@article{BaryWestnerStrahringer2019, author = {Bary, Benedikt von and Westner, Markus and Strahringer, Susanne}, title = {How decision maker's personal preferences influence the decision to backsource IT services}, series = {Journal of Information Technology Management (JITM)}, volume = {30}, journal = {Journal of Information Technology Management (JITM)}, number = {3}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:898-opus4-233}, pages = {1 -- 22}, year = {2019}, abstract = {To prepare their IT landscape for future business challenges, companies are changing their IT sourcing arrangements by using selective sourcing approaches as well as multi-sourcing with more but smaller sourcing contracts. Companies therefore have to reconsider and re-evaluate their IT sourcing setup more frequently. Collecting data from 251 global experts, we empirically tested the effect of service quality, relationship quality, and switching costs on IT sourcing decisions using partial least squares (PLS) analysis. Drawing on previously conducted expert interviews, our model extends previous studies and introduces a decision maker's sourcing preferences as a not yet examined moderator on IT sourcing decisions. This allows us to investigate the influence of the decision maker's beliefs on the decision process. We were able to confirm the negative effect of switching costs on a decision in favor of backsourcing, however we could not find significant support for the remaining hypotheses. We further discuss potential reasons for our findings and suggest future research opportunities based on our contribution.}, subject = {Outsourcing}, language = {en} } @article{KoenningWestnerStrahringer, author = {K{\"o}nning, Michael and Westner, Markus and Strahringer, Susanne}, title = {A Systematic Review of Recent Developments in IT Outsourcing Research}, series = {Information Systems Management}, volume = {36}, journal = {Information Systems Management}, number = {1}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, pages = {78 -- 96}, abstract = {Incomplete conceptualization of the information technology outsourcing (ITO) literature represents a challenge for navigating extant research and engaging into purposeful academic discourse. We extend the analysis of empirical findings on determinants of ITO decisions, outcomes, and governance. We identify increasing levels of research maturity, analyze effects of 38 new independent variables, highlight contradictory findings, and observe increasing interest in emerging topics such as innovation through ITO and multisourcing.}, subject = {Outsourcing}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{KoenningHeinrichLeyhetal., author = {K{\"o}nning, Michael and Heinrich, Kai and Leyh, Christian and Westner, Markus}, title = {A quantitative analysis of culture-induced differences in pivotal IT outsourcing contract features}, series = {Proceedings of the 27th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2019): Stockholm \& Uppsala, Sweden, June 8-14}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 27th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2019): Stockholm \& Uppsala, Sweden, June 8-14}, pages = {1 -- 15}, abstract = {More than 30 years after its first implementation, IT outsourcing (ITO) is unanimously considered a critical component of corporate strategy for private and public institutions alike. While implementations of ITO around the world share some common characteristics like typical reasons for outsourcing, key success factors, or dimensions along which they can be classified, extant research also points to regional differences. However, research on this topic, specifically regarding pivotal contract features like contract value, contract length, or pricing methods, is still in its infancy, and quantitative analyses on the subject are particularly scarce. We address this research gap by analyzing data on 14,917 ITO contracts closed between 2007 and 2017 through the lens of cultural regions and three statistical methods. The contribution of our paper is threefold. First, our descriptive analysis points to globally decreasing contract lengths and contract values, confirming previous studies and practice reports. Second, an ANOVA with independent post-hoc testing provides quantitative supportfor the degree of dissimilarity among individual regions in pivotal ITO contract features. Finally, our quantitative replication of a previous study identifies culture-induced regional differences between USA and Japan regarding the effect of influence factors on ITO contract features.}, subject = {Betriebliches Informationssytem}, language = {en} } @article{WestnerStrahringer, author = {Westner, Markus and Strahringer, Susanne}, title = {Evaluation criteria for selecting offshoring candidates}, series = {Journal of Information Technology Management}, volume = {19}, journal = {Journal of Information Technology Management}, number = {4}, pages = {16 -- 34}, abstract = {The identification of suitable applications or projects is a main initial step in any software development or maintenance related IS offshoring arrangement. This paper examines evaluation criteria and their importance for selecting application or project candidates for offshoring. Based on a literature analysis and interviews with 47 experts from 36 different German companies describing 64 case examples, we find that in contrast to the literature, "size", "codification", and "language" are perceived as important selection criteria by experts. Case examples additionally show that "business specificity" seems to be a main reason for application or project failures, that "business criticality" appears to be less important than suggested by the literature, and that adequate "size" might be a necessary prerequisite, but seems not to be a sufficient criterion for an application's or project's suitability for offshoring. These differences in comparison to findings from the literature may be explained by cultural and language differences.}, subject = {Betriebliches Informationssystem}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{KoenningWestnerStrahringer, author = {K{\"o}nning, Michael and Westner, Markus and Strahringer, Susanne}, title = {Multisourcing on the Rise: Results from an Analysis of more than 1,000 IT Outsourcing Deals in the ASG Region}, series = {Tagungsband Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik 2018 (MKWI 2018): data driven X - turning data into value, Leuphana Unversit{\"a}t L{\"u}neburg, 6.-9. M{\"a}rz 2018}, booktitle = {Tagungsband Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik 2018 (MKWI 2018): data driven X - turning data into value, Leuphana Unversit{\"a}t L{\"u}neburg, 6.-9. M{\"a}rz 2018}, number = {Band V}, publisher = {Leuphana, Universit{\"a}t L{\"u}neburg}, address = {L{\"u}neburg}, pages = {1813 -- 1824}, abstract = {Information technology outsourcing (ITO) has long been recognized for its numerous potential advantages such as lowering costs, accessing external skills, and improving efficiency, flexibility, and quality. However, it also exposes client companies to various risks, including vendor lock-in, poor agility, or insufficient vendor expertisein individual domains, especially inincreasingly dynamic market environments. Consequently, companies increasingly implement multisourcing by composing a "best of breed" set of vendors for their various IT services. In this paper,we use a dataset of 1,016 ITO deals closed with Austrian, Swiss, and German client companies between 2006 and 2017 to analyze the development of the ITO market in general and multisourcing in particular. Our results show decreasing services run rates, shorter contract lengths, an increasing number of concurrent service providers per client,and a distribution of the total number of contracts to a larger set of vendors, all pointing towards an increasing popularity of multisourcing.}, subject = {Outsourcing}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{SonnleitnerWestner, author = {Sonnleitner, Daniel and Westner, Markus}, title = {Quo vadis IT infrastructure}, series = {Proceedings of the 22nd UKAIS Conference : Ubiquitous Information Systems: Surviving and thriving in a connected society, 2017 Oxford, April 3rd-5th 2017}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 22nd UKAIS Conference : Ubiquitous Information Systems: Surviving and thriving in a connected society, 2017 Oxford, April 3rd-5th 2017}, pages = {14}, abstract = {Many IT organizations are confronted with the question whether to modernize their IT infrastructure. While most data centers run on a virtualized environment, Cloud Computing technology emerges with new characteristics on fast provision of standardized resources in a scalable IT infrastructure. Public cloud vendors offer IT services on demand, so that IT organizations do not have to operate their own hardware. Moreover, private cloud architectures gain influence, claiming to provide flexible and elastic IT infrastructure. The paper at hand guides the strategic decision for adoption of Cloud Computing on IT infrastructure. Therefore, we first introduce a taxonomy for IT infrastructure encompassing a technological and a sourcing perspective. Second, we evaluate selective areas of the taxonomy adopting the SWOT framework to understand both opportunities and challenges of Cloud Computing for IT infrastructure from a business perspective.}, subject = {Cloud Computing}, language = {en} } @article{StrahringerWestnerBary, author = {Strahringer, Susanne and Westner, Markus and Bary, Benedikt von}, title = {IT-Backsourcing}, series = {Das Wirtschaftsstudium : wisu}, journal = {Das Wirtschaftsstudium : wisu}, number = {6}, publisher = {Lange ; Mohr}, address = {D{\"u}sseldorf ; T{\"u}bingen}, pages = {702 -- 706}, abstract = {The importance of information systems (IS) for companies has grown rapidly over the recent years. For example, companies from various industries are focusing their efforts to digitize business models, to adopt agile forms of collaboration, and to leverage automation of routine tasks. This forces companies to review their IS sourcing strategies and to potentially consider alternatives for current outsourcing contracts. One potential option could be to backsource IS services currently performed by external vendors. Based on empirical observations, previous academics defined it as the repatriation of all assets, activities, and skills needed to perform IS services back in-house, which had been outsourced previously to one or multiple vendors. The distinctive characteristic of backsourcing is the change in ownership back to the mother organization. This distinguishes the term backsourcing from similar terms, e.g., backshoring, reshoring, or relocating, which rather focus on the change in location of the service delivery. At the initial sourcing decision, the strategy to outsource an IS service was considered most promising. However, certain developments both inside the company, but also on a broader industry level may lead to a re-evaluation of the situation and thus to an adjustment of the original sourcing strategy. Over the last years, there has been a strong increase in cloud-based services and a shift towards the deployment of standardized, almost "industrialized" applications as services. Before, large companies leveraged their size in realizing economies of scale within their sourcing volumes. The raise of cloud computing as well as standardization of service delivery decreased those benefits and led towards a decline in large outsourcing contracts across a variety of services and a growth of multi-sourcing of individual IS services from the respective "best-in-breed" vendors for shorter time periods. Besides sourcing the best vendor for each service, companies that implement multi-sourcing strategies additionally aim for cost benefits due to an increased competition between vendors, and an increase in agility and adaptability. At the same time, a move towards multi-sourcing strategies with shorter contract durations leads to an increase in so-called "second generation sourcing decisions", namely whether to continue outsourcing a respective service or to bring the service back in-house. Given the developments within the IS environment, this research projects aims at understanding why IS services are backsourced and which factors influence a company's decision to backsource an IS service.}, subject = {Betriebliches Informationssystem}, language = {de} } @inproceedings{Westner, author = {Westner, Markus}, title = {Antecedents of success in IS offshoring projects}, series = {Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2009), Verona}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2009), Verona}, pages = {3104 -- 3116}, abstract = {The paper presents a research model and a measurement instrument for a research-in-progress study on the antecedents of success in IS offshoring projects. In this empirical-confirmatory study, we intend to analyse the impact of the constructs "offshoring expertise", "trust in offshore service provider", "project suitability", "knowledge transfer", and "liaison quality" on offshore project success. Constructs and indicators are derived from an extensive literature review. We plan to formulate a structural equation model and to test it using partial least squares (PLS) as an analysis technique. Our research model addresses the paucity of research that quantitatively examines offshoring success.}, subject = {Informationstechnik}, language = {en} } @article{vonBaryWestnerStrahringer, author = {von Bary, Benedikt and Westner, Markus and Strahringer, Susanne}, title = {IT Backsourcing}, series = {International Journal of IT/Business Alignment and Governance}, volume = {10}, journal = {International Journal of IT/Business Alignment and Governance}, number = {2}, publisher = {IGI Global}, doi = {10.4018/IJITBAG.2019070102}, pages = {15}, abstract = {With the growing importance of IT as competitive advantage, companies aim to increase their digital transformation activities. Consequently, companies are also revisiting their existing IT sourcing arrangements. In the article at hand, the authors explore the concept of IT backsourcing by presenting the results from a quantitative online survey with global IT practitioners. The authors confirm that backsourcing is frequently applied in practice, with key reasons being dissatisfaction with service or relationship quality and higher than expected costs. Further, the authors identify IT services with an increased likelihood of being backsourced, e.g., application development or data center, and discuss the effect of a CIO change on the backsourcing decision. In addition, the authors show that there are differences in the perceptions on the antecedents and the results of backsourcing decisions between management and operational level. The authors conclude with practical implications for IT managers based on their findings.}, subject = {Outsourcing}, language = {en} }