IT outsourcing: aligning IT supplier competences and organizational structures

Albert Plugge

 

Research title	IT outsourcing: aligning IT supplier competences and organizational structures
Name of PhD researcher	A.G. Plugge MBT
Promotor
Copromotor	Dr. G.M. Wijers, H. Bouwman
Research goal / topic / abstract	Abstract The need for companies to outsource IT services is growing rapidly on a global scale. The reasons why companies decide to outsource are manifold, varying from more focus on core activities and cost reduction to access external capabilities. As from the early nineties, the academic research in the area of IT outsourcing increased substantially. As the supply-side of the IT outsourcing remains under-researched in the academic literature, more insight is necessary to fathom the challenges and development suppliers have to go through. As IT outsourcing is a people business, the distinguishing factor of an IT supplier is their core asset: their people. Since a dynamic customer environment will affect the IT supplier capabilities during an outsourcing arrangement, regular evaluation and adaptation of the IT supplier is necessary to retain customer satisfaction. Consequently, an IT outsourcing supplier will need a capability model in order to determine which competences and capabilities are necessary and how they can be organized to deliver a high performance. The objective of this study is to explore the supply side of IT outsourcing by investigating and describing the alignment between IT supplier competences and organizational structures. The outcome of this research is a supplier competence model which describes both generic and specific competences and capabilities via a conceptual model and guidelines.
Main methods	Qualitative exploratory research, grounded theory building, multiple case studies
Year started	2005
Publications	N.A.