Information Systems Offshoring—A Literature Review and Analysis

Abstract

IS offshoring has become one of the most discussed phenomena in IS research and practice. Particularly due to its rapid evolvement, current research on IS offshoring lacks a consolidated view on existing results. The article at hand seeks to meet this need by systematically reviewing and analyzing prior academic literature on IS offshoring. Based on a review of top-ranked IS and management journals as well as IS conference proceedings, we compile an exhaustive bibliography of ninety-six publications solely focusing on IS offshoring from a (project) management perspective. To adequately address the immense diversity of these publications, a multi-perspective research framework consisting of three perspectives, namely, research focus, research approach, and reference theory, is introduced and forms the basis for our literature analysis. The analysis results confirm the appropriateness of our framework and reveal directions for future research along the framework perspectives: Most importantly, in an effort to increase the significance and the trustworthiness of their results, researchers should apply a more theory-driven approach and provide a better description of their research context. Moreover, future research needs to pay particular attention to the pre-implementation stages of an IS offshoring initiative as well as the special nature of nearshoring and captive offshoring. Across all project stages, researchers should not only concentrate on the client point of view but incorporate multiple points of view.

Software Development Outsourcing: Challenges and Opportunities in Nigeria

“…The literature has reported hundreds of articles devoted to analyze GSD as a phenomenon and several broad reviews on offshoring and outsourcing (e.g., Noll, Beecham, & Richardson, 2010;Schneider, Torkar, & Gorschek, 2013;Šmite et al, 2010;Verner, Brereton, Kitchenham, Turner, & Niazi, 2014) and on specific aspects, such as contract management , selection of vendors (Khan, Niazi, & Ahmad, 2011), process models (Prikladnicki & Audy, 2010), knowledge transfer (Nidhra, Yanamadala, Afzal, & Torkar, 2013), agile practices (Jalali & Wohlin, 2012), and information systems offshoring (Wiener et al, 2010 As a result of the panoply of works already available, instead of performing a new literature review or systematic mapping study, we summarize the main findings with regard to challenges and opportunities in GSD. With regard to GSD challenges, the literature has reported the following:…”

“…Software development offshoring is one of the results of the phenomenon that has gained momentum in the last several years (Colomo-Palacios, Casado-Lumbreras, Soto-Acosta, García-Peñalvo, & Tovar-Caro, 2014). The growth of software development offshoring as a strategic option has transformed what was traditionally an internal firm activity to one driven by external vendors in which application development services are totally or partially outsourced (Wiener, Vogel, & Amberg, 2010). Driven by continuous advances in information technology, the trend toward offshore software outsourcing has been growing steadily since the 1990s, and now offshore software outsourcing has become an attractive strategy for companies that want to reduce costs, concentrate on core competencies, access specialized resources, and increase the overall competitive advantage (Sheng, Nakano, Kubo, & Tsuji, 2008).…”

Maximizing return on investment without increasing project risks — Near-shoring as a key practice on a business transformation programme: Case study on a training project for a global consumer goods company

“…Additionally, most research focus on a client perspective -"By contrast, few studies have examined supplyside aspects, especially between European clients and suppliers. This lack of published literature suggests significant opportunities for further research" [6]. Finally, there is not much literature on the subject that do not focus on IT servicesto broaden the scope of the research focusing on near-shoring can be an interesting path.…”

“…Additionally, we can also add that "near-shore emphasizes location and proximity as opposed to the prevailing off-shoring archetypes of location transparency and irrelevance of distance and time" [5]. To be noted that the constructs that constitute near-shoring have already been analyzed by Carmel that "identify seven distance dimensions that claim advantages of near-shore destinations over far-shore 1 destinations:(1) Geographical proximity; (2) Time difference; (3) Cultural similarity; (4) Historical linkage; (5) Linguistic similarity; (6) Political alignment; (7)Economic grouping" [6].…”

Information Systems Outsourcing

“…There has been significant research published on factors or issues that are likely to impact on the success of offshore IT service arrangements (see for example Winkler et al 2006;Rottman and Lacity 2009;Wiener et al 2010;Palvia et al 2011). We explore our case study using two published frameworks Winkler et al (2009) and Palvia et al (2011).…”