Outsourcing Decision Making Aspects Considered by Brazilian Companies’ It Departments

There is a growing outsourcing movement in the activities that involve Information Technology (IT) services. This movement can be easily acknowledged since companies are outsourcing their IT activities more than ever. For this reason, studying this movement is very relevant, mainly in places where it is increasing. An important focus in IT research has been the outsourcing decision. An analysis of the literature that refers to this subject found that six aspects are usually considered by the companies when evaluating the outsourcing alternative. Considering these aspects, this research aimed to verify if they are really considered by Brazilian companies that outsourced IT functions. This study used survey to research the companies. The results obtained show that Brazilian companies consider the six aspects, but each aspect has a different level of importance. It was also possible to group such aspects according to their level of importance and interdependency, using cluster analysis.