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Research on international experience notes its positive influence on subsequent international expansion by firms. We test this relationship in the context of the Indian software industry whose offerings, unlike many other services, are storable implying that delivery can be separated from production.

We analyzed the domestic expansion of a sample of publicly listed Indian software firms over the period 2000–2009 with help of Poisson regression.

We find that even internationally experienced Indian software firms might prefer to expand domestically because of limited financial and managerial resources and concerns about diluting their cost advantage. The storable and separable nature of software services will support this strategy of serving clients remotely. The domestic expansion of assets will, however, be slower for firms with the highest level of industry accreditation. It will also be slower if there are institutional pressures in the form of rivals locating development centers near clients in developed countries.

Our results demonstrate that international experience alone is not sufficient for firms to expand overseas.

Despite extensive investigation of the Indian software industry, knowledge about small software firms is inadequate. This knowledge is important as many developing countries are contemplating the software industry as a means of national growth along the lines that India has taken. This paper provides a descriptive analysis of small software firms in India. It shows that small software firms that are located in software clusters; quality certified; low product oriented; and slightly larger tend to be more productive than others. Small software firms are defined as firms that have fewer software employees than the national median size. The paper used firm level data available in the Indian IT Software and Services Directory 2003, whose members contribute 95% of the industry revenue.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of trends of Indian information technology and business processing management (IT-BPM) sector and to analyse the determinants of IT-BPM sector during the period 1991-2014.

The study is based on annual data collected from National Association of Software and Service Companies and Department of Electronic and Information Technology for the period 1991 to 2014. The methodology adopted for studying the objectives are simple averages, percentages, ratios, growth rates, graphs prepared on the basis of data from the IT-BPM sector and regression analysis. Trends and patterns in key variables, such as total revenue, domestic revenue, export revenue, employment and exports of the IT-BPM sector have been examined. Factors influencing IT-BPM export growth have been analysed using ordinary least square multiple regression model, with growth rates of gross domestic product (GDP), labour productivity, exchange rate and previous year’s export, as the explanatory variables.

The export revenue from IT-BPM sector increased continuously over the years, at an average growth rate of 36.60 per cent during the period 1991 to 2014. Similarly, domestic revenue of IT-BPM sector also increased, but at a lower growth rate. This is because domestic market in India is captured by multinational giants against Indian firms, which do not possess full comparative advantage in the case of IT-BPM sector. Indian firms are producing low skill activities required for production, mainly concentrated only in the export sector. Direct employment, excluding hardware from IT-BPM sector, has grown at an average rate of 18.08 per cent over the study period. The determinants of IT-BPM exports indicated previous year’s export demand to be significantly contributing the highest to export growth rate. This was followed by GDP growth rate, implying that overall growth of the economy leads to significant increase in export growth. Increased labour productivity followed next in significantly encouraging export growth.

Generalization of the results may not be possible, as Indian conditions and policies vary.

The paper has implications for the expansion of domestic market, diversification of trade and products, innovations for increasing competitiveness and sustainability in the global market in the wake of stiff competitions from new competitors.

This paper focuses on originality in analysis of determinants of export growth.

In explaining international expansion and performance, the traditional explanation in international business literature has mainly offered country, and firm-level structural explanations for performance. Moreover, this literature has been biased toward larger, established multinational manufacturing companies (Dunning, 1958; Hymer, 1960; Aharoni, 1966; Vernon, 1966). This was understandable as, for much of the 20th century, manufacturing occupied the dominant share of the economy. However, by the early 1960s, the service sector already accounted for more than half of the domestic economic activity in developed nations. Today, even in international operations, the share of services is rapidly increasing. For example, the share of services in U.S. exports in 1997 had grown to 27%, and to 16% in U.S. imports (Contractor, 1999). Moreover, in sectors such as information technology, telecommunications or biotechnology, recent years have seen a proliferation of entrepreneurial start-up companies, where the characteristics of their founders and leaders appear to have as much, or greater, impact on performance, as traditional firm-level explanations. Since the late 1980s, the growth of venture capital markets and rise in entrepreneurship have been observed in technology-driven industries (The Economist, 1993; Gupta, 1989; Mamis, 1989). Could entrepreneurial and leadership factors assume greater importance in explaining performance, especially international performance, of younger companies in such sectors? This is the broad hypothesis pursued in this study.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of back-office (BO) service capability and front-office (FO) service capability, and how firm age influences the impact of these service capabilities on small and medium size enterprise (SME) performance.

Based on the prior literature on servitization and firm operational capabilities, hypotheses were developed on the impact of service capabilities on firm performance. These hypotheses were tested using a survey and externally sourced financial data on 224 SMEs in the software industry.

FO service capability has a positive impact on firm performance of SMEs. The effect of BO service capability was weaker and partly contrary to expectations, showing a negative effect on firm performance for young SMEs. As hypothesized, the impact of both BO and FO service capability is moderated by firm age. Young SMEs benefit more from FO service capability. For older SMEs, BO service capability becomes increasingly more important.

As different capabilities lead to different outcomes, SMEs need to carefully consider which service capabilities to invest in. As the relative importance of capabilities changes over time, SMEs need to be ready to change their strategic focus over time toward BO capabilities to attain optimal outcomes.

The findings suggest that factors such as industry, firm size, and firm age affect the optimal servitization path, and that current understanding of servitization does not necessarily apply to all servitized firms. The study also provides further evidence of the impact of service capabilities on firm performance.

The creation of customized, technology-based services is highly dependent on experience-based knowledge embodied in individual expert employees. Therefore, knowledge upgrading through recruitment is fundamental to advanced services firms. Paying particular attention to the role of pre-existing knowledge bases and organisational contexts, this paper aims to investigate how software services firms search and select new employees. By doing so, it addresses an underdeveloped part of the human resource management (HRM) literature that concerns the relationship between recruitment and organisational learning.

The analysis uses qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews with HR managers and executives in 12 software firms located in the Norwegian capital, and supplementary information from technologists’ CVs. The firms are strategically chosen to support conceptual development and to allow theoretical generalizations that have relevance for practitioners, and for future research.

The findings point to a challenging tension associated with the need to create stable individual knowledge linkages internally in consultancy-based business environments where technologists tend to develop their careers through external labour market mobility.

Mangers should reflect upon the balance between external and internal competence investments. The creation of an organisational labour market represents one way of co-investing in integrative capabilities and thus of avoiding over-dependency on external sources of knowledge.

The study provides a conceptual model linking recruitment to organisational learning, and emphasises the importance of knowledge management functions at the intersection between external labour markets and the internal organisation.

The aim of this paper is to make a descriptive exploratory effort to discern the role of IT exports in India's macro-economic indicators, like national income, employment and balance of payment in the post-Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization strategy in the 1990s. The paper also explores the vital historical developments of various dimensions of IT, such as its export growth, major software and services exports destinations, compositions of IT exports and domestic growth in India.

This study is based on secondary data, which were collected from Balance of Payment Statistics Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy, National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM),rtd and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY). This study has used descriptive analysis and growth models for studying the objectives. Major IT sector dimensions, such as total output, exports revenue, domestic revenue, gross domestic product, employment and exports of the software and service industry, have been examined for the period 1991–2016.

The findings suggest that over the last 26 years, the information technology industry's economic footprint has extended by more than seven times. Over the same period, direct employment in the information technology sector increased at an average growth rate of around 17%. Software and services exports earn, on average, about three times greater than the other three major services of India's current account of the balance of payment.

This study focuses on originality in examining the role of IT exports in India's macro-economic indicators economic reforms of the 1990s and also explores the historical developments of various dimensions of IT exports and domestic growth in India. All the work has been done in original by the authors, and the work used has been acknowledged properly.

The main purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of intellectual capital efficiency on US multinational software companies' performance from 2012 to 2016 by applying data envelopment analysis (DEA).

It adopts a new slacks-based measure (SBM) to obtain a more accurate performance estimation and rank between companies. Regression analysis is used to test the overall IC and each of its elements (Human Capital, Innovation Capital, Process Capital and Customer Capital).

The univariate result shows that multinational companies are more efficient than non-multinational companies. However, the regression result shows that multinationality can hardly explain the firm efficiency of software firms. Another interesting finding is that intellectual capital has a positive and significant impact on software firm performance in the US human capital influences firm efficiency directly. However, when human capital is combined with the other elements of IC, the contribution of human capital becomes less significant. This is because people may think that innovation capital, process capital and customer capital can replace human capital, but it is not. In short, human capital may affect firm efficiency through other elements of IC (innovation capital, process capital and customer capital) as it is the base of other elements.

The results show that multinational companies have higher efficiency scores than non-multinational companies. In addition, Intellectual capital has a positive and significant impact on software firm performance in the US human capital influences firm efficiency directly. However, when human capital is combined with the other elements of IC, the contribution of human capital becomes less significant. This is because people may think that innovation capital, process capital and customer capital can replace human capital, but it is not. In short, human capital may affect firm efficiency through other elements of IC (innovation capital, process capital and customer capital) as it is the base of other elements.

Overall, the study highlights the needs of having intellectual capital and its elements (Human Capital, Innovation Capital, Process Capital and Customer Capital) to increase firm efficiency.

First, the authors use a more comprehensive elements of IC, which are human capital, innovation capital, process capital and customer capital for a better IC measurement. Second, this study makes the first attempt using the DSBM model via DEA to examine the operating efficiency of US multinational software firms.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to manage the strategy to counter disruptive innovation by identifying stronger attributes and key strategic areas for improvements in an engineering services context with less freedom to orchestrate product innovation. The authors also validate the combined use of multi-grade fuzzy, Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) and gap analysis in developing the strategy to mitigate turbulence.

The paper presents a framework using a combination of Dynamic Capabilities and Organizational Agility to develop the strategy. The study uses data gathered from a 60-member engineering project team working on an Aircraft Engine Controller design to identify 50 attributes and the related importance and performance ratings. The research study is designed using a three-tier approach. First, multi-grade fuzzy is utilized to measure the overall firm response agility index. In the second step, the IPA is used to analyze the strength and weaknesses of the firm and to identify the attributes where the firm needs to focus. In the past step, gap analysis is used to prioritize the identified attributes. The findings are validated by panel discussions with a different group of experts from the project team and action points were arrived at.

This research work finds that the firms’ response agility index of 6.97 is comparable to that of the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) from previous literature, but still needs a better agility score to effectively counter turbulence from disruptive innovations. It also identifies seven key areas for improvement and their relative priority to effectively improve the response agility by utilizing the least number of resources, the reasons for the gap and the mitigation strategy to close the gap. The findings highlight a few key differences between an engineering services firm in comparison to OEMs and Software Services firms.

The findings help the practitioners with a comparative agility score of an engineering services firm, and an effective way of measuring agility, identify key focus areas and prioritize the actions using a simple set of data that could be collected regularly to keep track of the improvements. The provided strategic framework to improve the agility score can be used for continuous improvement.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by developing a framework for outsourcing services companies to cope with the turbulence by using dynamic capabilities and organizational agility. It also adds to the literature by extending the validity of IPA and gap analysis in making strategic decisions in an industrial set-up.

Advances in information technology coupled with the need to build resilience against disruptions by pandemics like COVID-19 continue to emphasize offshoring services in the software industry. Service-level agreements (SLAs) have served as a key mechanism for safeguarding against risk in offshore service arrangements. Yet, variations in service cost and quality persist. This study aims to open up the blackbox linking SLAs to offshore project outcomes by examining (1) how the provisions in these contracts affect the ability of project teams – the work unit primarily in charge of producing the offshored service – to achieve their objectives and fulfill client requirements and (2) how differences in contextual factors shape the effects of these provisions.

The authors incorporate the role of organizational work practice differences to understand the challenges that 270 offshore project teams faced in coordinating and integrating technical and business domain knowledge across organizational boundaries in offshore arrangements. The examined offshore IT projects were managed by a leading software vendor in India and several of its US-based clients over a three-year period.

The authors demonstrate that organizational work practice differences represent a barrier to offshore project success, and that project team transition processes are an important mechanism for overcoming these barriers. Moreover, the authors find that transition processes represent key mediating mechanisms through which SLA provisions affect offshore project outcomes.

The study findings shed light on how SLAs shape software project teams' balance between activities aimed at meeting client needs and those aimed at containing costs.