippines are attracting a lot of IT outsourcing work. In order to save costs, companies have to work out the best pricing models with the vendors so enable profitability at both ends. The main pricing models prevalent in the industry are Time and Material (TnM) and Fixed Time Fixed Price (FTFP) alternately also referred as Fixed Price. There are various other pricing models now, which are mainly variations of these. The purpose of this paper is to show an empirical comparison between these models from the vendor’s perspective to see which of them has greater acceptability.

The paper is an empirical paper in which literature survey has been done to study various pricing models in the IT service outsourcing industry, on the basis of same, two most used models have been identified, namely, FTFP and TnM, hypothesis were formulated, Likert scale questionnaire was formed. Subsequently data were collected and Wilcoxon signed-rank test was carried out to compare the variables defining the FTFP and TnM models of pricing. In total, 68 firms were targeted and 120 responses were received. The two models were studied against parameters like usage, profitability, risk, deliveries meeting project schedule, good quality code, the pricing model used by respondents’ majority of times and whether either of them lead to increasing costs.

This study has found that TnM is less risky for vendors, more profitable and vendors are able to manage better quality delivery compared to FTFP. Also it has been statistically proven that the pricing models TnM and FTFP do not impact the usage and schedules in any way. These are important findings as there have been no earlier research papers which have compared the pricing models with reference to Indian IT service outsourcing industry.

The two major pricing models TnM and FTFP are studied in the paper below. Data were gathered from 68 companies. As per results, TnM is more profitable, less risky, does not lead to increasing cost and produces good quality code as compared to FTFP also it has been statistically proven that the pricing models TnM and FTFP do not impact the usage and schedules in any way. The implications bridge a gap between theory and practice, as theoretically many pricing models exist, however, what are practical applications and justification vis-à-vis different aspects has not been approached statistically so far in the given context. Further research can be done on other variations of pricing models and to establish which one should be the preferred model and in which circumstances.

There are major practical implications of the paper as it fills the gap between the theoretical discussions of pricing and identifies and statistically proves importance of various aspects of pricing in practice.

The paper is original and adds value in terms of advising the IT service outsourcing companies as to which pricing models to use.

The purpose of this study is to empirically quantify the factors that are perceived to drive or inhibit performance of information technology (IT) outsourced employees from a range of information technology outsourcing (ITO) stakeholders in South Africa.

The first phase was a qualitative study on 19 stakeholders focussed on the development of the constructs. The second phase was quantitative, with a sample of 116 ITO stakeholders of the largest IT company in South Africa.

The study revealed that the ITO stakeholders had misaligned perceptions on inhibitors and somewhat congruent perceptions with regards to drivers of performance. Managers and poor performers’ perceptions of inhibiting factors of performance were significantly different. The empirical evidence showed that the key drivers of performance were intrinsic factors and leadership, whilst the inhibiting factors were mainly related to poor leadership.

The major limitation was that the population was represented by one large organisation in the South African IT industry and its clients, thereby excluding the rest of the IT industry participants, specifically the medium and small IT companies. The quota sample resulted in a non-probability study, and thus, the results of this study may not necessarily be generalised to other populations. This study’s findings on differences between good and poor performers must be investigated in other industries.

For outsourced employees to perform optimally, some key intrinsic factors must be fulfilled. Passion and pride, aligned to a meaningful job role, will unleash outstanding performance. Organisations need to ensure that there is regular feedback to managers on their performance and subsequent leadership development. Alignment of managers and poor performers’ perceptions on drivers and inhibitors could improve performance.

These findings demonstrate the large gap in perceptions about the key drivers and inhibiters of performance.

The study reveals that top performers tend to have higher order and intrinsic motivators, compared to poor performers, who have a mixture of extrinsic and intrinsic needs, and managers have a misaligned expectation of extrinsic motivators.

The ecosystem concept has attracted attention in information system research to explain business competition, innovation and many other emerging phenomena. Existing studies focus more on a single ecosystem type or a single ecosystem goal and pay little attention to the ecosystem’s evolution. The objective of the study is to investigate the factors that impact the evolution of the information ecosystem (IE) to gain a better understanding of strategic thinking.

The IE involves many actors, so the multi-case study approach is conducted with purposeful sampling to recruit all the significant ecosystem actors. The collected qualitative data are analyzed by coding data, exploring data relationships and structuring pattern steps; institutional theory is used as a theoretical framework.

The results demonstrate that industry practices, laws and regulations, new actors and the mimetic pressure of outsourcers drive the growth of the ecosystem. Strategy intention, cost pressure and normative pressure all contribute to the IE’s evolution.

The concept of ecosystems has attracted attention in information system research. The study investigates the factors contributing to the evolution of the IE from an institutional theory perspective. Our suggestion is that new players can find a niche in offering information technology (IT)/ information services (IS)-related solutions to survive in the ecosystem; however, they need to pay attention to the normative pressure.

Outsourcing of information technology (IT) and financial services has changed enormously over the past decade. To date, India has been the principal winner in this offshore techno‐shift. Buoyed by the rise of data networks and satellite communications, the country has witnessed a boom in software applications development and IT services outsourcing since the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991. Its blossoming technology services sector was helped further when the technology bubble burst in 2001 as Western companies started pruning their IT budgets and began shopping around for better value.