Characteristics of IT Outsourcing Contracts

نویسندگان

  • Benoit Aubert
  • Jean-François Houde
  • Michel Patry
  • Suzanne Rivard
چکیده

Once the decision to outsource an activity has been made, managers are faced with issues related to the management of the relationship with their service providers. A critical element of relationship management is the contract itself, which defines, more or less completely, the nature of the services to be rendered and of the relationship itself. In this paper, we rely on transaction cost theory to develop a series of propositions on the relationship between the characteristics of the transaction asset specificity, number of suppliers, measurement problems, uncertainty, and permanent character of the contract and the level of contract completeness. A survey of 200 firms was conducted to test the propositions.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

IT Outsourcing Contracts and Performance Measurement

Companies that outsource information technology (IT) services usually focus on achieving multiple objectives. Correspondingly, outsourcing contracts typically specify a variety of metrics to measure and reward (or penalize) vendor performance. The specific types of performance metrics included in a contract strongly affect its incentive content and ultimately its outcome. One specific challenge...

متن کامل

Information Technology Outsourcing Contracts: An Empirical Analysis on Contract Structure and Performance Implications

The study examines two dimensions of IT outsourcing contract structure: contract specificity and flexibility. We posit that the contract structures are influenced by (a) relational elements such as prior interactions, current nature of relationship between the contracting parties, and future interactions; and by (b) the attributes of transactions such as investment specificity and task and tech...

متن کامل

IT Implementation Contract Design: Analytical and Experimental Investigation of IT Value, Learning, and Contract Structure

T article analytically and experimentally investigates how firms can best capture the business value of information technology (IT) investments through IT contract design. Using a small sample of outsourcing contracts for enterprise information technology (EIT) projects in several industries—coupled with reviews of contracts used by a major enterprise software maker—the authors determine the co...

متن کامل

The Role of Service Level Agreements in Relational Management of Information Technology Outsourcing: An Empirical Study

This study extends the view that formal contracts and relational governance function as complements rather than as substitutes. We investigate how specific characteristics of service level agreements (SLAs) impact relational governance in information technology outsourcing relationships. Eleven contractual elements (categorized into three SLA characteristics: foundation, change, and governance ...

متن کامل

Outsourcing Contracts and Performance Measurement Extended Abstract for WISE 2006

The successful outsourcing of IT services in firms has been hampered by the lack of guidance on how to design IT outsourcing contracts to achieve optimal results (Gurbaxani 2006). In particular, theories of the firm have had limited success explaining the choice of particular performance incentives in outsourcing contracts. It remains a puzzle for these theories why so many managers do not use ...

متن کامل

Contracts: Theory and Evidence

The information systems outsourcing market has seen rapid growth. Companies are increasingly choosing to outsource many of their information systems activities to services firms rather than sourcing them internally. This trend is inconsistent with the predictions of some of the published literature which point to the high costs of using an outside market. These articles, based on transaction co...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2003