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Do researchers investigate what practitioners deem relevant?

  • There is a common understanding amongst academics that information systems (IS) research sometimes has limited relevance for practitioners. This can be explained by the fact that research lags behind the fast moving IS environment, has limited practical applicability and is hard to access. We have focused on the research area of IS backsourcing, and analyzed practitioner literature to increase our understanding of topics of interest for practitioners, to determine a potential gap between academic and practitioner literature, and to identify future research directions in this field. We observed that most publications are either news or background articles, focusing on describing backsourcing cases. Additionally, we identified four recurring themes, namely reasons for backsourcing, presentation of survey results, discussion of industry trends, and backsourcing success stories. The main reasons identified to trigger backsourcing decisions are cost savings, quality improvements, and increasing control and flexibility. By comparing our findings with academic literature on IS backsourcing, we conclude that generally both literature types cover similar topics. However, researchers have a more formulative or interpretive focus than the often descriptive practitioner literature. Academic literature also examines a broader range of topics, while practitioner literature has a narrower focus. Additionally, we observe one difference regarding applied terminology: while researchers employ the term backsourcing, practitioners mostly use back in-house or insourcing. Our paper contributes to facilitating the exchange between academics and practitioners, presents topics to consider when aiming to increase practical relevance and provides researchers with concrete directions for future research within the field of IS backsourcing.

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Metadaten
Author:Benedikt von Bary, Markus WestnerORCiDGND, Susanne Strahringer
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/CBI.2018.00014
Parent Title (English):Proceedings of the 20th IEEE International Conference on Business Informatics (IEEE CBI 2018): Vienna, Austria, 11-14 July
Subtitle (English):Gaps between research and practice in the field of information systems backsourcing
Document Type:conference proceeding (article)
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2018
Release Date:2019/12/11
Tag:Backsourcing; Information systems; Practical applicability
GND Keyword:Betriebliches Informationssystem; Backsourcing; Anwendung; Literaturbericht
First Page:40
Last Page:49
Institutes:Fakultät Informatik und Mathematik
Fakultät Informatik und Mathematik / Regensburg Strategic IT Management (ReSITM)
Begutachtungsstatus:peer-reviewed
research focus:Digitalisierung