Vendor Opportunism in it Outsourcing: A TCE and Social Capital Perspective

J Software Evolu Process

Khan

et al. 2019

Software Outsourcing Partnership (SOP) is considered as a kind of risk and reward sharing client‐vendor relationship. Generally, a fruitful outsourcing association might be converted to an outsourcing partnership. The objective of this research is to identify and analyse barriers that are hurdles to vendors in renewing or promoting their ongoing client‐vendor relationship to outsourcing partnership. A questionnaire survey based on the findings of Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was performed with 50 experts. The study identifies five critical barriers such as “insufficient quality of technical capability,” “poor infrastructure,” “poor quality of service,” “communication gap and poor coordination,” and “relational risk.” The results indicate that barriers' insufficient quality of technical capability, poor infrastructure, and poor quality of service were common in four types of experts while insufficient quality of technical capability is common in three levels of experts. Furthermore, barriers were classified based on their criticality from client‐vendor perspective. The results of Spearman correlation test (rs = 0.714 and ρ = 0.000) confirmed that the participant strongly agrees with the outcomes of the SLR. The results suggest that for successful renewal or promotion of their existing outsourcing association, vendor organizations should address all the identified barriers in general and the most common barriers in particular.

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practitioner's view of barriers to software outsourcing partnership formation: An empirical exploration

J Software Evolu Process

Khan

et al. 2019

“…“Vendor opportunism and low mutual trust (B1)” is the top reported barrier in our study with 82% citation in our final SLR sample. Opportunism refers to “lack of condor or honesty in trading, to include self‐interest pursuing with guile” . “Communication gap and poor client‐vendor coordination (B1, 76%)” is the second most reported barrier in our study.…”

Section: Results and Analysismentioning

confidence: 86%

“…For instance, B3 (relational risk and poor relationship management) is dependent on all other barriers, while it only can affect B1 (vendor opportunism and low mutual trust). According to Lioliou and Zimmermann, vendor opportunism in outsourcing association may take several forms, for example breaching of obligations and promises, debasement of service quality in product development or service provision, distorting or withholding information regarding the project. Maintaining strong social capital and mutual trust will discourage vendor opportunism …”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A framework for modelling structural association amongst barriers to software outsourcing partnership formation: An interpretive structural modelling approach

J Software Evolu Process

Huang

Khan

et al. 2020

Software Outsourcing Partnership (SOP) is considered as a type of risk and reward sharing relationship between a client organisation, in the developed countries, and its overseas vendor organisation. Regardless of numerous benefits, the development of SOP still remnants in its infancy stage due to several interactive barriers. Some studies have been conducted to examine the barriers to SOP formation. However, no attempt has been reported so far to explore the multifaceted interrelationships amongst them. To bridge the gap, this study implements Interpretive Structural Model (ISM) approach to reconnoitre the interrelationships amongst the barriers in the context of SOP formation. The objective of this research paper is to develop a framework for modelling structural association amongst the barriers. To achieve the objective, we used a hybrid methodology based on systematic literature review (SLR), empirical survey, and ISM. Firstly, via SLR study, we identified 27 barriers to SOP formation. Secondly, to empirically explore the interrelationships amongst the identified barriers, a questionnaire survey was performed with 50 experts from a total of 20 different countries. Further, interrelationships amongst the barriers were identified using ISM via panel review, and their classifications were carried out via Cross‐Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to the Classification Approach.

“…'Vendor opportunism and low mutual trust' is a top reported barrier in our study with 82% citation. Opportunism refers to ''lack of condor or honesty in trading, to include self-interest pursuing with guile [61]. More generally, the distorted or incomplete disclosure of information, especially to intended efforts to distort, misleads, obfuscate, confuse, or disguise [61].…”

Section: A Barriers Identified Via Slr (Rq1)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Barriers to Software Outsourcing Partnership Formation: An Exploratory Analysis

Ullah²,

Abrar

et al. 2019

IEEE Access

Software Outsourcing Partnership (SOP) is a type of cooperative client-vendor relationship. SOP is an emerging strategy and is different from ordinary software development outsourcing (SDO). Usually, a fruitful outsourcing association might be converted to an outsourcing partnership. Conversely, SOP is not a risk-free business, numerous barriers associated with SOP. The overarching target of this exploratory paper is to find and analyze a list of barriers that are considered obstacles for vendors in the conversion of their surviving contractual outsourcing relationship to a partnership. Firstly, twenty-six barriers to SOP formation were identified through systematic literature review (SLR) from a sample of 106 papers and then an empirical survey was conducted with fifty experts to analyze the significance and applicability of these barriers in the SOP context. The identified barriers were further analyzed based on five variables such as decades, company size, continents, location of analysis, and perspective of the study. Ten barriers were considered as critical barriers (CBs) via SLR. Industrial experts indicate they extremely agree with five CBs. Eight CBs were equally reported on all continents. We found ten CBs common in all types of organizations. Further, twelve CBs were shared in both decades while ten CBs were found common in both academia and industry. Furthermore, four CBs were specific to clients; five were specific to vendors while ten were common to both. The association of various barriers with SOP formation is found statistically significant for twenty-five barriers with effect size (0.41 < Ø < 0.90, p < 0.05). Stakeholders in SOP should address all the listed barriers especially the critical ones to attain a partner position. INDEX TERMS Systematic literature review, empirical survey, software outsourcing partnership, client-vendor relationship.